07-06-2005 13:17
This might qualify as a feature suggestion for the voting page, but I wanted to bring it up here to discuss it in general terms.

Let's say you're browsing a web site and having difficulty finding what you're looking for. Your search results show 204 matching records, and it's obvious you're looking at mostly crap. The filters you have available let you limit by category, like "New" or "Orange" and let you sort by just about anything. But even after you use the filters it's still mostly crap, and the thing you're looking for is one of those things that you'll just know it when you see it.

Here's what I always want to do in this situation: remove things I know I don't want to see. Just a simple "remove from results" button.

This would be really useful on the voting page. I could remove anything I don't really care about or know I don't want to vote on. Then when new propositions show up I'll be more likely to notice the good ones, and can easily ignore the bad ones.

It might be less useful for events (since the events change every day), but I think in the Places and People windows it would have use. If I was looking for plants, I would eliminate the place I already looked at last week and didn't find anything.

Another example is an e-commerce site. Let's say I'm looking for a computer part and I'm not exactly sure what I need, but I know what I don't need.

Eliminating options would make a cleaner and more relevant set of results, and each item eliminated gets me closer to the item I'm looking for.

Any thoughts?