Fast Running Blog

Here's my idea.  There should be someway to quickly find the HOT topics of the day.  For example, who could ever forget Lybi's infamous Weight Watcher's discussion... (Does that one still hold the record for comments?)

I propose that anyone's blog that has more than 10 comments in a day becomes a HOT topic, and then they are displayed in descending order.  (in a fashion similar to LOST SHEEP or LONE FAITHFULS)  That way anyone can tune in and give their 2 cents worth.

Great idea. On the TODO list, and being easy, should be done fairly soon.

I agree this is a good idea.  It can help you get a peek into a blog you may not have normally browsed.

Done.

What happened to the hot comments section?  I was wanting to look at Nevel's 260 post page, and comment on MaryAnn's 60 post page, and found the Hot Topics box has disappeared.  And MaryAnn's blog is missing.

And the top runner's are gone.  What is up with that?

I will not be maintaining Top Runner's anymore for a number of reasons. One is time. It takes a while to validate a claim to a certain performance, then figure out what it was worth. I could do it when we did not have many people, and I did not have as many kids, but now we have reached the saturation point. Two is people keep coming and going. So somebody leaves the blog, and I have to figure out if he should be on that list anymore.  Or somebody posts an entry or two and then requests to be on that list with no intention of maintaining a blog. If somebody misses that list bad enough to commit to maintaining it, we can have it back.

Hot discussions is being reworked. I realized it was not accomplishing the intended purpose and on top of that had potential for abuse. I want hot discussions to feature outstanding race reports or interesting discussions of vital subjects rather than nonsense banter or attempts to artificially draw attention to some issues. The plan is that we will rate those discussions by the number of posters rather than the number of posts. To avoid possible abuse login will be required to post a comment. This will also solve the problem of anonymous comments. I have removed the box for now as it reached the point of just wasting space on the page.

Sasha- I imagine it might be hard, but I have one idea/thought on redoing the Hot Topics.  When someone leaves a comment, there could be a box that they could check that reads "This should be a Hot Topic" or something like that (i.e. interesting topic, good race report, etc).  The 5 posts with the most votes in the past week would show up on the Hot Topics list.  Maybe find a way to only give them a vote on their first post so no multiple voting would occur.  Again, that may be difficult programming-wise, but it is one potential way to meet your intention.

It would not be too hard to do, but total posters count is easier. And my feeling is that either method will put to the top 7 the same entries most of the time. Each method  has an error potential - posters count will err when people leave random comments that do not necessarily mean endorsement but not much - if 30 people found a certain post comment-worthy that says something about the post. At the same time, voting method is subject to error as well with people forgetting to vote, not knowing they can vote, not knowing how to use the vote function, etc.

Will the Hot Discussions have a time limit as well?  Some of those currently listed haven't had new posts in several weeks...

The time limit is 60 days right now. This is high on purpose. With a low time limit it would be very easy for a senseless discussion to make it to the hot discussions list. Once it makes it, due to the fact that lack of sense is often  contagious it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy hot discussion as the comments keep being added. With the new change, no discussion will make it to the list unless it is more interesting than 7 most interesting race reports in the last two months. However, nothing is fool proof, I already am envisioning ways to bypass the original intention of the change. So to discourage that I will manually delete the comments if a dumb discussion happens to make it to that list.

60 days?  Seems very long- I think we'll be sick of the discussion by that time.  I would vote for a shorter time period so we can see more/different posts.  But whatever.

Not that this is a democracy or anything, but i vote to put it back the way it was.  You could always reserve the right to delete the discussion if it's lame or misused.

Some times a 'hot' discussion involves only a few people, but with a lot of back and forth.  Seems to me that the total posts is still a significant factor.

Cal - remember that if I have to delete manually, that is a problem. My cloning capabilities are very limited, and I have only 24 hours in a day, 8 of which must be reserved for sleep. The blog makes very little money, less now that the advertising industry is not doing so well, so I cannot treat it as a job by any stretch of the imagination. It is a whole lot easier to get two people talking about nothing than to get 30 people talking about nothing. Or, for one blogger that wanted to get attention to post a multitude of meaningless comments on his own blog to put himself on the Hot Discussions.

The idea of the 2 month limit is that if a not specially promoted post did not get the attention of more bloggers than the best posts 2 months ago, it does not deserve to be on the Hot Topics. If it is truly Hot, it should have no problem beating somebody's 2 month old race report. If you really think you or somebody else wrote about something hot, post on the Discussion Board and link to the entry. If it is really as hot as you think it is, others will respond.

Are only race entries eligible for the Hot Topics?  Or is that just a fluke.  I guess more people comment on races, but it would be nice to have some other entries on there.  I think some of the daily entries are very worthwhile.

Any entry is eligible. However, the rating is now based on the number of people who commented rather than on the number of comments. So if you write about something that gets attention of a lot of people enough to comment on it that entry has a chance to make hot discussions. Aside from running a race, an idea would be to post on the Training Review Requests board about a workout you've done or a training idea and ask people to comment on it.

The reason for the change is that I want to see legitimately interesting entries on the hot discussions rather than nonsense banter. It has worked so far, sort of, at least it has worked better than before. We now see race reports on it, although I must say that many noteworthy races have been missed. And those are from not too long ago either so you cannot blame it on not having enough people. Fritz takes third overall in Ogden this year, and he gets 6 comments, 6 posters. Jeff McClellan wins Provo City Half with 5:03 last mile, and he does end up with 23 comments from 14 posters but not until we start a debate about collegiate running and somebody (I have an idea who but with the lack of 100% fool proof evidence I will keep this private) makes a negative comment. His win at Painters Half earned him 10 comments from 10 posters. Sean runs sub-1:08 half, places 7th in Indi 500 racing Kenyans, 22 comments from 16 posters. Those all were long race reports too, not just a one liner "I did it". 

So I realized there was something I was doing wrong, and decided to try a different sort order in Race Reports. We'll see how that goes.

What I've noticed is that # of comments is directly proportional to how active that person is on the blog. In other words, if a person comments a lot on others' blogs, he/she will also receive lots of comments. It has almost nothing to do with speed, and more about being an outgoing personality. Which is fine. In order to have friends, you need to be a friend first.

I agree with Paul.  Some of us more "pedestrian" runners read the "big wigs" race reports, but don't comment because we feel somewhat intimidated (at least that's how I feel, I don't know that person and what could I say that a really fast runner wants to hear, besides "great race" which sometimes we think is a pointless comment, although it really isn't).  If some of the faster runners were more active, posting comments on some of the more average runners' blogs, I'm sure they would get lots of comments when they have a great race.  But then if they spend a lot of time commenting they won't have as much time to train, and then they wouldn't be as fast, so who knows what's the right thing to do.  But rest assured whether we comment or not, great races do not go unnoticed.

The new format seems to be working great and putting worthy posts at the top of the list. A suggestion: put a time limit of 15-30 days on the posts. Right now Paul's 2007 St George race report is on the list. While it's a great read, and it was a hot discussion, it is a little outdated. This would also help currently hot topics make the list. Nobody wants to find the good discussion a couple weeks after it ended. Also, if this format continues to work it might benefit from being a list of 10 or even longer. Probably a better use of sidebar space than the "most recent comment" list. You could even give it it's own page.

maybe there should just be an entirely new box. one for "hot discussions" (current discussions/recent races) and one for "notable race performances" (from any year). while paul's st. george 07 race report may be outdated, i very much enjoyed reading it, and probably would have never come across it had it not been on the "hot discussions" list. it was a very inspiring report and a huge race for him, so it should be noted somewhere. of course, a notable race performance is subjective, so there would have to be some criteria set to make the list---i.e. OTQ time, top 3 in a big race (criteria for "big"), PR by 30 min., or even better, PR by 30 min. after joining FRB---FRB success stories, if you will.  :D

or maybe that just makes things more complicated  :-\

Allie - great idea. On the TODO list.

The 'Hot Discussions' list seems to be somewhat stale lately...  don't you think it would be better for them to timeout after a couple of weeks or so of no new activity?

(BTW thanks for all your efforts on making this a great site!)