This may seem a bit unintuitive, but have we considered removing the Suggested and Related (or at least, the Suggested) section at the bottom of each post? These are features that exist mostly to “drive engagement” on other forums and I don’t think that’s really something discuss.python.org is going for.
Normally social media sites want to promote “hot” posts because if it’s popular with some users than it’ll probably be popular with all users, so it’s a way to get clicks and pump up engagement numbers. But I’m pretty sure most people are using this site in a chronological manner; you find things to discuss with people by looking at the recent posts or making a new post.
Are there people who actively do find the 5 Suggested posts helpful? Or is it just some fluff at the bottom of the page that is mostly ignored?
As someone who is HIGHLY active on this site, I definitely don’t find them useful, because as you say, I follow everything in chronological order. Their value may be quite different for people who land here from a Google search or something though, and might not have seen any other posts/threads.
Related is incredibly useful, especially in Ideas since it is pretty decent at finding older related suggested. In Python Help it is also sometimes useful to spot “duplicates”, although it’s rare that those are useful in actually giving an answer.
I like Suggested since that is what I use on my phone to check through newest updates without having to navigated to overall “Latest”.
AFAIK, this isn’t what either of these sections do at all.
Suggested is essentially the subset of “Latest” where discord would put a blue indicator for you
Related is some algorithm based on the content of the thread/original post (not sure)
They maybe could be considered “engagement drivers”, but I doubt that was their intention nor do I think they would do a good job at that. (e.g. “popular” topics that aren’t on my watch list because I only clicked on them for a short moment aren’t in “Suggested”)
I believe that suggested or related content is the bare minimum a modern website should offer. It is very helpful for conducting research and finding interesting post threads. The most used category is Python Help, where visitors mostly come from search engines to ask questions. They don’t read the content chronologically.
As someone who browses this subreddit forum for fun, I find this really useful. It always suggests me interesting old topics which I read for hours and learn a ton from!
