Saturday, 18 June 2011

Voting at ProgBlogs

We've got a new voting system with the relaunched Progressive Bloggers. One votes for individual posts on a scale of 1 to 5. Can't say I care for it.

Like, why vote anything but 5? Is one signalling: 'This post is sorta interesting, but not as interesting as this blogger usually is, or not as interesting as other bloggers on the same subject, or I don't like this blogger and s/he is getting way too many 5s?'

So. If I vote for a post, I vote 5. Otherwise, I don't vote and don't affect the score given by other people on the blogger/subject/treatment.
Publié par fern hill à 6:58:00 pm
Libellés : ,

10 comments:

JJ said...

I don't know why PBs has to have any voting at all, it seems kind of High School to me, but if they must, I much prefer the new system.

I hated the old PBs voting system for a long time, and had long since stopped voting for anyone other than blogs stuck in the sidebar. My problem with the old system was that the front page was always dominated by the posts with the most votes, which always seemed to be from the same blogs (and admittedly, mine was one of them for awhile), and always sat there for hours if not days. This resulted in many lesser known blogs sliding off the sidebar with nary a vote, which I found grossly unfair. My irritation hit critical mass when people started cross-posting all over the place, and PB readers were actually dumb enough to vote up all the identical posts, further clogging up the front page with redundant crap.

With the new system, I guess the idea is to vote for the "quality" of the post -- Yeah I like it, give it a 5, No it's stupid, give it a 1, or Meh give it a 3. IMO it's better than the previous system, but I still don't know why we need voting at all. It's a bit like a goofy Popularity Contest.

18 June 2011 at 20:26
fern hill said...

Well, as you say, the old style of voting was at least a way to get a post out of the sidebar into the higher profile middle. On sitemeter you could see how high some people set their threshold. Like if a post had fewer than 10 or whatever votes, some people deigned it beneath their notice.

The cross-posting bugged me too and I mentioned it to Scott. I haven't noticed yet whether it is still going on.

I think the current system is pointless and unnecessary. It doesn't even function as a popularity contest. I mean, where's the prize?

18 June 2011 at 20:33
Scott Tribe said...

If you can find me a plugin from Wordpress that works as you want it, then by all means point me to it. Voting for syndicated posts are rare, and the ones that are out there don't all work properly.

I've offered at Facebook to give the code for the current voting plugin to anyone who a) can make it work better and/or b) modify it so that people can again have a voting widget on their site for it... or alternately c) can write me up a new plugin on their own.

Basically right now, it's either this type of voting system (and all the other ones out there all seem to be based on 1-5 point rankings) or no voting at all.

18 June 2011 at 21:28
fern hill said...

I am TechnoDolt. No help, sorry. But I think you've got 2 votes here so far for 'no voting'.

It's not important, Scott. Don't worry.

18 June 2011 at 21:31
Willy said...

You needed the magic 3 votes with the old system to make it to the front page and similar to JJ I would run thru the back pages and vote for any post that had at least two votes just to reset the front page.

It seems with this system you can vote down a post, or place negative votes as opposed to not voting at all, which is somewhat disheartening. If you think the post is crap, just move on or if you disagree with the blogger leave a comment.

I took the vote for this post off my blog, the whole voting thing was starting to piss me off and now without it the votes are a lot lower and it there are few posts that break away from the pack.

I'm spending more time reading my blog list now and using Progs to decide if I want to add new ones, which is probably not the desired result that the changes were intended to make. However I am enjoying the house keeping activity and constant updating, so I think I fall on JJs side and prefer my new found freedom.

18 June 2011 at 21:45
Steve V said...

One post per blogger on the frontpage would help. I know WSP has put this in their code, which I think PB should adopt. If you have multiple posts, only your last stay on top. This way we have more variety of posters, rather than just the most proficient. As well, perhaps a longer front page, more posts, because things move pretty quickly.

19 June 2011 at 09:10
fern hill said...

@Steve V: More variety, yes.

But a problem with group blogs. Just now for example, dBO and I posted within minutes of each other. If your suggestion means that co-bloggers have to schedule and coordinate their posts, it ain't gonna fly.

What is WSP, by the way?

20 June 2011 at 11:55
Steve V said...

Wellington Street Post. Ahh, I hadn't thought of that, that is a problem.

At bare minimum frontpage has to be longer, more posts.

20 June 2011 at 13:49
Scott Tribe said...

I've changed the voting system, as you folks no doubt have seen if you've visited there. The frontpage is currently set to 20 posts before it shifts to Page 2, and 3. I suppose I can up that as well.. I'm just worried of people scrolling down too much.

21 June 2011 at 17:08
fern hill said...

Looks good and as I said, voting doesn't matter to me. I vote or I don't.

Good work, Scott. I hope you know we appreciate it.

21 June 2011 at 17:37

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