Randomly Featured Users of the Day

[welian]

Only one question remains: is this possible??

 

[Life.]

Shall we risk our safety and attempt to summon one of the administrators in order to see if this question can be answered?


@The Dark Wizard


Eeeegag! I happen to have tagged the all powerful being!

 

[welian]

YOU HAVE DOOMED US ALL

 

[The Mechanist]

Idk about 6 hour cycles, some users might be asleep during that cycle and there is that small probability that someone will sleep through their own featured cycle

 

[Noivian]

I think instead of 6 hour cycles we could do 12 hour cycles?

 

[Chordling]

10 hours ago, The Mechanist said:



Idk about 6 hour cycles, some users might be asleep during that cycle and there is that small probability that someone will sleep through their own featured cycle




 

Well, it wouldn't just stop after every member was featured.  Additionally, it's also random.  So, the feature for the same user wouldn't happen at the exact same time.

 

[The Mechanist]

Well, it wouldn't just stop after every member was featured.  Additionally, it's also random.  So, the feature for the same user wouldn't happen at the exact same time.

It still is a chance and then when will that person be featured again? How long will they have to wait fore they finally get to see their own feature? There is a large number of active users on this site, personally I think an 8 hour cycle would be more effective, three different people per 24 hour cycle, each one having a higher chance of not sleeping through their feature, albeit still a probability since some have long sleep cycles on random occasions but less chance of it

 

[starboy]

It still is a chance and then when will that person be featured again? How long will they have to wait fore they finally get to see their own feature? There is a large number of active users on this site, personally I think an 8 hour cycle would be more effective, three different people per 24 hour cycle, each one having a higher chance of not sleeping through their feature, albeit still a probability since some have long sleep cycles on random occasions but less chance of it





 

8 hours, if you think like this, definitely won't cover a lot of people's sleep, work, or school. 12 hours or plain old 24 hours would work better, really.

 

[The Mechanist]

8 hours, if you think like this, definitely won't cover a lot of people's sleep, work, or school. 12 hours or plain old 24 hours would work better, really.

I agree but that would take longer to feature someone, as I said a lot of active users on this site, some might even have to wait year(s) before they see themselves and who's to say they plan on sticking that long?

 

[Chordling]

24 hours would be incredibly painful, which was why we tried discussing shorter time periods, so more people could be featured.

 

[welian]

Now, I'm pulling this number out my ass, but once upon a time I saw a number floating around in the staff panel that around five thousand users had been active in the past 30 days (active, I assume, means posted, because we have a LOT more users who just log in and check for alerts).


Suppose that number is still correct. It would take over thirteen YEARS to feature five thousand users every 24 hours.


12 hour segments? 5k(365*2), or 6.66 years.


I'm beginning to think that the most effective technique would be to either limit to algorithm to people who have been active in the past week, or go balls to the wall with a randomly featured user every hour.

 

[JustNicole]

Instead of having everyone barrage one user at once, what if it was made in such a way that it shows a different user to each individual person every time you access the front page or for a set period of time? It wouldn't be a person of the day, but just a randomly featured user for you to interact with. It would still give you someone to interact with, but instead of everyone interacting with one user, it spreads the connection. Someone might have someone else as their random, and then they have someone else as their random, who has someone else, and so on and so forth.

 

[eclipsa]

Instead of having everyone barrage one user at once, what if it was made in such a way that it shows a different user to each individual person every time you access the front page or for a set period of time? It wouldn't be a person of the day, but just a randomly featured user for you to interact with. It would still give you someone to interact with, but instead of everyone interacting with one user, it spreads the connection. Someone might have someone else as their random, and then they have someone else as their random, who has someone else, and so on and so forth.

tumblr does this on their sign-in page. it shows a different post each time you access the page. i always liked it because you never knew what you might find.

 

[welian]

Flight Rising does that too! A different random dragon from someone's lair is featured every time you visit the front page.

 

[The Mechanist]

Honestly that's actually the best answer so far, better than what I got cuz no one is singled out, and it would be funny if I saw myself on the side bar XD "oh hey this me

 

[Necessity4Fun]

Honestly that's actually the best answer so far, better than what I got cuz no one is singled out, and it would be funny if I saw myself on the side bar XD "oh hey this me

Screenshot it and save in a memories folder or something >w<

 

[The Mechanist]

Screenshot it and save in a memories folder or something >w<

Ahhh!!!! I missed you!! -tackles you to the ground-

 

[Necessity4Fun]

Ahhh!!!! I missed you!! -tackles you to the ground-

*Is tackled*


I... *looks around* might have wrecked accidental havoc in another dimension and had to go undercover for a while so they didn't find me? >w<

But kidding aside, I never left? I may have gotten more busy with some things, but I've always been around... I think @.@? Now I'm a confused cat...


Either way, this is not a thread for this >.> XD

 

[The Dark Wizard]

Shall we risk our safety and attempt to summon one of the administrators in order to see if this question can be answered?


@The Dark Wizard


Eeeegag! I happen to have tagged the all powerful being!

DOOM!


But in all honesty, this is super simple to accomplish with database queries and some caching. However, the better question should be not if its possible but "Why would we want to?"


RpNation is a community about humans interacting with each other online to roleplay, we like to reward merits and effort, why would we ever allow the system to declare people Featured based on an Algorithm. Like what would this accomplish?

 

[welian]

Well, since it's random with exceptions in regards to activity (pulling from users who have only been active in the past X amount of days), people are not being featured because of something they've accomplished. That's what the newsletter does. This is more akin to "Hey! Have you met this person yet?".


And as for why, well, I think it would foster interaction! I like the idea of logging in one day and seeing a user I've never talked to or met before displayed on the front page - imagine then, that I go look at their posting activity, and see that they like the same kind of RPs I do, or they like the same video games. There are so many friendships waiting to happen that haven't yet occurred, because there's not always a ton of cross-pollination happening between social circles on RPN.


How about we remove "Featured" from the idea's title? Then we have "Random User", which I think is closer to my original intent. Maybe there could even be a miniature refresh button that says "Show me another random user."


With the proposed algorithm's focus on recently active users, there will be a higher proportion of new users likely to be featured. That would be a great thing to happen IMO, because the hardest part of making a site "sticky" for a user is getting them to get integrated into the community.


TLR: Lots of RPN users are introverts. Let's make it easier to find new friends.

 

[eclipsa]

honestly, this would have been great when i first joined the site, because i'm very shy and making friends wasn't super easy when i first got here. i was six months into my time on the site before i made friends tbh.

 

[Kaerri]

Well, there's always the status updates bar.  That will even get you people to chat with that are active while you're looking at things.  Not everyone makes them, of course, but it's something.

 

[welian]

Well, there's always the status updates bar.  That will even get you people to chat with that are active while you're looking at things.  Not everyone makes them, of course, but it's something.

That's true, but as you said, the status bar is a little self-selecting. The type of user that make status updates, in my opinion, does not have a lot of overlap with the type of user (like @orphic, for example) who has trouble getting started on making friends. A Random User feature would be most helpful in throwing some less outgoing users into the light.


Where its real strength is though is that the algorithm cannot judge a user's "worthiness" based on their content. The algorithm doesn't care what kind of roleplays you like, how long your posts are, if your character sheets are detailed, if you post a lot of tutorials... It doesn't care about any of that, because it's a more or less a random number generator that grabs a user ID number from a predefined pool. Think of how powerful and liberating that is, especially for the users who know that they'll never be featured in a Newsletter because they're solely 1x1 players, aren't artists or poets, don't GM roleplays, don't write tutorials.... Think of all the users who enjoy and participate in the community but aren't able to contribute to it in the same fashion that Big Name Users can, and think of how amazing it would be for those users to have a tiny slice of limelight simply because they post on RPN, because they are here and they exist and they are part of our community and wouldn't you like a chance to meet someone you might never even realize existed?

 

[welian]

I got poetic there, whoops.