Editor's Picks: pens we select by hand
The home page no longer shows the six most liked pens: it shows a random six of those the editors selected. On the showcase they have a filter of their own and a label on the card.
The Penlab home page has a section with the work of members. Until now it held the six pens with the most likes.
What was wrong
Such a selection has two weak spots.
The first — the set hardly changed. A pen that once collected likes stayed on the home page for weeks, and new work could not get there: nobody sees it, so it has no likes either.
The second — likes can be inflated. The more visible the place on the home page, the more sense it makes to do so.
The like counter itself is not at fault: it honestly shows what people liked. But this number alone cannot decide what a person sees on their first visit.
How it works now
We select pens by hand and mark them as Editor's Picks. Of the selected ones the home page shows a random six, and the set and the order differ on every load. Reload the page — and other work is there.
If fewer than six pens are selected so far, all of them are shown.
On the showcase the selected pens have a place of their own:
- the type filter, next to Originals and Forks, has an Editor's Picks item — it works together with sorting and search;
- the card of a selected pen carries an "Editor's Picks" label. The same label is visible on the home page and on the author's page.
The ordinary showcase is still there: sorting by likes, by date and by views works as before, and all pens take part in it.
How a pen gets picked
There are no applications and no form. We look through the showcase and mark pens that are interesting to open: a neat animation, an unexpected trick in plain CSS, a clear demo that invites you to play with it. Both an original and a fork can be marked.
A few details:
- the mark stays if the author keeps editing the pen;
- a fork of a selected pen does not inherit the mark — it is already different work.
The choice is subjective, and we do not hide it. In return, the home page now shows different work, not the same six.
To get a pen noticed, save it with a clear title, and it will appear on the showcase. A new pen is a place to start.