techPresident - Blip.tv - Comments

Interesting, I've already

der74hva3 — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:05:21 -0400

Interesting, I've already seen this in some forum. If I find the link, i'll put it here.

wou

der74hva3 — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:28:58 -0500

wou

"Overlooked" is a self-fulfilling prophecy

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:40:24 -0400

Relegating newer videos to an "overlooked" section (as was done at Community Counts) formally sequesters less popular videos into a lower tier and further reinforces the "popularity effect" of the leading videos.

But that's probably the best you can do for now. For the long run, consider this: One of the things I was working on was a grid that would open in random order and could then be sorted in various ways (tag, title, author, current popularity, the user's own rating, etc.).

on Randomization of 10qs videos

Micah L. Sifry — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:53:29 -0400

We're aware of the issue, and the site will start to dynamically display a column of "Overlooked" videos on the right-hand third of the front page...as soon as there are enough videos in the system to push some off the front page because of the popularity effect.

Any, any user is free to take the embed code for a particular video and put it on their own site, which means there are plenty of ways for people to drive attention to what they think of as deserving questions.

Good suggestion

Ruby Sinreich — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:36:09 -0400

Perhaps the front page could present 3 separate columns of videos: most popular, newest, and random. I especially think newer videos need more exposure as it will be hard for them to catch up to the number of votes on ones that were posted early on.

Randomization

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:44:11 -0400

I see now that the 10questions site provides a button to randomize the display of videos. I'd suggest setting things up to invoke it on page load.

There's another way. It might be a better way.

flywheel — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:23:14 -0400

I see that 10questions is essentially a reworking of CommunityCounts, which is a great idea overall. In particular, I think the the idea of soliciting candidate responses to the selected questions and then having another round of voting on their responses is outstanding.

Nevertheless, what's going on here repeats some of the most glaring shortcomings of CommunityCounts. I think there's lots of room for improvement.

Frankly, the failure to randomize the display of videos on load makes it patently unfair. That means that the "front page" videos will get increasingly greater attention than the others, and there will be an ever widening gap between the leaders and the also rans. You're replicating the same tiering problem of the current presidential campaign.

Moreover, I find site performance to be rather pokey, which makes it hard to use.

I'm all for developing a technology which can be used to compel the candidates to answer citizens' questions. I've thought deeply about these problems because, like David Colarusso, I've also put a lot of effort into creating technology that could facilitate online democracy. I used to call it Indaba.org. Now it's called ChoiceRanker.com.

The main difference is that I use a ranked choice/Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) interactive ballot rather than a thumbs-up or down contest.

To see what I mean, here's a link to a poll that includes the videos from the CNN/YouTube debate this past summer.

http://www.choiceranker.com/election.php?eid=153

The current implementation of choiceranker is very good at dealing with crowded fields of up to 10 and is OK up to maybe 25 or 50, but it would be better to have some kind of subgroup vetting once the choices exceed a few dozen. I have a strong vision of what needs to be done, but I don't have the resources to do it on my own.

In this overstimulated age, building a better mousetrap isn't enough. You also need to invest in a lot of billboards before people will know where to find your door.

Human nature

Ruby Sinreich — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:51:43 -0400

You seems to assume the worst about people, Wacko. It's obviously very early to tell, but the most showy videos so far have been voted to the bottom of the pile.

I have to believe that humans (which many Americans are) really want the best for each other - however they see it. Otherwise, why would you want them to vote at all?

(I'm not just saying this b/c my video is on the top of the pile right now. I consider that an accident of timing and don't expect it to last long.)

This will work great (for the NYT and MSNBC)

LonewackoDotCom — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:26:28 -0400

Just as long as your goal is for the candidates not to be asked tough questions, this format will work great. Which is probably what the major sponsors want. The last thing the NYT and MSNBC want would be for the candidates to be asked really tough questions. And, that's definitely the last thing the Democratic and Republican parties want.

As TP knows, I outlined a different approach, and I've even started implementing that (example: http://nomoreblather.com/yt2/uninspected-cargo-containers ).

My approach would weed out the Obama Girls and snowmen; the TP/NYT/MSNBC approach will guarantee those type of questions will be right at the top. Which is probably exactly what NYT and MSNBC want.