I'd like to see a few more advanced search filters:

  • maximum question votes
  • maximum views
  • maximum answers
  • date ranges
  • minimum asker rep

The existing search filters are a promising start, but more options required!

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Ping... can this be implemented? –  RCIX Jan 9 '10 at 3:44
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6 Answers

up vote 17 down vote accepted

I like this idea to filter out the useless cartoon/joke questions. I can think of no reason why adding this feature to the advanced search would be a negative addition, and it should be trivially simple to implement.

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So, realizing this is now a three year old question, and I came to ask the exact same thing - why is this not yet implemented? –  Chris Jan 1 '13 at 15:49
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I know this is an old question, however I went here to ask this very question.

I think this is a very valid feature to be able to filter by asker-rep. The fear of loosing potential answers from high-rep visitors is very valid, however, wouldn't peoples race for rep by answering simple questions prevent that? As it is now, you certainly miss 99.8% of all questions anyway because you cannot keep up. That would also help newbies help newbies, aswell as earning reps because of fewer answers from high-rep visitors.

Even though I filter out lots of questions by tags, I still only see questions from the last 6 minutes. And I don't visit stackoverflow every 6 minutes...

And what about a feature to only show questions with interesting tags? Is that possible? I can filter by each individual tag, but not all questions with either one of my interesting tags AFAIK.

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Indeed. I've pretty much stopped answering questions from Stack Overflow's front page, because it doesn't have this feature or one like it. Instead, I go by a couple of tag RSS feeds I follow in Google Reader, which are usually delayed by several hours. I spend no more than 3 minutes a day on average now on SO, and I'm sure I'm missing lots of questions I could contribute uniquely to. –  Barry Kelly Dec 5 '09 at 3:01
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I'm in favour of this, especially if it's coupled with 'favourite searches':

  • When I'm in a generous mood, I could seek out newbies (we sort-of have this with first-post review)
  • When I'm in a snobby mood, I could keep the newbies at bay with my whip & chair (lion tamer, not kink)

The flip-flop of mood is partly due to the patterns I've noticed in quality when different timezones come online.

The obvious drawback is that it could encourage fence-sitters to always ignore new users (it shouldn't affect answer rates from established pro or anti). It also makes it more difficult for quality new users gain rep.

The big danger with this is that 'low rep' only reflects how actively involved a user has been, not what their skill level is - I'd guess that there are lurkers on SO, who browse to expand general knowledge, but don't often comment/ask/answer.

I think the safest way to implement this would be to allow a shadow-rep for a question, so 'mentors' can allow high-quality newbie posts to break-through a low-rep filter. No idea what this means for the back-end. As it's out-of-scope here, I've created Flag (not tag) for mentor as a related discussion.

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I think "Minimum rep filter" is needed because:

It's already possible to employ that filter manually. I for instance tend to avoid spending time on "user128238"s question because it feels like the guy probably won't care to follow up (12% accept rate is also a sign). Being an active member of community is a plus in that sense. Althugh manual works, it's getting harder and harder to find a question from someone with at least three digits rep.

Therefore a minimum rep filter is a motivating factor for newbies to get more intellectual juice out of SO. If he doesn't care for the web site, he doesn't get the answer. Motivation is twofold, newbies also need to answer more questions in their own caliber to get credibility on the web site.

I have been getting more and more tired to find questions which I can answer. The ones I find usually have 10 answers already 8 saying the same thing, 1 being Jon Skeet, 1 is a clueless one having -3 score. I can only cling to newest+unanswered and hope something worthwhile comes along in three refreshes then I'm out. This needs to be fixed.

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I'm here to learn from asking & answering questions. Seeing more content cluttering up the site with the sole purpose of encouraging gaming of the system would only serve to push me away.

I don't want to give the impression that your feature requests are invalid, I'm just not sure they're in line with the goals of the site(s) (obviously I can't speak for Jeff/Joel, hence the uncertain phrasing).

Maybe you can get what you're after by filtering to only show questions tagged with more advanced topics. I'm not sure that rep-gaming gimmicks are going to keep anyone around long-term.

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Eh? Where did I advocate rep-gaming? What did I say that encourages it? Basically, I want to reduce the influence help vampires have on the site, otherwise I'll stop visiting, simple as that. slash7.com/pages/vampires –  Barry Kelly Sep 2 '09 at 14:39
And I really really don't see how adding a new advanced search feature to the site is going to "encourage gaming of the system". I'm really at a loss as to the nature of your answer. –  Barry Kelly Sep 2 '09 at 14:41
Maybe I misread, I thought you'd stated that you wanted a search feature specifically to help get a badge? (hard to tell now that it's been edited down) –  Kara Marfia Sep 2 '09 at 15:11
You can look at the old edit, I never mentioned badge, I only advocated the feature. I thought that my personal motivations were clouding my specific request, though, so I removed that. –  Barry Kelly Sep 2 '09 at 15:18
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Rep is a cumulative value from all of a user's activities; if the questions they are asking are in topics they aren't experts in (or are just curiousities) then they're no better than a user with no rep.

I've seen lots of Q's and A's from user's with several thousand rep points that are on par with any beginner question. For your intended use rep would need to be topic-specific: "Show me questions related to Widgets where OP's Widget Rep > 5000"

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IME, it doesn't generally work that way. People with high rep usually ask deeper and more thorny questions related to their general area of expertise, rather than naif questions in unrelated areas. But my primary motivation with asking this question is to avoid me being bored with SO and drifting away, as a front page of trivial questions are less and less interesting to me. –  Barry Kelly Sep 2 '09 at 14:33
There is also simply the issue of vampires: slash7.com/pages/vampires - this problem is pretty bad once it sets in, and it invariably does. –  Barry Kelly Sep 2 '09 at 14:36
Strongly disagree on this; although out-of-comfort-area posters don't know the details of the topic, basic concepts are similar. Code is either multi-context (including processes, threads, interrupts, etc), or it isn't. It's either mostly event-driven, or not. Most languages a C-style syntax. Many problems are logic-based, even when experienced in the context of a specific language. –  Phil Lello May 1 '11 at 17:27
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