GovCentral

I think this is a very good idea.  I'll look into getting that widget expanded.  At the very least, we could create something similar to this page for site-wide activity (as opposed to just what your friends have been doing).

One more idea: what if I dedicated a specific part of the home page to "User Generated News", since that seems to be largely where the activity has been lately?

To help a little bit more, I got the engineers to double the "recent activity" feed on the home page.  Now, you'll see the last 8 actions.  Still not a long-term solution, but should help relieve the problem for now.

Would it be possible to take quiz results out of the recent activity tab?  I don't think most people really care if someone else is a Homeland Security Candidate or needs to brush up on their US history, and it certainly doesn't help keep topics that might be of interest on the front page.

Optimally I would like the ability to make my own filter, since I don't really want to see a string of 20 million photo uploads either, but the quizes would be a nice start.

Also, another idea.  It makes sense that the home page has recent activity for the whole site.  It does NOT make sense that  someone getting a quiz result or giving a discussion question a thumbs up knocks a VIDEO off the recent activity list in the MEDIA section.  While I realize it is easier for the admins to just slap the same Recent Activity script on every page, it would make the site far nicer if, for example, there was a Recent Activity feed on the news page that kept track of just news (IE new articles, comments, and ratings) and a similar addition to each section.   I would make them at least as large as the recent activity feed in the media section (15 topics), and specific to the section you are viewing.  While on that topic, I really think you need to make the home page's recent acticity feed bigger.  Doubling the size is nice, but  it's still WAY too small, and too far down the page.  I would make it at least 15 subjects in length as well, and place it at the top of the page, where the friend's activity feed is now.  The news page, specifically, should have a longer list of recent articles and the popular articles should be most popular for the day or the week at most.  The recent activity feeds should begin at the top of the page where people can see them, not the bottom, at least assuming that the site is supposed to be user-driven rather than admin/mod driven.

An example of how this would help:  Take the article "Russia - Georgia Conflict: What It's All About."  It has no comments.  It has no ratings.  Why, you ask?  Probably cause no one ever saw it.  I certainly didn't.  Hell, I check the site more than any reasonable person should, and I never even knew it existed until I went to the article history to look for an example for my rant.  It's not one of the 5 newest articles, so it doesn't show up on the News main page.  It probably got pushed off the recent activity feed on the main page in about 30 seconds by a new user taking every quiz on the site in a 10 minute period, just like everything else does.  The most popular section is usually full of articles that are a months old, and most articles don't stay on the main page long enough for more than 1-2 people to see them anyway, even if they DO decide to rate them.  While implementing my seuggestions would not guarantee that the article gets any more attention, it would certainly give it more of a chance.

Just my suggestions.  Those are what have frustrated/annoyed me lately, and I probably spend way too much time here anyway, especially considering I'm not even looking for a job right now!

I agree with you.  I'll see what I can do to fix this problem.

Dammit...if I had only been a little more patient I could have used this as my example!

I copied these images to the engineering team - they're fully aware of this problem.  Needless to say, it's fairly complicated to try to build exception cases for a feed like this.  We'll basicallly be telling it, "Show everything except quiz results and picture uploads."

Ovbiously, this will be a problem that would increase as our site continues to grow.  Another option may be to try to turn off this type of reporting within each indivudal quiz.  I'll write back when I figure out if this is possible or not...

The news feeds are bigger!  *high five*

Not to be greedy, but I don't suppose there would be a way to add a third feed to the right of "Most Recent User Submitted News" that kept track of comments on new articles?  We have some really great discusssions going in some of them, like the Palin articles, and I would love to be able to know when someone has replied!

Its good to see the improvements though, thanks for the hard work guys!

Is it possible that there is a place where we can see all the new people that are coming in onto the site to be able to welcome them in?  Doesn't seem enough just to look at the recent acitivity board and see where who's new. Those that have been here for a while can find their way around, but the new people coming in have no idea.

Is there a way that there would be instructions on how to upload a video or even try and post an article?  You could get that information from friends, but it would be so much easier, if they could read it for themselves.