So, what algorithm makes a post appear in the forum overview?

[altenbach]

I have been puzzled since the beginning to figure out what algorithm is used to select the single posts subject shown in the forum overview.

Does everybody see the same "featured" post or does it depend on the user?

So far I can only come up with negative characteristics:

• It is NOT the newest post
• It is NOT the newest unread post
• Does NOT seem to correlate with thread activity (hard to tell)
• ...

[RavensFan]

I've never seen that.  Just he title of the board, # Posts, # New.

[tst]

Don't see it either.

I also have a couple of filters in my adblocker to hide the second row and the icon, but even when disabling it, I still don't see that preview.

Filters for uBlock:

! ni forums board icons
forums.ni.com##div[class="board-icon"]

! remove second row from LV board description
forums.ni.com##div[class="board-description"]

[tst]

Looks like it's these settings:

Speaking of settings, what does this do? It has no effect that I can see.

[RavensFan]

I wonder if that is left over from prior to the forum updates when you could see icons showing if there were new messages, or ones you replied into, or hot threads were red/orange.

I highly recommend setting the emoticon type to "None".

When you don't change that and it is left on the default of "default (smiley)"  that is when punctuation symbols  : )   🙂   get turned into smileys when you don't want them to.

Those are a colon, space, closed parenthesis to show that is typed next  a colon, closed parenthesis.

If you see a smiley second, you should change that setting.  I did not explicitly put in an emoticon, but if that you see one, that means your setting is turned on and not showing you what I had actually typed.

[Kristi_Martinez]

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@altenbach wrote:

I have been puzzled since the beginning to figure out what algorithm is used to select the single posts subject shown in the forum overview.

Does everybody see the same "featured" post or does it depend on the user?

So far I can only come up with negative characteristics:

• It is NOT the newest post
• It is NOT the newest unread post
• Does NOT seem to correlate with thread activity (hard to tell)
• ...

---

Hi altenbach,

I apologize for the delayed response. Based on the testing we have performed the settings are working as expected.

[Kristi_Martinez]

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@tst wrote:

Speaking of settings, what does this do? It has no effect that I can see.

---

Hi tst,

I apologized for the delayed response. RanvensFan is correct. This setting is left over from the forum update and is not connected. We have an open request to remove the setting with our provider. 

[altenbach]

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@Kristi_Martinez wrote:

Based on the testing we have performed the settings are working as expected

---

Thanks. Well, I guess I don't know what's "expected" 😄 and my "expectations" might be different. It is OK to show a post, but often it lists a post that I have already seen and I click on it again because I assume there is something new. Wouldn't it be more useful to show the post with the newest (or highest) unseen recent activity, for example. Currently, it seems to semi-randomly pick something from the first page, seen or not.

I guess the "featured" posts may not be personalized, but is the same for all users (?). Hard to tell. I was just wondering about the algorithm the forum uses to decide which post to pick. The current pattern is confusing to me and I was not able to figure it out. What exactly is "as expected"? ;).

As a programmer I would like to be able to look at a forum and be able to determine from first principles which post will be featured on the overview page.

[LiliMcDonald]

The "latest topic" component will show the most recently posted topic even if you have already read it. This is also true for the "latest post" component. In our testing, this was always true. If you are seeing something different, we could dig into it a little further with some examples of boards where this is occurring.

Also, thanks for the feedback on expecting to see the "newest for you" post. Currently, this functionality is unavailable. We can raise this as an enhancement idea to our community provider.

Thanks,

Lili

[altenbach]

In my experience it is typically not the topic all the way on the top of the forum...

Here are two views, both freshly refreshed pages:

• Overview features Bob's thread
• most recent topic is Ben's thread.

I guess it uses the time of the first post in a thread, not by time of last activity.

OK, that might be the "algorithm" I was looking for. 😄 Who would have guessed? 😉