Top Posts block: posts with same stat count ordered randomly

[samiff]

If two or more posts have the exact same stats (e.g. a bunch of posts all have 0 visits), then the block will order them randomly between themselves on every load, i.e. each and every time that list will look different. This looks a bit weird, and might subtly suggest to the user (even though it’s not technically true) that the Stats block/plugin isn’t working as expected, because if the number of visits doesn’t change between loads, why would the order of posts that get shown there be different on every load? I think it would be better if the order in that list remained constant on every load.

Perhaps order by number of visits first, then by some other constant field, e.g. publication date

Via Jetpack 13.2 internal testing: p8oabR-1t3-p2#comment-7901

[github-actions[bot]]

Support References

This comment is automatically generated. Please do not edit it.

• [ ] p8oabR-1t3-p2#comment-7901

[Aurorum]

Not sure I agree with this.

If two or more posts have the exact same stats (e.g. a bunch of posts all have 0 visits), then the block will order them randomly between themselves on every load, i.e. each and every time that list will look different. This looks a bit weird, and might subtly suggest to the user (even though it’s not technically true

The block will, indeed, load random posts when they have zero views - that’s based on what the Legacy Widget does. However, would it not confuse people more if those posts were fixed? I would imagine people might get the impression that those posts have more views than they actually do, and that might be more misleading for both the user and, more crucially, any readers on the site.

If it’s based on publication date, that might make it challenging for users to use both the Top Posts and Latest Posts block.