default list of resources loading at start

[joehobson]

It looks like you've changed the behavior so the widget now loads a list of resources from the beginning, even if you haven't done a search yet. I can see the benefits of that, but I think we should choose a better set of resources than just everything sorted by title (?) or whatever it's doing now. Maybe the most recently published resources? most popular? word cloud of the most popular search terms? Up for discussion. Maybe @bausland has some thoughts

[serpentblade]

I'd have to suggest steering away from most recently published as that will likely lead to favoring all of a single publisher's stuff and can be influenced by how frequently contributors push stuff to the LR and if they are constantly updating their records. Also, most popular anything does not make any sense without people pushing back relevant paradata to LR and the widget having very limited initial usage. Also word clouds aren't cool anymore, 2008 is long gone.

[joehobson]

I definitely agree on the fear that people will try to game the system with the default list. Any suggestions on what we should put there?

[serpentblade]

As opposed to what is already being displayed? No. I think it is better having results over it being blank as it use to be as it will allow people to immediately start browsing resources. However, until we have relevant data and statistics to provide better results, I don't have a suggestion as to what the default should display.

[joehobson]

Maybe the subjects list is a better default then. The way the widget currently works, if your filter is wide-open, the first resource is an image of a doorway, and only 2 of the first 10 have a title other than URL.

[serpentblade]

That does certainly seem to highlight the lunacy of items in LR. However since the focus of the search widget is to search for resources and not so much browse subjects or standards I'd prefer not to have the subjects tab as the primary option. Perhaps we could establish a set of default search terms that we select an item from at random to search by, and allow widget editors to choose their own set of default terms should they not like ours