i imagine two ways of doing this, one use a tag system so if somebody clicks on the tag option in a thread that thread is tagged as being hot, or good reading. if a thread has at least 5 hot tags then its considered to be a hot item and listed in this forum section. or if say 5 users all subscribe to the same thread then its considered hot. perhaps the politics forum, and general chat could be rated a bit differently so as to disallow those forum sections from mattering.
If you watch the spy or continually check the new posts you see the threads getting all the play. In general they are not the most informative threads.
Also, look top right in a thread, you can rate it already. With the stars. Hot threads also have a different icon, the red-ish one.
thanks top 30, guess for some reason i always just skipped over that part. I agree somewhat smyrl, i do continually check the spy and you can see trends, however i think that threads which are rated highly isntead of merely having a lot of activity would be of more worth. is there a way to only look at highly rated threads?
IMHO the thread rate is useless...no one care touch that even thread is good...only those who want to get attention for their BST thread use it...and thier thread always has 5 star cause no one bother to touch it...
But T0PS there are a few members who just rate their threads 5 star although the thread has no value... Also, i dont agree to OP's advice too. Spy is the best way to keep track, which i keep continuosly watching from my login to logout.
I think it takes 2 people to rate a thread before the stars appear so it's not that easily spoofed. But yeah, it's not like Digg, a definite indicator of popularity. Anyway, rather than following the herd, I just judge by thread title and pop-up snippet to see if I'm interested.