The Best of Fred's Thread

What do you think of this idea (if the moderators would be willing to give it some programming help so that their burden is not increased):

There are some truly worthwhile posts in both of Fred's Houses, worthwhile not just for wisdom or erudition but also for wittiness, imagination or any other qualities that elevate their "delight" quotient above the ordinary. I think it would be nice to have such examples neatly gathered into one place, to bring them wider circulation and spread the enjoyment, so to speak. Also, Danny, think of the book possibilities.

The way it would work is totally automatic. The thread would be barred to manual entry, even to comment. The only way a post could get into the thread is by computer, which periodically scans the Fred's threads and looks for posts that have been thanked by 5 or more other posters. Any found get duplicated in the "Best of ---" Thread, with links back to the original thread so anyone interested in deeper context is only a click away from seeing it.

Now I think 5 is about the right number. 1, 2 or 3 thanks are so common the thread would overflow. 4 starts to be an indication that a post has merit, and I wouldn't quarrel with a threshold that low. But at 5 there's no question the post is beyond the common - I rarely see 5 or more thanks.

I thought about also requiring a candidate post also being excerpted some minimum number of times in other posts, but 90% of the time a post is excerpted it's to disagree with the quoted part, not agree with it. Now it could be argued that if a post is excerpted 10 times even to disagree with it that's still an extraordinary level of attention, but the point of the "Best of ---" thread is that it would be the "Best of ---" thread, not the "Most Attention Paid to ---" thread. So I recommend using only the number of thanks as the criteria.

This idea could be applied to other departments of PriusChat too (the environmental thread I'd actually combine with this one as it's in the same vein as Fred's Political House) - having the "Best of ---" for general Prius information would be exceptionally valuable.

So what do you think?

 

I recall a cartoon recently that got 9 thanks - pretty good one, too, but I don't remember what thread it was in.

There are some risks having the computer doing all the work. In the Giffords assassination attempt thread one especially thick hemorrhage spilled all over the page by the rock thrower got 4 thanks (Alito, Scalia, Thomas & Roberts, who else but? ) so it wouldn't have been picked up but only because drbermanmd wasn't around to make it 5 and a swish. Still it rated an enthusiastic outburst of appreciation from 4 enthralled minds so who's to really judge? A computer doing the choosing on the raw hard data of thanks quotient could never be accused of bias.

I can see small conspiracies assembled to get some favored post over the 5 thanks threshold and into the thread but trying to prevent that kind of pettiness would start to overburden the concept, so I say let 'em pass if so mustered; there really wouldn't be any harm and I think most readers would be able to tell the ringers from the good stuff.