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I was thinking about ways to reduce the size of the sandbox, and I came up with three points that could potentially be addressed.

  1. The most upvoted answers rise to the top, and those questions are posted. Afterward, those questions stay at the top, increasing scrolling distance to the new questions.
  2. The comments on questions get extremely long - almost chatroom length. I don't know if there is a feasible way of addressing this, but if the comments were removed after the issue was addressed or after the question was posted, that would help. Another possible solution is to have a chatroom for the comments of a question.
  3. Some people edit the question to say {POSTED} after they post it. This helps, as some questions are extremely long. If more people would do this, I would greatly help in minimizing the length of the sandbox.

I don't know if any of these three main issues could be addressed, but perhaps some of you have novel ideas that could reduce the size of our sandbox, thereby allowing it to be used for more questions.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Maybe this just mean that it is time to move on to sandbox mark 9. \$\endgroup\$
    – Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia
    Feb 22, 2014 at 14:49
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Victor True, but I noticed that some people were saying that they would prefer just one sandbox. \$\endgroup\$
    – user10766
    Feb 22, 2014 at 17:11
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think we should distinguish between just one active sandbox (covering all classes of challenges) and just one sandbox post at all (no sequencing). The former is what we have had, the latter would require vigorous, ongoing cleaning and the proliferation of posts would still be visible to moderators and users with at least 10k rep. \$\endgroup\$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Feb 22, 2014 at 18:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ OK, I thought I saw people discussing methods of keeping a single sandbox post regardless of scrolling somewhere recently. Perhaps I was mistaken. \$\endgroup\$
    – user10766
    Feb 22, 2014 at 18:51

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Let's see

  1. Many people prefer to sort the sandboxes by activity, meaning that long posted or long dormant entries float to the bottom and ones currently under revision to the top. Of course, I believe this means diddling the sort order as you browse other parts of the site. Alternately voluntary deletion of sandbox entries after a while (in addition to editing to {Posted} status) could help.

  2. Comment hiding parameters on site metas are set to much more permissive levels than on main sites. If there is enough interest we could ask the team to choose a less permissive setting for us so that more of long threads would be hidden. Also, voluntary deletion of comments relating to corrected mistakes would help. I suspect it is better to leave comments relating to decision where the right answer is a matter of choice, however (to preempt a reemergence of the same issue).

  3. The {Posted} status edits are a big win, and and my choice would be for them to be sanctioned for all edit-empowered users.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes, I agree. I think hiding the comments on long threads would probably be the best solution, given enough people are interested. \$\endgroup\$
    – user10766
    Feb 22, 2014 at 17:15
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    \$\begingroup\$ I see value to keeping the comments as a teaching resource for the rare person who wants to learn how to write a good question before they start writing one. \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter Taylor
    Feb 22, 2014 at 20:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ Maybe a chat could be created instead of comments (I know that when a long discussion occurs, a link appears saying that you can migrate to chat). \$\endgroup\$
    – Justin
    Feb 23, 2014 at 1:05

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