Let's chat about Quail's Random

No significant update news for the site design this week so instead let's take the opportunity to talk about Quail's Random.

It's a feature on the site that's appreciated by some, hated by others, and probably ignored by many. It's a list of ten totally randomly picked DD webcomics that sits on the front page in-between the Top Ten and the Recently Updated lists. Unlike the other two lists the comics it displays have zero criteria, they don't have to be popular or recent, it's a random list with no order or reason. Comics on it might only have one page, they might have finished updating 12 years ago, they might be a horrible mess of copy-pasted gunge, you really never know what you'll get


Why is it hated?
That's easy: it takes up extremely valuable real-estate on the front page with a list of comics that are mostly essentially dead. Promotional space on the front page of the site is at a huge premium and it's not great to use so much of it up on comics that will never update again and creators that aren't there to care about the readers. It can give the impression to new viewers to the site that we're just full of old, dead comics, failed projects, and things that just don't go anywhere.
Which is why it needs to go.


Why it's appreciated
Quail's Random doesn't just throw up dead-end 4 page MS Paint comics from 2006, it serves up a whole bunch of hidden gems that there is really no other way to locate on the site aside from a targeted search- but if you don't know about something you can't search it out, which is why Quail's Random can be so valuable. It works like a kind of magic archeological retrieval system, Indiana Jonesing these lost gems back into the light of day!
Which is why we still need it.


So what do we do about Quail's Random?
I have two ideas:

1: Replace it with a single comic result instead of a list of ten (so it takes up less room), and have it somewhat limited in scope, so that the comics it displays have to have (for example) at least 10 pages- plus any other criteria people can think off.

2: Move it to the Search page (ie "Comics" link on the front page), so that when you go there there's a list of ten randomly picked comics at the top of the page. And we could still limit it to showing comics with at least 5 to 10 pages.


Those are my thoughts. The current redesign doesn't include Quail's Random because most people didn't want it there anymore and on balance I agreed with that, but I can still see the need of it, especially since people like HPKomic and Lothar pointed out that it does have a use, What do you think?


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