Ok fellas, a couple of weeks ago I put a survey on the H.A.M.B. hoping to get honest feedback from you guys now that we've been up and running for almost a year now on the new format. After about 48 hours, we had over 5000 responses to the survey. So many responses that I think Survey Monkey now owns my house, my cars, and maybe my children as well... Long story. Anyway, I think that survey might be one of the best things I've ever done. I mean, I've always done feedback threads but I've never done anything structured so that I got real numerical evidence on wants, needs, shortcomings, etc... The survey showed me a lot of things that while I knew were issues for some, I had no idea were such big issues. The single most common response I got to the "what frustrates you most about the H.A.M.B." question was one of discovery. A typical answer to this question went like this: "I hate digging through all the shit to find what I need." The thing is, of course, is that one person's shit (a post about early 60's Ford trucks for instance) is another man's gold. So, how do you fix that? You can't really... But one thing I can do is emphasize the threads that "most" people seem to be most interested in. And so, I got to work... This new feature is called "Featured Threads." Essentially what it does, is it measures things such as the number of views a thread gets, the number of likes it gets, and the number of replies it gets. Those numbers are then thrown into a formula which spits out a dynamic list of the current most popular threads. If you are familiar with Reddit, this is very similar. Anyway, you don't have to know all that shit of how it works - you can just enjoy the outcome. The main forum list page now has a "Featured Thread" pod at the top. This pod displays a randomly chosen featured thread every time the page loads. Essentially, it just makes you aware of something other people find cool. And, if you are interested in seeing all of the current featured threads on the forum, you can go here: Or, if you want you can go view a page full of all the past featured threads here: A couple of things to keep in mind: 1. This feature is still very much in BETA. Meaning, I haven't perfected the formula of what is featured and what is not featured yet. It will take some time to get that right. I think I'm shooting to have around 25 threads featured at any one time. 2. It might be that this feature sucks... No way of knowing yet. If it does suck and people hate it, I'll get rid of it. 3. There might be bugs.
That's actually #3 on the list... and is a huge technical challenge, but I did it once - I can do it again...
Thanks Ryan that's a great addition I can't believe its been a year since the new version took affect and I don't even remember what the old version looked so I'm here to stay.
I give you credit for always moving forward and looking for ways to improve an already incredible site. I honestly don't think this feature will be a big priority for myself, but I'm sure many will appreciate it. Thanks for always being pro-active.
I noticed this feature recently and I dig it. A lot of times I get on here just to kill a couple of minutes downtime, not looking for anything in particular. This is perfect for that!
I like the Featured Threads idea (noticed on the mobile site recently, too). If you don't have time to browse pages of posts, it should provide for some good reading in just a couple clicks. Thanks! Malcolm
Ryan, they both look and work pretty good (and that's huge from a technical standpoint!). It's good to see that you guys took the time to not only look to see what the users wanted, but followed through and developed it. Too many sites get the info, then either are overwhelmed by the number of responses, or decide the changes are going to be 'Too Hard' and do nothing. Well done Sir!
Personally,I like it but if a member doesn't like it he doesn't have to use the feature,just ignore it. As has been said earlier,I didn't realize that it has been a year since the kick-off to the new improved Hamb. HRP
As HRP said, if they don't like it they can ignore it, so I cannot see a reason to get rid of it unless it causes issues on your end. Thanks for all the work you put into this site, it keeps getting better!
I especially like the option of viewing the banner feature thread or being able to view them all,if you have just a few minutes you can quickly see what going on without wading through 5 or 6 pages. HRP View This Thread - View All Featured Threads
@Ryan will all the featured threads be based on statistics alone (views, likes, etc) or will the moderators/you have the ability to feature certain threads they think are worth a look. It would be interesting to see what the mods are looking at, and what they think the hamb should really be about. Might be a good way to kill two birds with one stone.
We can feature threads manually, but I don't plan on doing much of that until I get this thing working as it should.
Wonder if you would be able to do this within the sub groups? A person just getting a new project could then pull up the most important threads within that group.
I like the idea. I wonder if someone had time to go back in time and make a sort of "best of the HAMB" year by year? Maybe the top 100 threads of each year? Seems like people get razzed when they post something that has already been posted.....but, what if a guy missed it?
I'll offer my feedback... I don't see myself ever using it, but it doesn't bother me that it's there. The bad side of it is the first post I saw was a highly viewed post, but not a good post. Just a post with a kind of crazy title. Definitely didn't seem worthy of being "featured." If the posts featured were based on user ratings, instead of views I think it would be much cooler.
I may be wrong when I said I'd never use it. I saw the post showing at the moment is actually a cool thread I hadn't looked at until now. haha
I think once it get sorted we'll see some stuff that really stands out. Things like that can set a friendly bar height to shoot for. I'd nominate those crazy Norwegians with the Ranchero and perhaps several others like it. I can also see some major event coverage getting featured too. Most usually do well within this community.
The Jalopy Journal
