Alphabetical Listing is gone!!

[Cat]

Hey Chris

I noticed that the Alphabetical listing is gone

is there another way for newbies (or not newbies) to surf through podcasts other than the top50 or by Genre - what if someone just wanted to see a listing of all the podcast (you know, cause they would have so much time on their hands)

Is there a way??

[theFerf]

with 1300+ listings, the page was massive. if i can find a way to divide the list by letter, i will do that for the alphabet listing.

im also working on better genre browsing for just the reason you are talking about.

[Cat]

Cool!!

[travishoffman]

If the alphabetical listing takes affect i'm considering changing my podcast to
" A the ponderplace podcast"
-impropper grammar at the top of the list...looking stupid would never look so smart.

[camilian]

A-1 Daily Download... Hmmmmm

[thefly]

!!!!!!The NoGagReflex Bucast

Man, the directory will look like Ebay. :(

[Version3]

The problem with the current listing is that it perpetuates itself and does not create a level listing environment. Newbies to the podcasting world are not likely to scroll down to number 63 in the comedy category to find out what it's all about... they are going to choose from the top 5. I'll bet there are many better shows than the one they choose, however they are not very likely to find out about them. Then they will vote or leave feedback only for the ones they have been exposed to, keeping them at the top of the pile. For a pretty large podcast listing service I think that's it's pretty irresponsible to allow this to be the primary way podcasts are displayed... even worse, pretty much the only way.

I'm not against people being able to see who is the top voted show... on the contrary, I think that's a great idea. -as long as it is based on a more level playing field than is available currently. I'd love to see ideas on how to make it better. Alpha (by lettter) is at least a standard that works... people know that it's alpha and are more likely to skip around in order to sample podcasting. What about having a few listing methods (top rated, newest, alpha, reverse-alpha, lowest rated) and having a script choose randomly from the listing methods? It's more scripting sure, but it would give new site visitors just as much variety in viewing the shows as there is variety of shows listed on the site.

Anyone else have an idea?

[jeffoest]

One of the ways that I pick musical streams is to see how many people are listening to it - figure a good starting point is to go with what others like and then work from there...

Eventually I'd like to see podcast ratings based on popularity (i.e. number of downloads, etc..) - the problem is that the Podcast Alley top 50 is not the top 50 in downloads. It's more probably the more aggressive top 50 podcasts in terms of getting out the vote. Admittedly, they are probably correlated because of the catch-22 factor. But hey, that's the way most stuff works I guess - NYTimes BestSeller List, Billboard Top 50, etc....the top on the list gets more interest and inspection...

Eventually when podcasting gets bigger, I think collaborative filtering techniques (like the recommendations on Amazon.com for example) will prove useful to help people sift through podcasts but collaborative filtering takes a lot of data points to start providing anything meaningful so it's probably a ways away for our community.

[owyn]

Try searching by keyword.

eg. I was looking for 3 specific "blues" podcasts. Just entered "blues" as a keyword into the alley search and found them, and a pile of others, very quickly.

As far as I could see the order was arbritary and did not reflect voting.

[owyn]

PS: Tested the Foxfire Search Plug-In for the alley at the same time. Worked a treat.

[paul]

Version 3-

I feel the same frustration. I feel like our shows are getting better, but we still have the same number of listeners. The important thing is to concentrate on our shows and a quality show. The fun of doing a show that any one is listening to shouldn't wear off too quickly.

Just keep thinking that before August, NO ONE here had their voices heard (with the exception of some of the comm. podcasts. If your're enjoying what you're doing, then eventually you'll catch on.

At least that's the principle i'm operating on...

[yaz]

so there no longer is an alphabetical list, is it such a big deal that we have to search for a show, its not like you have to get out of your chair...geez...