Questions for Confluence: what is the definition of the "popular" filter?
Asked by Trudy Claspill:

We have Questions for Confluence v2.3.4. On the Questions home page is a default filter named "Popular". What is the definition of that filter?

The page was showing questions until this past weekend. At that time we did a merge of data from another Confluence instance, and a re-index was performed. Now the Popular filter says "no questions found".


Answers:
author: NotTheRealStephenSifersNOPENOPENOPENOPE
body: Whether a question is popular is based on the number of answers, comments and up votes it has. You may find that your questions do not appear because they are competing with pages and blog posts that have more likes and comments.

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Source: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/questions/confluence-questions-faq-407724483.html>

comments: author: Trudy Claspill
body: Thank you for that response. However, it is not very helpful.

I am not seeing even a single entry when the Popular filter is used. Therefore it is not a matter of competition with other pages. Nothing at all in our Questions space is considered popular. We have questions with and without answers, and questions with and without votes. None of them appear.


author: NotTheRealStephenSifersNOPENOPENOPENOPE
body: I understand the pages have votes, but do any of them have likes?

The documentation states that if the page is "liked" it will show on the popular tab:

Likes and Popular Content {#toc-hId-1842141193}
===============================================

Has someone written a good blog post or page on Confluence? Or made a comment you agree with? Click the **Like** button to them know. ![](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/files/278695530/LikedIcon.png)

When you like a page, blog post or comment, the author of the content receives a notification. If enough people like the content, it'll appear on the **Popular** tab of the [dashboard](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/the-dashboard-139374.html).

Source: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/likes-and-popular-content-278695530.html>


author: NotTheRealStephenSifersNOPENOPENOPENOPE
body: When you state you re-indexed, did you just re-index confluence or also the plugins?

#### Restoring plugin indexes and popular content {#toc-hId-1252600700}

For all versions of Confluence, the following files and folders may exist in the index folders:

* `<confluence-home>/index/plugin` - this is where the [Usage Tracking plugin](https://ecosystem.atlassian.net/wiki/display/USGTRK/Confluence+Usage+Tracking+Plugin;jsessionid=436EA28FDC2261B6AC414C73B07F3A8F) stores the usage statistics
* `<confluence-home>/index/edge` - this is where popularity data for regular content is stored
* `<confluence-home>/index/questions-edge` - this is where [Confluence Questions](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence-questions) stores popularity data

Edge indexes are simply pointers to what is popular in the primary index. By clearing the edge index, Confluence must learn what is popular content again, which will take time to re-learn. If you need to restore the popular data from your backup:

1. Shut down Confluence
2. For each file listed above that exists in your backup, restore it to the correct location
3. Restart Confluence  

Source: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-to-rebuild-the-content-indexes-from-scratch-110035351.html>


author: Trudy Claspill
body: Thank you, Stephen. That is very helpful information.

I did not do the re-index myself, but I'll pass it on the sysadmins who did.