Under the Blog link that's part of the site banner, there's a link to a random blog entry. I think this is really helpful when you just don't know what to read. I also believe that this helpfulness could transcend to the Review Forums. Wouldn't it be helpful if you couldn't choose what to read and a handy litle link just pulled up a story for you? I think it would. Really, I wanted to know if this would be useul to anyone else, or even possible for the site? So, would it?
The random blog capability is built into the latest vBulletin release. Implementing it to select a random thread from within a particular set of forums would not be trivial. In addition, the Review Room isn't there for entertainment purposes. It is for developing writing and reviewing skills for works in progress, and we would like to keep the emphasis on: 1. Unreviewed works 2. Recently active works (including recent responses). However, one search that I feel might be useful is threads ordered by the most recent first post in the thread (instead of just most recently posted to).
Oh, okay, I don't quite understand the second part. But I didn't mean it for entertainment, I just honestly can't choose somedays. I just thought it'd be helpful for the indecisive among us.
We currently show the five "newest" unreviewed pieces. Due to the eager response by everyone here, the five newest unreviewed pieces are often all well over a year old!
Well then, if our review room is so well taken care of, why can't we have a random searcher in case we want to enjoy the wonderful pieces our fellow writers have written? I mean, surely we are readers as well as writers.
It's built in to the new vBulletin. It randomly selects among ALL blog threads. The equivalent, randomly selecting among ALL post threads, would not do what you want. Randomly selecting among threads under a specific set of forums would be quite a bit more difficult, and would have to be custom programmed. Also, the only person with the required access is Daniel, and I doubt he'll have the time to work on it.
I never set it had to be any of the specific sub-forums, just that it would choose amongst the fiction peices. Is that still too much?
Aw, well, okay. If it's required access stuff *rubs foot in dirt* Couldn't it randomly select between the review room? Sorry, Zor, looks like we won't get to make a new special part of WF.org. Ho hum. Back to wandering threads.
It's not due to restricted access, just that it would be too much of a hassle to re-code sections of the vBulletin ?framework? The job can only be done by someone with a solid computing background and for such a tiny feature, it's not worth the time.
Well, other than the fact that only Daniel has access to the site implementation files and database. Threads are stored by thread id, not by the forum they are in. To implement something like this, you would have to search for threads by a set of forum IDs, then randomly select from those. It's not terribly efficient to do that, and someone, probably Daniel, would have to write and test the search code. And all that just to pick random threads from the Review Room? Remember that a lot of stuff gets deposited there for comment and is abandoned before it ever gets anywhere. So I feel I need to stress this again - the Review Room is not there for entertainment purposes. Apart from the other reasons, the last thing we need is one more feature delivering a mixed message. So to sum it up: 1. It would not be all that easy to do 2. The results would be disappointing 3. We don't want something that sends the wrong message I'm really glad that people are looking for ways to make the sitre even better, but I really think this one doesn't hold uo to a closer look.
Okay, okay, it was just a suggestion. I get your point. But I have one question: Why is it that you think that link would construe the forums as entertainment?
