testing out a new activity stream

[Kalo]

I made a test page to try out a different activity stream to possibly replace the one on our homepage. It has a lot more features but the way it displays activity is completely different than the current one so might not be desirable.

The current activity stream shows ALL posts made on the forums ordered from newest. The new test one instead shows only the latest replies of each thread so the stream is not cluttered up with replies, it shows more threads.

This can be good because a no reply topic will not get buried in the activity stream by one popular thread with 20 replies. It could also be bad because people might miss a reply someone makes to an older thread...for instance the recent replies to Coast's slightly older thread " Gooney Bird "Casual Friday" Group Flight" are about 7 posts down the activity stream. (although if you want to show threads by latest post date, click the "Filter" option near the top right and toggle the "New Topics" option on then off again.)

Test page for new activity stream: https://www.msflights.net/forum/test8

Which do you guys like better?

[Wingman]

I do like that it shows more threads. While the currently-implemented recent activity section is a good indicator of current thread-popularity, it's nice to show the breadth of topics touched upon by the community. I'm trying to understand the sort order, still. Is it sorted by topic-created-date, while showing the latest reply with the replied-to date shown? If someone "finally" solves a problem posted in an "old" thread, would we possibly never see the informative reply in the activity stream? If so, what you highlighted as a possible negative to this layout may outweigh its positives. If only a function existed to use the current/old layout but limit the number of per-topic replies listed in the recent activity section thus preventing one topic from saturating the page.

[Kalo]

Yes it sort's by thread creation date, unless you click "Filter" option near the top right and toggle the "New Topics" option on then off again. It then sorts by latest posts which seems the best combination between the two. If I could figure out how to make it default to this sorting method this would probably make it the better activity stream for the fact it shows more threads.

edit: It seems it will not show posts to very old threads such as one I tested that was 2 years old

[Wingman]

Strange; it appears that applying any filter also sorts by latest-post-date, which I presume would/should be the initially expected sort.

If your experiment was replying to some old not-updated-in-2-years thread, then I concur with your finding; I can't find it in the test activity stream either, regardless of sort/filter options.

Bummer, because I still like the underlying goal of making more threads visible in the activity stream (without adding clutter/length).