There is a summarize feature in the topics starter post, however, it is rather unclear how it works. Probably a button “Show most liked post first” can a good companion to it. At the moment, it looks rather hard to find out fast the essence the long topic.
It is very simple, the summary feature only appears for topics with more than 50 replies. You can change this threshold in your site settings by searching for “50”.
Thank you for you answer! I am sorry, it seems that my feature request was not really clear. So I will subdivide it into several parts.
-
Yes, I understand that “Summarize” button is only valid for rather long topics. The question, however, was about the procedure which is used to select the posts for a summarized view. Simply speaking: How posts are selected to be shown in summarized view of the topic? The most relevant post for this question I was able to found is here Feedback: Improved topic summary mode , however, it mostly describes how to use summarize feature instead of explaining what is under the hood. Digging the source is probably an overkill to get an answer
-
My actual request was to add one more button “Show most liked posts first” along with “Summarize button”. This new button should provide a new view of the topic, exactly as it is promoted on the button: after I press the button I will see the most liked post in the topic right after the topic starter message. It is something similar to StackOverflow manner of sorting the answers, so the most useful answer is shown the first, some valid alternatives can be shown afterward. Such an “SO”-mode can be extremely useful for user self-support section of the forum. Probably, a topic starter should be able to switch on this mode by default for other users in the topic.
-
One more way to provide an automated summary of the topic is to use “user normalized likes” sorting (probably I will describe how it is already implemented, sorry). Let me use Post Importance (PI) metric for each post to select posts for such topic view. It can be evaluated with some simple formula, e.g.
PI = (1 + {number of current mesage likes})*sqrt(Tune+{total likes of the author messages}).
The exact equation can be discussed later, here I assume that the PI is proportional to the number of likes for the post and the reputation of the post author. However, author reputation is less important by default (so I use square root operator) and there is some Tune value which will tune the possibly of a new author giving a better post compared to an old resident. This Tune value can be used to add some artificial intelligence to the forum in the following way. There should be some default Tune value, however, for each display of this “user normailzed likes” topic view of topic the engine should use slightly derivated value, e.g.
{Tune used} = {Tune default} + random(+/- 10% of Tune default)
The real tuning starts than a user likes some post, then such a Tune used value is pushed to a small array (lets call it Tunes best). We should remove the oldest value from Tunes best before adding new value, so Tunes best is simply several (e.g. ten) values of Tune used with a user like. And a Tune default is a simply average value of Tune best. That`s all! The forum “user normalized likes” view of the topic will automatically adapt to the typical user activity of the forum, moreover it will change over the time as the forum community changes (e.g. follow the change of share newcommers\experts and so on). As we have a PI value for each post in the topic we can sort them (and show best posts first) or use 10-30 posts with best PI values in the same manner as current implementation of “Summarize” button.
P.S. Adaptive feature is inspired by my recent experience with adaptive stochastic optimization algorithms, you can find much more information about them in Google.
One more possible formula for Post Impartance:
PI = (1 + {number of current mesage likes})*(Tune+log{total likes of the author messages})
Should provide more natural way to meter post author significance, as far as first 100 likes are much more valuable compared to, e.g. 100 likes in between of 2300 and 2400 likes.
Given that likes are factored heavily in the summarized view, this is in effect already how it works. Just remember that summarize is only available for longer topics, unless you adjust the relevant site setting, summary_posts_required.
Yep, I remember that summarize is only available for longer topics.
NO, summarized view does not show the most liked post in the topic right after the topic starter. E.g. Sam's personal "minimal" topic list design has a number of posts with 14 and 12 likes… However, it is not obvious to find them even in summarized view, they are hidden somewhere it the middle of the summarized view. You should scroll all the summary to find it out… At the same time, most of the pragmatic readers should be OK with the top several proposed designs…
I don’t understand why it isn’t still implemented…
Imagine situation: visitor don’t want to read all messages in thread, he want to see the best of them instead (most liked messages). In this case “sort by likes” feature would be extremely useful.
It would be great if the “Most Liked” response gets a section of its own like the “Popular Links” in the summary.
2 Likes
It is implemented, press the “summarize this topic” button at the top of the topic.