random thread

Syth

There should be a link that'll take you to a random thread on boards. Somewhere on the front page perhaps. You never know what you mite find by occassionally following it. Boards is huge. A community is built on random interactions, and boards lacks this.

Giblet

Actually thats a good idea, I'd use it if I was bored.

Lukin Black

Very good idea. Could be put under the boards.ie menu (as in the one at the top beside Subbed) perhaps?

oneweb

Yup, I've thought of this a few times when I was bored. Would be a nice feature

Giblet

Of course we could enter a random number between 1 and 112674 after threadid= in the url bar

And then AGAIN, people might reply to really old threads which will prompt people to post the "Octopus"

Next on Sky One, When GOOD ideas go BAD! 4

Syth

Of course we could enter a random number between 1 and 112674 after threadid= in the url bar

True but the amount of threads changes daily. Plus the random thread link could just specify threads changed in the last 30 days, to get something recent, or not. You mite find an old thread and have something new to add to it, reviving it. You never know. Besides many people probably wouldn't bother typing in a number in the url, but if they see a 'random thread' link, mite go to it. That way a 'random thread' like would get more people making random and/or unexpected connections. That's what boards should be about.

Plus it'd be a way of just cruising arounf boards.

ecksor

Technically, this is easy to do.

Whether we want to do it and if so, how we want to do it was never worked out (please please, search for threads relating to your ideas, you'd be amazed how often stuff like this comes up).

Comments relating to the issues raised when it first came up are welcome.

Gordon

If the random thread was within 30 days as Syth mentions then it sounds like a good idea.

Victor

I thought there was a random thread link or is it just the virgin thread link under boards.ie >> bulletin boards on the main nav bar

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/search.php?s=&action=showresults&getnew=true&searchid=185625

But that may not work for everyone.

ecksor

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=107227

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85698

Giblet

Ok heres what I was thinking.

We intergrate the random thread into the search page.

We add parameters for the search like these:

Search thread with more than x replies
Search thread with less than x replies
Search thread with more than x views
Search thread with less that x views
Search thread older than x date
Completely random

Now if there was a way to prohibit replying to a thread older than a certain date into the random search, it could work so we could search old threads, but not have people replying to them and then having loads of old posts mixed with new ones.

This of course should only be in the context of the search and not applied to the threads when searching nomally.

Stickys should be exempt to this rule due to them being in full view.

Locked threads and private threads (duh!) should be excluded due to inappropiate content and the error message assoicated with private threads.

I dont know if half of these things will work, but something to think about.

ecksor

Hrm ...

As an experiment I was thinking that updating a sticky somewhere with a link to a random thread every couple of minutes would be a good trial, or alternatively create a php script that selects the thread and does a redirect.

Replying to old threads is often quite a pain in the arse for other people, but I can think of several examples of threads where a new reply or opinion is perfectly reasonable, so I'm reluctant to start locking threads automatically. I'll see if I can dig up the code I wrote to get a random thread ...

walt

i was thinking that....HAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA :)AHAH AHAHAHAHAHAH

Bard

Perhaps the random thread link should go to a randomly selected thread depending on certain rules - those rules being that the thread was started, or last replied-to recently (say the last 3 to 4 months)...

Victor

But should exclude (a) politics board (b) classifieds.

Giblet

Actually it definatly should include them!

Never know what you might get a bargain for, and the political thread, well who doesn't want to get into a discussion.

ecksor

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/random.php

You can pass the script a forumid parameter to restrict it to a certain forum, which some mods might like to include in a sticky on their forums.

Like so: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/random.php?forumid=24

Redshift

Thats actually quite cool:) I just looked at some threads in forums that I wouldn't usually look at interesting stuff.

Redshift

Seems to be broken now, I didn't do it...:ninja:

Giblet

That is cool, is there any restrictions on it?

ecksor

Quite a few restrictions actually.

You may not redistribute any URLs you get from that script.

You may not use any URLs you get for commercial gain, unless you upgrade to random_professional.php

As always, boards accepts absolutely no liability for any financial damage incurred as a result of using random.php

random.php is not certified for use in nuclear facilites or for any sort of life support systems.

Syth

Wow, I actually made a difference! Cool. Quickly, too. Guess I'm valued afterall, better cancel that noose order...

Thanx

Gordon

Excellent, can you also provide me with next Wednesday's winning lottery numbers please ecksor?

ecksor

3, 5, 10, 12, 26, 27

Gordon

Great, now everybody knows them.

ecksor

Everyone's a winner with boards.ie

*cheesey grin*

smiles

22-05-2003 -- and people say they take _me_ seriously...

<< Fio >>

Gordon

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85698



(ecksor, thanks for pming me the bonus number, you saved my life)

ecksor

It was brought up before that by WhiteWashMan, but we never decided on how best to do it.

This time we haven't reached any decisions either, but I decided to do it anyway.

Cloud

We had a random thread link added to the dhtmlmenu about a year ago. Regi will remember it because it wasn't as simple as you might think it should be...

Say the last threadid is 10000 - you would think that a rand(1, 10000) would do the trick, but of course there's lots of thread IDs missing. So the random number has to come from a set (which can be extracted easily enough, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, ... 9996, 9998, 9999, 10000). Perhaps it was just that we were using the random function in SQL, but it was causing the menu (and page loading) to become very slowwwww!

Anyway, that random.php is a better idea, nice one X_OR!

Syth

Ah so other people had the same idea before. Ah well at least it got done now....