WordPress.com Forums » Topic: Featured Blogs

veerubhai on "Featured Blogs"

veerubhai — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:48:56 +0000

Over a million blogs to look upon, it is quite unfavourable to confront all the blogs and decide on which one's the more better...Automated process oriented "featured blogs" are seldom exceptional, but otherwise, are completely 'offside', and your suggestion does hold good for this phenomena

Veerender
(www.veersworld.wordpress.com)

raincoaster on "Featured Blogs"

raincoaster — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:01:04 +0000

What kind of pony?

universalgeni on "Featured Blogs"

universalgeni — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:41:57 +0000

Ha ha! What bank should I wire the money to? I'll be looking forward to seeing myself on the front page every day. Why didn't you tell my this sooner?

andy on "Featured Blogs"

andy — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:33:10 +0000

I wrote the secret code that picks the featured stuff so if you are looking for someone to ply with booze and gifts, that would be me. ;-)

Also, my girlfriend would like a pony.

universalgeni on "Featured Blogs"

universalgeni — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:21:27 +0000

Well, of cause featuring must rely quantifiable parameters. Otherwise staff would have to read every single post written on WP. But number of hits is not the same as quality. No matter what criteria, there would be complaints...

strider01 on "Featured Blogs"

strider01 — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:08:06 +0000

I have heard from another thread along this topic that someone had "gamed" the system using the theory that the one with the most recent posts get featured. Simply post more than the second-most prolific person, and you will be featured. So, WordPress is rewarding quantity over quality. This seems to be consistent with what I have observed in many of the /tag directories. Person gets featured, and below that, a ton of posts by the same author. Quality, as suggested by number of hits, would sound more reasonable. However, I suppose that can also be gamed. But checking the IP of the client would reduce that (which WordPress already does to hit counts on the existing blogs, including mine).

raincoaster on "Featured Blogs"

raincoaster — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:08:49 +0000

Oh, it's DEFINITELY not chosen on the basis of quality. It's automated somehow, but I point-blank asked Matt how and he wouldn't tell me.

strider01 on "Featured Blogs"

strider01 — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:21:42 +0000

I have to say that my first day on WordPress, I suddenly had a featured blog (Title: "My Next Big Thing", I think it was under the "Life" tag), which puzzled me, because it wasn't my best writing, and was a bit airy-fairy, and it didn't really have much of a point to it. But it was a featured blog for almost 48 hours. After that, nothing I wrote ever got featured (at least to my knowledge), regardless of how good I thought it was, or how relevant to the tag it was (which I think is more important). I also noticed that other people's articles consisting of casual chit-chat (similar to mine, they usually don't have much of a point to them) tended to get featured consistently. I got to wondering if they knew something I didn't.

But if there is some kind of a problem with the counter, then that is another thing. I would like to think that it is based on something objective, like number of hits.

orbvab on "Featured Blogs"

orbvab — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:22:22 +0000

And, uguh, Mylittlepony??? Who has a tag like that???

orbvab on "Featured Blogs"

orbvab — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:19:36 +0000

Here's how I think it works, To be a featured blog, you must continue to use the tag on all of your posts, if you make a post with out that tag you are removed from the tag and the latest person to use the tag is given the title, just my theory.

blogharbor on "Featured Blogs"

blogharbor — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:36:25 +0000

It's nice to see I'm not alone wondering about this. I like raincoaster's idea about throwing in a different tag, when appropriate. Then again, that brings into question a whole new debate: Who decides what's appropriate?

"Whack-a-Mole Zombies"...........there's a blog in that somewhere.

raincoaster on "Featured Blogs"

raincoaster — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:26:41 +0000

I have also suggested they rotate the categories on that page from time to time. Maybe give Politics a rest and post Oscars when appropriate. Or just random tags. "MyLittlePony" followed by "Tigers" followed by "home schooling" followed by...

raincoaster on "Featured Blogs"

raincoaster — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:23:50 +0000

Oh, I saw you on the Guardian yesterday. You've conquered quite enough of the world already!

That's a good point about the sell-by date of some of these things. I guess it's hits that day, but yes, rotating THAT would be a good idea. Nobody's going to use that page if it's always stale.

BTW, the full lists of blogs of the day and posts of the day is available at http://botd.wordpress.com

lettershometoyou on "Featured Blogs"

lettershometoyou — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:05:03 +0000

What I don't get is why some of the posts featured are weeks, sometimes months old. Shouldn't there be some sort of time limit on them? It's a drag seeing the same post pop up time and time again, like some whack-a-mole zombie.

BTW, rain, it should be some other Canadian.

raincoaster on "Featured Blogs"

raincoaster — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:54:30 +0000

Anyway...it IS on rotation, as cpmonster can attest. I can't find the post now, but staff did say that they'd gotten enough complaints about always seeing the same blogs in the top ten that they set it so the top blog IS always the top blog, but the next is taken from a range, like 2-20 or something, then the next taken from 20-50, etc. So what you're suggesting is already in place in some form at least, although when they announced it, they were talking about the list of Top Posts and Top Blogs in the Dashboard page. Maybe they haven't applied it to the global tag pages, which is where that particular list of featured blogs comes from. Even if they did, the #1 blog is always the #1 blog, so there would be no change there.

cpmonster on "Featured Blogs"

cpmonster — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:48:18 +0000

Yeah you got a point

thesacredpath on "Featured Blogs"

thesacredpath — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:47:11 +0000

No idea where that started, but it is considered shouting. It is also much harder to read.

cpmonster on "Featured Blogs"

cpmonster — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:42:00 +0000

lol ok and why though

thesacredpath on "Featured Blogs"

thesacredpath — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:39:37 +0000

That happens CP, and please don't type in all caps. It's considered shouting on the internet.

cpmonster on "Featured Blogs"

cpmonster — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:33:22 +0000

OK I KEEP GETTING KICKED OFF THE FEATURED BLOG AND THEN IN A DAY GETTING BACK ON????

blogharbor on "Featured Blogs"

blogharbor — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:18:57 +0000

What you're saying makes sense, obviously; WP would never be able to review the amount of blogs here to do justice to the word "featured". The fact is this, though: If the proccess is indeed automated, it would be far more interesting to see a rotation of blogs that sit in the featured position rather than the same person's blog over and over again. When I go to WP's main page, it would be nice to know the various categories were highlighting someone different as often as possible. Seeing the same avatar in a category featured over and over, I end up tuning out that particular blog.

Another view of all this -- perhaps what I'm rambling on about is much ado about nothing. Brevity has never been my strong-suit.

raincoaster on "Featured Blogs"

raincoaster — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:46:44 +0000

No, there are no editors going through choosing blogs for quality. It's an automated process. Several attempts have been made to start blog lists or awards which reward quality, so if you do a search you should find them. You might even want to start doing that yourself. But I very much doubt WP.com will pull their technical people off technical tasks and set them to making literary taste calls, nor do I think they'll hire anyone to do this.

Although if they do, it should of course be me.

blogharbor on "Featured Blogs"

blogharbor — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:28:13 +0000

One thing I've noticed in the nearly four months I've had a blog in wordpress is that rarely is a Featured Blog worthy of being featured. That is to say, if the definition of "featured" has anything to do with the quality of the writing; of the blog being a really good read. Mind you, often times there are featured blogs that make for a terrific read but that seems to be the exception more than the rule. It would be nice going to various categories and knowing a featured blog was featured because it was a well-written, well thought-out post.