Does it make sense to have the Monthly Recipe Thread locked in contest mode? Can someone ELI5 why we do that? Contest mode randomizes comments and prevents sorting. So it's impossible to sort the monthly thread by newness. That means all the new recipes I haven't seen before are hopelessly mixed in with the ones I've already seen. So I end up not browsing much towards the end of a month, before the mods turn off contest mode, because I can't just check for new posts.
I don't know if other people feel this way as well... Maybe I'm just lazy...
I get that contest mode theoretically prevents the hype train from always piling upvotes onto the same people's recipes, but preventing sorting by newness is a big negative to suffer in the meantime, when each thread lasts a month long and is supposed to serve as a knowledge repository. And they're just fake internet points, right?
As /u/overachiever noted:
> it's done to give recipes posted towards the end of the month more of a chance to be seen
and
> enable contest mode whilst the thread is active and disable it when a new monthly thread has been started
I try to do this; if you see an old one with contest mode still on let me know and I'll turn it off.
I understand from your post that this could be a pain. Problem is, a recipe from the 1st of the month is guaranteed to have more votes than one from the 27th, and with new sub rules coming into effect (almost) all recipes are going into the monthly thread or deleted. Right now we see a burst of activity when the new thread is posted, and dwindles to a trickle as the month progresses.
I'm willing to go either way with the contest mode; I'll monitor this post to see where the sentiment lies. Thanks for bringing this up.
> I'm willing to go either way with the contest mode; I'll monitor this post to see where the sentiment lies.
I personally would prefer it to not be contest mode.
I think the ability to sort supersedes the new post visibility issue
But I don't really care either way... I just wish there was a way to make it to where the only way to vote on a recipe was to prove you actually tried it. I realize that's impossible, but my point is that ideally votes would = actual experience with the recipe, not just reading it.
Okay. I certainly understand the rationale... because I share it, haha. I want to see the new recipes.
It makes sense if we assume that most readers are never going to bother changing the comment sorting from the default setting, which seems like a fair assumption. But it becomes less usable as the thread gets more posts. Right now there are 134 recipes in this month's thread. That's a lot of haystack to scroll through to find the few new needles.
I'm not familiar with the mod tools... Is there any other way to set the default comment sorting mode for a thread, aside from contest mode? If so, setting the default to "new" for the first month would eliminate the effect of upvotes/downvotes on visibility, without totally randomizing comments. That would be my suggestion; no idea if it's possible.
I feel like, if I were to post a recipe in the monthly recipe thread today, almost no one would see it.
I'm in the same boat as OP. I get that a lot of people aren't going to change the sort to sort by new, but it's damn near impossible to see new recipes towards the end of the month which makes the whole reasoning behind contest mode, at least in my opinion, counter-intuitive.
As you are monitoring this i would like to say that i would prefer it in normal mode. One of the reasons that i do not even bother with the monthly recipe thread is contest mode, mainly because i cant sorted and all replies are collapsed.
Thank you for taking our thoughts into consideration.
Thank you! I agree with the idea to some extent. It prevents the hype train and showering favored users with upvotes for their recipes while other, good recipes are ignored...BUT, I find myself not visiting the monthly thread often anymore for the same reason you mention, I hate sifting through stuff I've already seen because I can't sort.