My Suggestions for Voting

[ferg]

These are just suggestions.
I'm not blasting Chris or the current voting scheme (much). I think the dude does a great job here.


But I do have a couple of alternate voting methods that might make more sense for this site:

1. You don't just vote, you write reviews, ala Amazon.com. Each review is accompanied by a "star" ranking, but the sites don't necessarily have to be sorted by these rankings. This might stop people from voting one cast up, and another down, since they'd be required to actually write something about their vote. Sure, they could write garbage or something meaningless, but a person browsing the site probably isn't going to put much stock in a 1 star vote with no explanation.

2. You don't get to vote everyday. I'm not sure I understand the purpose behind being able to cast multiple votes for the same site, other than, perhaps, to drive traffic here. What this guarantees is that the people who have the most free time will drive their sites to the top. Does this make sense? I dunno. I would suggest one of the following alternatives:

a. You can vote whenever you want, but if you've already voted for a particular podcast, it merely updates your vote, rather than adding another. I mean, either you like the podcast or you don't. Sure you might hear something that causes you to change your mind, but this covers that.

b. You can only vote when a new episode of said podcast is available. New content could be cause for a revision in your ranking. This method may be more complicated, because it would require podcastalley to track when new casts become available, etc. But think about it - how do you know when you can vote again? because you heard something new!

3. I would recommend that, in addition to the voting, podcast alley appoint an editorial committee to write editorial reviews of the podcasts. These would be written by people who have proven that they are a) good writers b) unbiased and c) love podcasting. There would be a review based on several factors, some objective, some subjective, and an overall ranking applied. This would then factor in with user votes for some combined score.

I'm just rambling here, I guess, but I think some of this stuff could be done, and it would improve the overall value of the votes. Right now, it doesn't mean much. If you look at the number of stars on each podcast, they almost all appear as 4 1/2...how does that help us differentiate.

Also, as another feature request, I would like to see podcast alley pull in the feeds and display info and allow comments on the most recent episode of each podcast.

That is all.
Ferg

[allthewhile]

1 podcatcher, 1 vote.


That's my theory.

[bramley]

Ferg is a genius. I agree with everything!

I was thinking recently how the Amazon model is a good one to copy, so I'm glad someone else mentioned it. It would also prevent a lot of bad stuff, too numerous to detail.

Re suggestion 2, it also favors folks who have friends who spend all day at a computer or those with a young fan base with extra free time. On the humorous side, a friend with a hotmail account told me "sorry, I meant to vote early and often for you like white Chicago but because the right window didn't pop up I didn't vote at all like black Florida." My loss, but had he succeeded it would only have proved that I have loyal friends with not enough other things to think about.

Re suggestion 3, I have suggested this in another thread here. I would love good reviews. Obvious criteria on a scale of 1-5 like sound quality but also things like listener's interest in the subject 1-5, which would help you weight the review. Or assign specialists to categories. I'm tempted to start my own review site because it just isn't happening anywhere else. Think about it, ferg. But then again maybe no one would visit since I've not heard anything positive back about this review idea. I secretly guess that folks interested in insightful, even-handed reviews also concern themselve with what Elvis Mitchell says before heading to the movies. There are many implications there. Take whichever you like.

[Shelly]

Ferg is a genius.

please don't encourage the man, i have to live with him.

[Brian]

Excellent suggestions. I agree with ferg, bramley and allthewhile. One listener, one vote. I'd extend that to say per month, since Chris is implementing a monthly top ten in addition to the all-time top ten.

If the goverment allowed every citizen to vote once a day for the presidential election, what kind of bozo would end up in the oval...

OK, bad example.

But seriously, the ratings should reflect the most popular shows, right? Fewer listeners that vote more often doesn't make a show more popular. The folks on the iPodderX and iPodder Lemon teams have APIs that track subscribers and can populate a real subscriber-based top ten list. I don't know if the PoddumFeeder, Nimic and other podcatchers have implemented it, but I'd love to see that list here on PodcastAlley in addition to the "voted" list.

My listeners are kind enough to give me 30-40 minutes, three times a week. And I'm grateful for that. That alone makes me really loyal to my listeners, but if that weren't enough, many of them, ten to twenty a day, email me with requests, or suggestions, or answers to questions I may have asked in my podcast, or simply a pat on the back and to say "love the show".

And to ask those listeners to come here and vote every single day, just so that I can keep up with the other programs that ask their listeners to come here and vote every day? It's presumptuous to say the least.

There are podcasters here that claim that the podcasts that have the more devoted listeners will rise to the top. Some hosts have demonstrated that they are as competitive as an 80's-era Tom Cruise movie character, and have arrogantly cast a bit of a dark cloud over a site that I really enjoy coming to a couple times a day to catch up on forum posts and news items.

One vote per month could give other shows a chance to be recognized, and better yet, discovered here. There isn't a show in the top ten that I haven't listened to, just to see if it appeals to me, from a show about snow riding, to another show about libertarianism, to another show put together by a couple in Wisconsin. If i liked it, I gave it a vote. If I didn't like it, I didn't vote. But that, coupled with a single vote per month (and Chris' monthly top ten, which I'm looking forward to) would give new shows that rise in popularity over a couple weeks to build an audience.

The soapbox is starting to creak under my weight, so I'm going to step off and let someone else take the floor.

[Funtime Ben]

Yeah, I have to say that I really like the idea of having a login, just like this message-board, and are allowed to cast one vote per podcast... or something to that effect.

I really think the community at PodCastAlley is something special, it's a shame that some folks are ruining the system. If we could strengthen the community by making the voting process a little more amazon... or Netflixesque I think it would really boost shows and make dialogs between people much stronger.

Chris, just an aside - We really appreciate what you're doing here thanks for all your hard work.