For all this talk about how Spring and whether it is good or bad or we get it or don’t get it, there is one thing about this whole discussion that really irks me: javablogs.com. Based entirely on the subject, rather than the content, the “popular entries” are currently “I Don’t Get Spring” and “I Don’t Get ‘I Don’t Get Spring’”. To prove my point, I titled this post something even more “headline grabbing” - and I won’t be surprised that it makes it’s way to the top of the popular entry list.
I propose we fix JavaBlogs. Why not start a system where blogs in a community (Java, Politics, whatever) can be rated after they have been viewed? Then those ratings can be applied in the popular topics. On top of that, it catches those who don’t visit javablogs.com but instead come through RSS feeds.
Anyone else think JavaBlogs’ popularity system is a bit lame?
PS: Sorry to be a tease with the subject, you’ll find no flame war about Spring in this entry (though I have recent entries talking about it, so go there if you want).
PPS: I’m planning to write a blog community service exactly like this, but for Politics. Perhaps the JavaBlogs community can join me and we can produce a generic system that works for any community. Or, for those Java folks that are also political couch potatoes, let me know if you’d like to help out.
on Jan 31st, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Yes, JavaBlogs’ popularity system is pretty lame.
But I’m not sure these popularity systems ever work. Digg puts the button next to the headline and you get all the catchy headlines dugg without anyone RTFA.
I think it’s worth trying - to put that prominently into the blog entry itself somewhere below the headline but above the bottom. Maybe at the end of the abstract (for those that bail and want to rate it useless) and at the end (for those that were riveted).
I still think this is susceptible to the noisy minority who are inevitbly going to go for the mindless bashing of something over a good review or fair critique. But you can’t win them all
on Jan 31st, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Just for the record, I used the headline simply because it was the first thing that came across after finishing reading Bob’s blog. There was no intention to “grab the popularity top” whatsoever.
At any rate, any Spring bashing headlines would be eyeball grabbing no matter how the rating is done, don’t you think?
on Jan 31st, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Just for the record, I used the headline simply because it was the first thing that came across after finishing reading Bob’s blog. There was no intention to “grab the popularity top” whatsoever.
At any rate, any Spring bashing headlines would be eyeball grabbing no matter how the rating is done, don’t you think?
on Jan 31st, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Like Brett said, the problem is getting someone to return and click on the rating after reading the article. You’d basically have a small cadre of people (well, probably just the blog’s owner plus Hani) who were contrary enough to make that much effort to rate an article.
One workaround I thought of was having a bookmarklet that submitted the URL of the page you were on plus a rating back to Javablogs. That would mean a few more people might be likely to rate articles. Page authors could also include links to rate their own articles in their page templates.
(The main problem with that being that a simple iframe hack could make everyone who visited your site vote for your articles. Which would involve adding a verification/captcha step. Which would again prevent people from voting.)
on Jan 31st, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Charles,
Yeah, I was thinking that asking page authors to edit their templates would be the way to go. Then they could simply include a single JavaScript file, just like AdSense, FeedBurner, and others do. Perhaps both the bookmarklet and this would be enough to allow enthusiatic javablogs readers and contributors to get their widest range.
on Feb 1st, 2006 at 2:39 am
Charles, maybe you can start by adding such a bookmarklet in Confluence
on Feb 1st, 2006 at 4:30 am
Go stuff yourself! (And your little dog too!)
on Feb 4th, 2006 at 3:05 am
Coool, will JavaBlogs donate their project to open source?
on Feb 4th, 2006 at 6:55 am
Unfortunately, no. There is too much proprietary code for them to give it out. They would like it, but it just isn’t possible right now.