and before they changed the number of recs to remain constant on the left side of the GP (well for most forums and most of the time anyway - it is still not consistent on DU2)
Even with being able to filter the latest page by most recommended within a certain amount of time it is not the same, many of the same threads will remain at the top and many threads will be missed. And I do not see this getting any better once the conversion takes place, plus I'll always be fooling with the filters and scanning thread titles I've already seen.
This is what I posted at the time when threads were moving on and off the left side of the GP.
slipslidingaway (1000+ posts) Sat Jul-11-09 01:21 PM
Original message
Bring back the Latest/Greatest Combo with a time sequence
From another thread and I've copied and pasted this a few times in a thread that had 5 recs, but then it is dropped from the GP, it just gets stuck in a loop on the same forum.
Posted this a few times, this is how I used the GP and I would start a new post about it, but it would get rec'ed and unrec'ed and most likely never make it to the left side of the GP, where people from different forums might see it and comment.
Bring back the Latest/Greatest Combo with a time sequence.
I disagree, the left side of the GP was very useful, not so much anymore. Posted this in another thread, although I realize that we all may not use this method, the latest/greatest combo was an efficient tool IMHO.
I do not use the right side of the GP as much as the left side...
which Was a combination of the latest/greatest threads from any forum (that you could rec) placed in chronological order of when they hit the GP.
You could come back the next day or hours later and easily scan through the left side for the latest/greatest of the past several hours and then pick up where you left off from your last visit. If time allowed then you could visit other forums, but this was a quick and efficient use of the left side of the GP...IMHO.
What happens now is a thread might get 5 recs and be placed on the left side of the GP, then someone gives it an unrec, so it drops off the left side, a couple hours later it gets another rec and gets placed back on the left side, BUT it remains where it was placed earlier when it first hit the GP left side.
The right side of the GP does not change nearly as fast so it was not as useful, the left side is pretty much destroyed with threads dropping on and off as people rec and unrec. I can see why they are not placed at the top again as this could happen several times a day, so that would not help the functionality either.
If you look at the current "latest page" there is only about one hour of posts, several of which I would have no interest in reading and I do not want to scan through 12 pages to catch up.
In contrast the left side of the greatest page has the last day or so of threads that at least 5 people thought should get a rec, much easier to look through and also to pick up at a later point as they remained in the same order instead of dropping on and off.
Hope that makes sense, it was the best way to see a combination of the latest/greatest from all forums.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache
Q0B6T48SEIJ:www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php%3Faz%3Dview_all%26address%3D389x6041515+site:democraticunderground.com+slipslidingaway+%2B+greatest+page+%2B+sorted+by+time&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us