It's not so long since SP's "what's new" page was re-jigged to include 15 new Mountains/Rocks and 15 new Routes.

It's now quite common to have as many as 10 or 12 new mountains per DAY. Right now, for instance, there's 11 and the day's not finished yet.

As we all know, once off "what's new", that's pretty well it for most folks in terms of general attention unless their page is lucky enough to tickle Gangolf's fancy and it makes the hallowed and much sought after Front Page.

For us mere mortals, may I suggest that what's new in "Mountains/Rocks" and "Routes" is increased to 20 submissions at the expense for Areas/Ranges and Articles. There are currently 10 of these and they're often there for months and get little attention after the first week or two. 10 is far too many.

Or do it at the expense of albums. Doesn't really matter how long they are there.

Another suggestion I have made in the past is a separate 'What's new' section where elves could put various quality items that might not have made the front page. Would give a greater quantity of items just a bit more visibility. Sortof like looking that the best mountains for the last 7 days, but it would be more based on an evaluation of quality than a number of votes. Maybe the best 1 out of 3-4 items could pass through this area.

vancouver islander wrote:It's not so long since SP's "what's new" page was re-jigged to include 15 new Mountains/Rocks and 15 new Routes.

It's now quite common to have as many as 10 or 12 new mountains per DAY. Right now, for instance, there's 11 and the day's not finished yet.

As we all know, once off "what's new", that's pretty well it for most folks in terms of general attention unless their page is lucky enough to tickle Gangolf's fancy and it makes the hallowed and much sought after Front Page.

For us mere mortals, may I suggest that what's new in "Mountains/Rocks" and "Routes" is increased to 20 submissions at the expense for Areas/Ranges and Articles. There are currently 10 of these and they're often there for months and get little attention after the first week or two. 10 is far too many.

Increasing from 15 to 20 the space for new Mountain/Rocks and Routes would be a good start, but I would like to suggest a bolder change.

Everybody seems to agree that Areas, Mountains & Routes are the substance of SP, but only one single line is attributed to the new contributions under "what's new" for these categories. The information is so basic (name and submission date only ) that it is not possible to make a direct selection on what interests you, so you forcefully have to click first on the "More" icon to open a new page with the 50 latest submission, this time with a lot of details allowing you to click on what is of your interest.

To the opposite, new images, comments & summit log entries are given a disproportional importance with a large field including a pictures and lots of information. First I don’t think that objects such as comments deserve to be given so much importance (the receiver of the comment will anyway have it displayed on his/her profile page), and similar thoughts can be made for image and summit logs. Secondly, the frequency of such new submissions (images, comments & summit log entries) is so high that in any case it will disappear from the “what’s new” page after a couple of hours, if not earlier. So unless you are compulsively pressing the “what’s new” button every five minutes, the “average” regular member will anyway miss at least 90% of these new entries. And the new comments andlog entries are definitely buried (there is no “more” button for these categories) in a few hours, as soon as they are replaced by the newest 20 entries.

So my suggestion, if our chief engineer Montana Mad has access to the secret codes, would be to revamp the “what’s new page” in the following way, from top to down, always including a “more” button for each category, leading to the current list:

1) New Area & Ranges: 10 fields (e.g. in 2 columns) including picture, name, author, elevation, location, date of creation.
2) New Mountain & Rocks: same as for Area & Range, but with 20 fields
3) New Routes: same as for Mountain & rocks, and include route type
4) New Articles: 6 fields, including picture, name, author, date of creation

Etc, etc with new lists, trips reports, canyons, trailheads, custom objects, huts and albums (details to be adjusted).

And at the bottom, if found necessary, the new images, comments and summit logs, but with only 3-4 fields allocated to each category (currently 15-20), but with a clickable “more” button for those interested in browsing all new entries since their last visit.

I’m quite convince that with such a change giving more prominence to the new Area, Mountain and Routes, the average “lazy” member would be much more attracted to visit more frequently and pay more attention to these new submissions.

Another approach would be to have a mountain/area/route (even album?) of the day, the page with the highest power points.

One might even collect all of those somehow on a "Best of the Week" page or similar. I know that when I'm outdoors for a weekend or week, I miss new stuff. This would help people catch up.

Yes, I know that it's open to manipulation. All rules are.

Bruno_Tibet wrote:First I don’t think that objects such as comments deserve to be given so much importance (the receiver of the comment will anyway have it displayed on his/her profile page), and similar thoughts can be made for image and summit logs.

Personally, I like to see the latest comments. If there are popular pictures / pages / discussions going on "right now" (as in, active discussion), you can find them this way. It's a way to catch on to the latest news and the latest hot stuff, or just the latest talk. It makes the site seem much more 'alive' to me. Same for climber's logs, you can see what have people been climbing recently. Actually, a 'more comments' and 'more climber's logs' option would be very nice, rather than using its non-existence as an argument against having comments and climber's logs on the what's new page.

Rick B wrote:Personally, I like to see the latest comments. If there are popular pictures / pages / discussions going on "right now" (as in, active discussion), you can find them this way. It's a way to catch on to the latest news and the latest hot stuff, or just the latest talk. It makes the site seem much more 'alive' to me. Same for climber's logs, you can see what have people been climbing recently. Actually, a 'more comments' and 'more climber's logs' option would be very nice, rather than using its non-existence as an argument against having comments and climber's logs on the what's new page.

I understand your point, but still I wouldn't give so much importance to comments compared to mountain pages.

Actually, I was not using the absence of a "more" button as an argument againgst having comments at all on the "what's new page", but I was saying that the number of new pictures/comments/logs is so high that it makes little sense to have 15-20 fields for theses on the "what's new page". Let's take the exemple of pictures: if for example 360 new pictures are posted every day, they disappear from the "what's new page" within 1 hour. Even for a regular member logging in every day, only 5% of the new pictures will be directly visible in the "what's new" page. So shortening the space allocated for new pictures would not change much to the deal (you just pass from 5 to 1%), but instead it would allow to allocate more space to the mountain pages. And then, let's provide a "more" button for every category, so that everybody can enjoy what they like most...

Excellent suggestions. The illustration of the individual items can definitely be improved from the current one-liners by adding thumbnails etc.

As for number of items shown: Since the issue is with new objects disappearing too fast, the limitations should be time-related and not absolute numbers, e.g. all objects created in the last 30 days. If such a listing would contain 200 items then so be it, we're all capable of scrolling. (Lists like new areas/ranges would only contain a handful items for a time range like 30 days, so in addition you'd also need a minimum # of items shown, regardless of date added.)

Rick B wrote:

Bruno_Tibet wrote:First I don’t think that objects such as comments deserve to be given so much importance (the receiver of the comment will anyway have it displayed on his/her profile page), and similar thoughts can be made for image and summit logs.

Personally, I like to see the latest comments. If there are popular pictures / pages / discussions going on "right now" (as in, active discussion), you can find them this way. It's a way to catch on to the latest news and the latest hot stuff, or just the latest talk. It makes the site seem much more 'alive' to me. Same for climber's logs, you can see what have people been climbing recently. Actually, a 'more comments' and 'more climber's logs' option would be very nice, rather than using its non-existence as an argument against having comments and climber's logs on the what's new page.

But how many of those comments are really meaningful or helpful. Very few in my opinion. The vast majority are the likes of "great photo" or "POTD worthy". Those won't start a useful discussion about the photo. They are merely aspects of social networking or attention seeking of the commenter.

Well now I must throw in my two cents

I created a mountain a few days ago, and it stuck around for about 18 hours or so, conversely, I had an article on the front page for a few weeks, and another article on the front page at the same time is still under the whats new section.

Not to overlook informative comments and climbers log entries, I really dont see how they come close to the importance of a mountain-range-route page, and the turnover rate on those things are even quicker

It seems a simple matter to just click on the "More" icon to see more of what's new. Personally, I don't see a problem.

Scott wrote:It seems a simple matter to just click on the "More" icon to see more of what's new. Personally, I don't see a problem.

Ahh but do potentail voters click on the 'more' icon?
That seems to be the root of matter...

Scott wrote:It seems a simple matter to just click on the "More" icon to see more of what's new. Personally, I don't see a problem.

Something I suggested on another thread recently, and what I do if I've been away for a little.

However, I do like the idea here. Halve the number of custom objects, articles, huts and campgrounds, trailheads, and maybe lists, too, and you could show a lot more mountains and routes.

Unfortunately, I can't make that change, and I think only Montana Matt can. Maybe he will see this and like the idea. Maybe not. We can always inform him of the thread.

It may be nice if it is regional. I like to look at pages from all over, but especially like to see people put up pages near where I live, that I will use more frequently.

Hopefully some folks find this useful.

what-s-new-in-california-t56070.html

mrchad9 wrote:It may be nice if it is regional.

Agreed. I'd hate to miss the rare midwestern peak making a Cheshire-cat-like appearance on "What's New."

I'd also like the author's name to appear on the list.

Last but not least, I'd like another drink.

vancouver islander wrote:As we all know, once off "what's new", that's pretty well it for most folks in terms of general attention unless their page is lucky enough to tickle Gangolf's fancy and it makes the hallowed and much sought after Front Page.

Never had anything to do with the featured mountains / routes / areas on the front page. Just the tr / articles guy ...