Exploring recent notebooks is not working well

[LaoTzunami]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. This is a follow up to this thread on the observables forum: https://talk.observablehq.com/t/exploring-recent-notebooks-is-not-working-well/7594

In short, I don't think the current system is good for searchers or publishers. Before, recent notebooks was a proving ground for new notebooks. If you made something good, there was a decent chance people would see it and like it enough for it to appear on trending.

Now, it is way more work to sift through recent and people are disincentivized from even looking. If there are not enough reviews because people don't want to look or are spread thin, it is not a fair discovery process. It favors people who have an established following or who work with other people who use Observables, who can give them the initial likes needed to get on trending. This creates a barrier to entry for new people. By contrast, trending is consistently high enough quality to attract community attention, and because enough people are participating and rating, the signal is above the noise and trending is meritocratic. Fixing this problem would also improve trending, because more of the good notebooks were discovered and gathered in one place. It would concentrate quality on the high end through natural competition, and it would increase the amount of useful niche diversity on the low end.

With the previous system, it was clear when and why things were happening. I could take as much time as I wanted to make a notebook and know it would only go public when I published it. Like the news, there is a spike in attention when something is published which trails off when everyone who was interested in it has seen it. I knew where I was in the narrative arc, which was fun and exciting. It also taught me a lot, because a few notebooks I didn't think were that big of a deal got a big reaction, and some that I though were really cool were duds. That kind of feedback helps me know what people like and be a better designer. With the current system, I have no idea how anything works, what is happening or how to adapt to it. Instead of going on an exciting adventure when I publish a notebook, I just create in the black vacuum of space and hope something bumps into it eventually.

Describe the solution you'd like

1. Go back to the old model where we publish things when they are finished. Have unfinished notebooks visible on that user's notebook page, people you follow or on search, but not on recent. Alternatively, give all users a finite slot or token where they can promote any one notebook at a time.
2. Create a team of editors that review and monitor every new notebook people create. It wouldn't be fair to promote those notebooks with likes, but make a new 'editor's choice' page which would be like a curated recent that would deserve people's attention.
3. Create an algorithm that suggests similar notebooks as the one you are viewing. Like the YouTube sidebar.
4. Be able to see the likes of people you follow or allow people to make 'playlists' collections of other people's notebooks. This would allow a kind of reviewer user who doesn't create any notebooks themselves, but gains a following by having good taste. You could even allow people to follow specific collections while not following the whole user.
5. Have a monthly event, competition or theme to give people a motivating goal and a common interest. This would make it easier to discover new people and allow them to develop the peer to peer following networks.

[galopin]

I second that proposal. This could help suppress the cruft from Observable, e.g. blank, empty, or untitled notebooks. Every notebook should start as a draft and stay somehow “hidden” from public view until its creator marks it as ready.

“Unlisted” (or “Only you” for Pro users) should be the default sharing option, not “Public”.

As the owner of a notebook, I can change its sharing status from “Unlisted”/“Only you” to “Public” so that I can flag my notebook as public when deemed to be ready…

When one would fork an “Unlisted” or “Public” notebook, one would create their own “Unlisted” copy of this notebook, which they can then edit freely without affecting the original. I think this workflow would be ideal for making suggestions without cluttering the Observable user space. Of course, Pro users would still be able to make this fork private if they wish.

Performing this change would also not conflict in any way with the live editing feature…