Technical site integration observational experiment live on Stack Overflow

I’m an option 3, and it’s seriously obnoxious. I have a Team first, then this new panel, and I have to scroll down 1.5 screen heights before I see the questions I came to see.

Really bad UX.

edit: I'm no longer on any of the test groups. Can't say I'm unhappy about that.

feature-request status-completed

Update: functionality has been added that will allow users in variant C (the home page content module) to be able to collapse the module. When collapsed, this state will be observed on subsequent page loads in the same browser for one week.

Add a way to entirely disable or collapse the large Technical Communities Active Questions panel.

It takes up ~45% of the landing page, when I'd rather see the rest of my question list.

Don't get me wrong, I do NOT mind being able to see technical site recently-active questions, but I would also like the ability to collapse it if the ones that pop up do not interest me.

If there were a one-click way to to at collapse this panel (by clicking the header/title bar of the panel, perhaps?), it'd be much less in-your-face. As it is right now, it takes up a rather large amount of space on the main page.

I would ask the same for the teams panel that used to be here for me (was trying out Teams at my workplace). Their style is the same.

How do I opt out of this? The third variant is getting in the way of my list of SO questions :(

If I were to use the Stylus browser add-on, or similar, to make it invisible via CSS, SO wouldn't know I couldn't see it.

The "collapse" option does not have the same effect as not being subjected to the third variant because it still leaves the bones of the experiment to interfere with my previous view.

This is not a small UI change: it is putting something I do not need to see in the prime viewing location.

Perhaps it could affect only users who are not aware of other SE sites? Anyone whose SE profile encompasses more than, say, three, SE sites could be deemed to be aware that there are more sites available and so don't need the extra hint.

All variants are fine as long as you don't choose variant C.

I am in favor of variant B. Variant A is also fine as difference is minimal.

But variant C with other technical sites on top of SO questions is absolutely, totally, fully and completely unacceptable.

bug

Option 3 leads to a duplicate ID attribute on the homepage.

It doesn't seem to lead to any anomalous behavior, but it's not valid HTML, and might lead to trouble down the line. If the ID was unique, that would also make styling/hiding it a bit easier.

For some context, see Why are duplicate ids not allowed in HTML.

Related: Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination

I would very much appreciate if system would hide such links from users who recently (say, within a week or a month) hit some asking limit / block.

It is known that such users are often inclined to (ab)use other technical sites with sole purpose to circumvent asking limits at Stack Overflow. As evidenced by the feature referred in above link the issue is bad enough to warrant changes made to the system to address this.

As a side note, in case if you don't know whether it is possible to find out about asking blocks recently experienced by a user, this information is available in the system. It was even used to obtain statistic data requested in a related discussion at other site meta: How many questions do we get from users recently blocked at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?

^{approximately 23% of the users asking question on Programmers had hit a block on SO... Blocked users asked approximately 24% of questions...}

Alternatively to hiding as proposed above, you could implement functionality helping target sites in expedite closure and removal of inappropriate questions, for example as proposed here: Perform automatic checks for question block at SO when post enters close queue

If you make a feature having a distinct side effect of polluting other sites with questions from users willing to circumvent asking limits at Stack Overflow, it would be only fair to do something to help target sites handle this, wouldn't it?

See also:

• serverfault.com is not your trash bin!
• Please stop using SoftwareEngineering.SE as your toilet bowl

It's option C I have a real problem with. I don't see how A or B actually help vs the HNQ, bu they don't cause any real harm either because the left sidebar has plenty of room available.

C commits what is IMO the biggest crime in modern web layout - and the main reason I create new rules for my adcrapblocker; it adds a large block of content other than what I came to for that I need to scroll past to get to what I actually want to see.

Since the goal of letting users know about the existence of and question on other network sites is the same as for HNQ, how about an option D: put n technical questions on top of HNQ, for example 5, or all, either adding non-technical questions if the available number of technical questions is not sufficient to fill the list, or make the list shorter if that happens. Or make two parts of HNQ, "HNQ tech" on top, "HNQ all" below, to be switched on or off individually.

That would also work for people that switched off left navigation, although I expect that people that do that are usually already aware of the other sites in the network. It would not help for people that have switched off HNQ (again most of those will know about the other sites), but I expect those people might be interested in switching HNQ back on if only technical topics are shown (more or less an uncustomizable version of HNQ filtering that is currently status-deferred).

I got punished with option C. I rarely come to meta.se but it's so annoying that I was forced to look for a fix. Apparently the options are: post a complaint here and hope you get removed from the test (like Jamiec did), or use an ad-blocker rule. Since I already have AdblockPlus installed, I was able to add a rule to block it:

stackoverflow.com##.qlist-wrapper--boxed.s-card.p0.mb24

(This goes in ABP's settings under Advanced > My Filter List, if you are looking for where to put it.)

UPDATE

I added another rule to also hide the “Stack Overflow Recently Active Questions” banner above the normal questions list:

stackoverflow.com##.p12.fs-body1.bg-black-025.fc-black-600.bb.bc-black-2.btr-sm

I think this rule probably includes some classes specific to my dark theme setting.

Anyway, I think there's a vastly less obnoxious way to include recently asked questions from other communities. Just include them mixed in with the normal questions list! Stop wasting precious screen real estate on banners and separators.

feature-request

Add option to move the panel to the bottom; having a required "initial scrolldown" overhead for each SE site (or any site) is a bother.

Options A and B both look good with a slight preference for A. There is so much unused real estate there. It'd be nice to also include meta (and while on meta, SO). I find it really awkward trying to get to it from the menu bar.

Update:

I just experienced option C. It seems terrible. It's a bit hard to understand why you would give over the absolute most prime real estate on site X to promoting sites Y, Z and W. Even the collapsing isn't enough - now there's a big chunk of completely non-functional wasted space, again, right in the middle of prime real estate:

If this becomes a thing, I'll definitely use UBlock Origin to remove it. (Just like I removed the "hot network questions" which are impossibly distracting for me.)

(Unrelated: dark mode is awesome. Thank you!)

So I just realized I am in group getting the third variant, but only because I deliberately did something I rarely do, which is go to the "home" page of Stack Overflow. SO is already a fire hose, and the last thing I want is to be blasted with even more stuff to look at, so my opinion of the change was negative. However, I use SO almost exclusively by searching for an answer to a specific question, and that search is not usually limited to just SO, so I'm probably not your target audience for these changes.

Just out of curiosity, why are y'all going down the "make everything an advertisement" path instead of really integrating the sites? All of three of the test cases are going to have the same problem as most web ads. The ones in the side bar are going to be quickly rendered invisible by habituation and the one that inserts irrelevant content into the middle of the relevant content is going to quickly get blocked because it's annoying.

Some examples of really integrating the sites would be returning the most relevant search results from other sites in a box along with the Stack Overflow results. Or showing "Related" links from other sites. Or searching other sites for "similar questions" when someone is posting a new question to one of a family of related sites.

Those are just a few off the top of my head, I'm sure there are other creative ways to integrate the sites that ensure that the existence of the other sites and their content is relevant to the user in the context of their current interaction with the site.

I think I found a bug with how you apply which group a participant belongs to. I was enabled for variant 3, then switched to a different PC, now I don't see variant 3 on either machine.

It's not a big deal but maybe it will skew your results if a person can change group midway through the experiment.

Works for me, since option 3 is incredibly obnoxious, especially for the homepage. I come to Stack Overflow for... Stack Overflow. Don't force the network sites on me.

feature-request

As long as you're playing with the left side content bar, would you consider putting watched tags over there someplace? I find myself looking for it there all the time anyway. Perhaps make it an option that people can turn on or off so my idea doesn't get thrust upon everybody including people who may not want it.

It does save some clicking having your communities in the lower left...That could be handy, I like the idea.

I would choose option A maybe with "Communities" written as a heading - like it's in option B. (Would the "Teams" users be at a disadvantage if "Communities" showed above "Teams"? Could the order be configurable in preferences? Which "Communities" to show being fully configurable would probably be preferable for the majority.)

Are there any plans to try something like this beyond the technical sites. I can think of various site clusters where there might be shared relevance/interest, just like between Stack Overflow and other technical sites. Some examples:

• Literature, Movies & TV, and Science Fiction & Fantasy
• Biology and Medical Sciences
• Mathematics, Math Overflow, and Mathematics Educators
• Christianity, Biblical Hermeneutics, and Mi Yodeya
• The Workplace, Academia, and Interpersonal Skills
• Etc.

I, for one, would find this interesting.