Topic Summarisation

julian

@baris noticed this on the meta forum for another forum software...

What do you guys think? It's definitely new, something I didn't expect to see in forum softwares, and it looks like it's built into their core, too...

Personally, I don't like it. I've seen it used on Slate, but it's always been a gimmick to me. I'll admit that on some forums there's a definite need to get rid of... "cruft" ("first!", anyone?), but on actual discussions, I think it seems really weird to blip out entire posts because some algorithm deemed them unworthy of being read...

Something like this would be great as a plugin, though

finid

@julian

If a feature does not break anything, why not? A group of users will like it, while another group will not.

If I had any say, I'd rather at this stage concentrate on much needed core features that are yet to be implemented.

julian

Like sidebars?

finid

@julian

That'd be nice, but no, like anti-spam and moderation features. ;(

Or do you guys want me to learn how to code? I can mess with HTML/CSS from here til Thy Kingdom Come, but real coding is not my thing - yet.

bentael

I am not in love with that feature, UNLESS the topics were like, Q/A type, very similar to StackOverflow, .. if there is question on a TOPIC, I think the users should be able to vote which POST resolved this TOPIC, .. i guess, yea, it's not a bad idea to be able to view the SOLUTION-POST without having to read 50 other posts first

@planner anti-spam is blocked ! or maybe awaiting a major PR

trevor

I like this idea!

fais3000

@julian Do you guys think if one would do it, is NLP the way to go or conventional algos like https://smmry.com/?

gotwf

@fais3000 I wonder if something like this is actually the best approach or more "feature parity"? What problem are we trying to "solve" here? A couple possibilities come to mind:

Dismal signal to noise ratio. Lots of forums prioritize hits/impressions/click-thrus and thereby incentivized to tolerate and/or outright encourage "post whoring".
Long running threads with relatively good signal to noise ratios.
ADD/ADHD Generation?

Different problems may well warrant different solutions.