# How to seperate the "drive by" topics from the "deeper" discussions?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seperate-the-drive-by-topics-from-the-deeper-discussions/68222
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [17 Agosto , 2017 11:13 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seperate-the-drive-by-topics-from-the-deeper-discussions/68222 "2017-08-17T11:13:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 15

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### Author: ![angus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/angus/32/341715_2.png) [@angus](https://meta.discourse.org/u/angus)
#### Post date: [18 Agosto , 2017 10:20 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seperate-the-drive-by-topics-from-the-deeper-discussions/68222/15 "2017-08-18T10:20:56Z")

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> [@erlend\_sh](#):
>
> …because we the staffers have been actively and publicly applauding this behaviour. The algorithms are already in place; the rest is good old fashioned community management.

Right. There are proxies for deep / interesting already, the primary ones being “Likes”, “Views” and “Replies”. Discourse uses these proxies to highlight ‘interesting’ posts via specific topic lists - “Top” ([core](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/models/top_topic.rb#L170)) and “Hot” ([plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-hot-topics/48215)) - and via the design of the topic list itself (separate column for likes; heat colors);

One way of thinking about this is: What _other_ proxies for deep / interesting are there? Here are some possible candidates:

- Reading time (this is particularly underutilized I think)
- Writing time (interesting posts normally take a little longer to write)
- Number of links
- Frequency of posts quoting other posts

This data already exists in Discourse, it’s a matter of using it in an interesting way.

It is perhaps worth mentioning in this context the potential for machine learning to assist as well; if only to plug my existing (unfinished) [machine learning plugin](https://github.com/angusmcleod/discourse-machine-learning), which I would be happy to work with somebody on.

Another way of thinking about this, and this gets back to the OP, is “How do I handle different types of users, with different goals, on the same platform?”.

Say, for the sake of argument, we divide the ‘user experience’ management of Discourse into:

- Defaults: Site settings. In particular `top_menu` and `category page style`.
- Trust: The trust system.
- Taxonomy: Categorization / tagging / grouping.
- Visibility: This discovery list design and user control over notifications, emails and theme.
- Curation: mods & staff

In addition to improving each system independently, some interesting avenues arise when you think about the connections between them, e.g.

- Taxonomy + Trust + Visibility: e.g. A topic list that ranked based taxonomic variables of the topic and trust variables of the posters, in addition to likes. This could split the difference between hiding the ‘sandbox’ / support category and letting it pollute your homepage.
- Trust + Defaults + Visibility: e.g. Give trusted users greater control over the Discovery UI to set their personal preferences; or
- Defaults + Visibility: Show different default topic lists to different users based on things like how new they are or how long since their last visit. It seems that this approach is [already used](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-was-the-latest-page-chosen-as-the-landing-page/4483/14) (I can’t find it in the current codebase though).

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