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dirkdd January 30th, 2019 12:55am

Can anyone tell me the difference in poll types called “Hot” and “The Tap?” What the hell is the difference?

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John1 Florida
01/30/19 6:35 am

I see you’ve made the “Hot” list.

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susanr Colorado
01/29/19 10:42 pm

Polls on the Hot list are chosen by an algorithm that mere users (or even beta testers) don’t know, at least not completely.

The Tap list, as others said, has *all* the polls - at least all the currently *open* polls, with the exception of polls made by anyone you have on ignore, or who has you on ignore.

The Tap is much newer than the Hot list. When user-made polls were a new feature (they started on 3/28/13) the only way to see user polls was to follow other users (their open polls are your New and All lists), or look at a user’s poll list through their profile.

Tony (you remember Tony? - you’ve been here since before there were user polls, so you must) found a number of ways to help users get more followers. One is the Recommended list on the People page. One is “featured” user polls on the main SOH poll list. There were some others that don’t exist any more, some having been abandoned by the new regime.

And then there was - still is - the hot list.
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susanr Colorado
01/29/19 10:59 pm

The Hot list was devised to help users without a lot of followers but who made good polls get more followers. Tony hand-picked a number of polls for the list every day, but that got overwhelming pretty fast, so he & the developer came up with an algorithm to pick them automatically. Initially it included a *low* number of followers. (I think maybe 50 at first, but it increased some as more users got more followers - maybe to 100 or 150?) Now, it looks like “anything goes” far as followers. (I see MrMilkdud has a poll on it currently, and he has over 1300 followers.) To indicate that other users found the polls “good,” they had to have a number of votes and comments - but not *too* many; that would indicate a poll probably everyone had already seen. I don’t think up/down rating of polls was a feature until a little later, but a minimum number of up ratings did become part of the algorithm. Some people seem to think it’s the *only* factor, but that’s not correct.
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susanr Colorado
01/29/19 11:01 pm

The Tap list was added later (I think in Nov 2015), supposedly to provide users with even more polls to vote & comment on, after they’d exhausted their New list.

I kinda think that adding the Tap was as mistake - or at least, it has some significant negative effects. The one *positive* effect it has is to let us all see new users’ polls much faster.

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UniversePlan Michigan
01/29/19 7:50 pm

This user is currently being ignored

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dirkdd
01/29/19 6:29 pm

OMG thank you! I’ve been on here for years and never knew! But I’m kinda dumb. 🤓

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paranoidandroid peace love science
01/29/19 7:21 pm

Lol. No worries. Not a dumb question at all!😊

paranoidandroid peace love science
01/29/19 6:07 pm

User polls seem to get onto the Hot List after about 3 likes and 3 comments. They come on and off the hot list based on likes/comments. The Tap is every single user poll posted.

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Kay41 the Midwest
01/29/19 6:01 pm

The Tap is a list of every active question asked by SOH users. The Hot list are those questions that are most "liked" by users at any given time.

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