Will anyone miss the "Related" sidebar?

The "Related" sidebar appears when you display an existing question in SQLA. It contains a list of titles for other questions that the underlying software believes are related to this one... in other words, it is a "Related Questions" list.

I am going to get rid of the "Related" sidebar, unless I hear strong objections.

Here are my reasons:

(1) It's not a very useful list; personally, I have never used it, but... that's not the main reason...

(2) I believe the existence of that list on each question page is causing Google to generate false hits... it finds some matching text in the "Related" list and thinks the containing question is a match. You can read more about this topic here: http://sqlanywhere-forum.sap.com/questions/535/why-does-google-return-hits-based-on-the-list-of-related-question-titles-but-n

Dumping the "Related" list won't solve all of Google's problems, but waving a dead chicken over the keyboard has not accomplished anything.

meta-sqla sqla.stackexchange.com

asked 24 Mar '10, 08:52

Breck Carter
32.5k●541●724●1050
accept rate: 20%

edited 19 Mar '11, 07:09

Mark Culp
24.9k●10●139●297

I just noticed the "Related" sidebar does not appear for this question... that's not my doing! It might be that the underlying software takes time to index new questions.

(24 Mar '10, 09:15) Breck Carter

I won't miss it. For me the list shows topics that are as much relevant as the hits of the internal search I've tried. Not want I would want to see (in other words: crab). But you could try waving a dead rabbit over the keyboard (Easter is coming...)

(24 Mar '10, 09:20) Reimer Pods

Comment Text Removed

My screen shows a "Related" sidebar, but maybe that's becaus I didn't have a dead chicken available.

(24 Mar '10, 09:22) Reimer Pods

I have looked at "Related" now and then (and sometimes wondered what makes those questions related:), so I would not call this feature absolutely useless. However, it's not critical to me, particularly if it is responsible for the suboptimal search results. - I would recommend to (temporarily?) disable/drop the list to see if that fixes the problem.

(24 Mar '10, 09:29) Volker Barth

Still strange and unsatisfying that there are no comments to your SX question yet. - I hope it's not because of too much ranting against the "nannies"...

(24 Mar '10, 09:31) Volker Barth

I don't think I'll miss it ;).

(24 Mar '10, 09:58) Dmitri

Me too. Drop it.

(24 Mar '10, 11:04) Thomas Dueme...

@Reimer: You still see it because I haven't dropped it yet :)

(24 Mar '10, 13:06) Breck Carter

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Ok, it's gone... we'll see what happens.

For the record, the following code was added to SQLA's <HEAD> section; the "related-questions" line is the one that's relevant to this discussion:

<style>
#bootstrap-module { display: none; }
#bootstrap-guide { display: none; }
#bootstrap-details-module { display: none; }
#related-questions { display: none; }
</style>

permanent link

answered 25 Mar '10, 10:25

Breck Carter
32.5k●541●724●1050
accept rate: 20%

edited 25 Mar '10, 12:22

At the moment they still show up... (Firefox 3.6.2 if that matters)

(25 Mar '10, 10:33) Volker Barth

...and your code is shown as the first line on each page. So I guess it is not set correctly - but don't ask me where or how it has to be coded - I don't have any experience with that.

(25 Mar '10, 10:38) Volker Barth

@Breck: As display is a CSS property AFAIK, shouldn't it be put inside as .css file or inside a <style></style> block?

(25 Mar '10, 12:02) Volker Barth

I don't see "Related Questions" anymore (FF 3.6.2). And it looks like opening a question is faster than before (at least 57 milliseconds) ;-)

(25 Mar '10, 12:14) Reimer Pods

You guys are quick... yes I forgot the style tags, I'm CSS-challenged, I still don't understand why I can't use <blink> :)

(25 Mar '10, 12:24) Breck Carter

Comment Text Removed

@Breck: Looks better - and google seems to return better results now (though I would not expect the indexed pages to be re-indexed in the interim). Glad you re-tagged - hope this site is doomed to be successful.

(25 Mar '10, 13:08) Volker Barth

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question asked: 24 Mar '10, 08:52

question was seen: 1,491 times

last updated: 19 Mar '11, 07:09

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