The Problem
Let’s face it. Most of the sites we see when dropping cards aren’t really blogs. Oh sure, they run WordPress or Blogger, and they have a few articles that let them get some SEO for the AdSense. But do they ever update or write interesting posts? Are they simply pay-per-post manure passing as a blog? If you were an admin, how can you say “I think this blog is spam and this one isn’t”. Can I tell the difference? Sure, but then I would be playing EntreGod (ugh!). Also, say I write a great article a day for 10 days, then stop writing them forever, shouldn’t the opinion of my blog change?
The Solution
What Entrecard requires is a quality rating system. One that is quick, easy and doesn’t slow down dropping. I’ve come up with just such a system. The idea is that the card does not change at all if you are not logged in and see “get one” as in the first picture. However, if the card says “drop yours”, when you mouse over it the colored boxes appear as in the second picture. You then rate a blog on the fly from 1-5, with 5 being the best.
The Reward for quality blogs would be 4 fold
- When people filter their inbox, those with the most quality points in the last 5 days should always appear first. This should increase their drops received and thus credits earned.
- Add a sorting category called “Quality Score” so people can filter them and see the Top Quality blogs. This also would bring fame and some fortune to those making an effort.
- Everyone wins because they would be exposed to more good blogs than bad blogs.
- Splogs would be forced to advertise much more to remain in the most popular. This returns their credits to the system at a faster rate.
Gaming The system?
Of course there are always negatives. The system I propose would require additional coding. People would find the tiny boxes harder to click on. Other would advertise “I give all 5 ratings” to attract the splogs. Luckily Entrecard droppers all get their own vote. So one person gaming the voting system wouldn’t effect it much. The only way to truly game it would be to write quality posts daily.
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41 users commented in " Proposal To Filter Out Entrecard Splogs "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback **********I have something better. How bout a toolbar, a la stumbleupon, that lets you rate as you go, and delivers the highly rated blogs more frequently over the low rated blogs.
Graham: Thanks for giving a quick opinion straight from the top man himself. A toolbar has advantages and disadvantage.
The advantages:
The disadvantages:
But…If you allowed a certain keyboard combination to click the ratings button for me, I could simply assign mouse keys to the ratings and get around that obstacle. Anyway, it should be possible for both systems to co-exist. If your widget detects the toolbar, disable the mouseover.
A toolbar could work for some, but what would stop people from still gaming it? You would still have people saying, “I’ll give you a ‘High Five,’ if you give me a ‘High Five.’”
Trademark pending on ‘High Five’ in relation to a hypothetical Entrecard toolbar.
Man, I came from the “goodbye to entrecard” post over on Entrecard, and got here and read this. that’s a really good idea, Turnip and Graham (i agree, a combination of the two would be best). Yes, the system will be gamed, like Stan mentioned, but I’m not sure a fool-proof system exists.
I for one would love to see Turnip’s idea, or a hybrid idea created for Entrecard…might make me drop more.
that would be a great idea!
I’m a regular poster. I don’t post techno info, or news or gossip…just my life, but I have a good regular readership (AND regular droppers, so I hope that these folks (that includes YOU, Turnip!) are reading my blog from time to time). I like your idea, Turnip. I don’t think the squares would be too small at all!
There is nothing worse than clicking on a blog that hasn’t updated in what seems to be years. That ranks right up there with poor spelling, grammar and punctuation!
I think Turnip’s proposal is good. See, when people drop, sometimes they feel like clicking the profile link to report a site for TOS and such, but then it would temporarily stop their blog visitation round (hassle!).
Truly one of the best suggestions I’ve seen in quite awhile. There are way too many splogs invading Entrecard and a lot of non updated blogs as well. (What I mean by non updated blogs are months between posts.) Or you’ll see a blog with one solitary post, made weeks ago, and nothing else.
Or you could start using the Sitehoppin.com toolbar and rate the sites that way, if they suck they wont show up.
plus you gain traffic the whole time you surf. Two birds one cup, I mean stone.
I like the idea of rating blogs, but I think we should take it further. There should be a way to easily flag blogs that haven’t been updated for some time, such as in 6 months.
Better start selling those beer stocks short instead of spamming sitehoppin around the net.
I didn’t like sitehoppin then:
http://turnipofpower.com/2008/01/04/7-reasons-why-i-think-sitehoppin-is-bad-for-entrecard/
and I don’t like it now. If Graham’s suggestion goes through your stock is worthless. Max should charge you money to never mention who was foolish enough to buy it.
I love the idea of a rating system. Good idea Turnip!
I love this idea - it would be nice to be able to see what you are using your hard earned credit for when picking sites to advertise on!
On 28 December 2007, Tyler Mulligan suggested this before.
His original post on his blog here:
http://www.doknowevil.net/2007/12/28/how-about-this-for-entrecard/
And his forum post about it here:
http://entrecard.com/forums/1/530/#p=29
It is a nice idea, but what is stopping the splogs from coming up with 100 splogs and voting 5 on themselves?
I think a rating system is a great idea. I do get sick of visiting blog that either haven’t been updated in ages or are writing about the same thing as someone else!
As I said Deimos, it was proposed several times before, but nobody ever suggested a suitable reward and punishment. The thing that stops splogs from making 100 splogs is time. Splogs exist to make money, not play “game entrecard” all day. There is nothing to stop someone from making 300 sites, and only drop on themselves, other than time.
The entrecard dropping by itself is a pain in the ass. When blogs appear that seem to have no content or an enormous amount of widgets, I really get pissed off.
Especially those ebay auction thingies, adsflip and webhosting special offer banners piss me off. Nah I’m just kidding. =)
Do cut some slack for the people with bad grammar and spelling, though. I think there’s like a ton of bloggers from forein countries that blog in English. It’s the language of the Net and if it ain’t your native language, you’re gonna make some mistakes sooner or later, but probably sooner! (Just like I do).
I think this is a great idea!
I really love your solution Turnip, and appreciate Graham’s interest as well for thinking of ways to keep and attract quality blogs.
I have noticed blogs that haven’t updated in months although they remain popular, and it’s infuriating, but I haven’t noticed any of them on Entrecard. However, I’m pleased with the fact that you’re keeping track~
Turnip, I don’t want to make your head swell or anything, but you have taught me a lot- thanks~ :))
And great site Graham~
Have a fun and relaxing week-end~
Anything to improve the quality of this service, I’m for. I do think, however, the better quality blogs are already getting most of the attention organically without the aid of a formal ratings system. An added rating feature probably won’t make that much difference but it couldn’t hurt. Above all thought, before they launch any new features, they should concentrate on fixing the current issues that exist.
I like your idea very much. It’s a waste of time to visit blogs that haven’t updated regularly and have no good content. And I hate it when I can’t find the entrecard box easily too (just venting)
I like your idea turnip, but I hate Graham’s idea. Toolbars just drive me nuts and as you say, too much movement or clicking. Getting Entrecard to change their widget would be a far better idea.
I’m no fan of toolbars, either. I have 2 or 3 and adding a 4th would just be too many for me.
I like your idea, Turnip if we absolutely HAVE to have a rating system, but even so, I’m not convinced of the value of said system. I think I would end up clicking 3 just to be “fair” a lot of times as I hurry through, many of the sites don’t have a date on their posts so it’s hard to figure out how old it is and some are going to click 1 if you peeve them (I can think of two right now who would probably do that to me right out of the box and one I would be STRONGLY tempted to do as well although neither of us deserves a 1 in reality)
You asked and I’ve now given my .02.
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Commenters here are all power-droppers. I just look at the blogs who drop on me and follow their entrecards through perhaps to the third card. In this way I make roughly 80 drops a day.
I read the blogs I come across. I subscribe to some. Some I look at, and don’t drop
Simple solution. If you’re using tool bars or whatever - and see a splog. . don’t drop!
Nice suggestion, Turnip. The way I see EC these days, will thier system be able to handle a more complex program? I blogged about using WOT (Web of Trust), a Firefox add-on to rate blogs when dropping EC. That way, the rating tool is third party, would affect these blogs even outside EC and will not overload the EC system. For EC to implement this novel system you and other EC users have suggested here would take some time and some coding. The last point here is that many EC users just want to drop and go and never really came out to rate any blog/site. You can read the post to understand better how this can be applied: http://mcneris.blogspot.com/2008/04/22-must-have-firefox-add-ons-for_28.html
Simply a great idea! I wonder how many 5’s I would get?
Excellent idea.
I would like to also show my disapproval of ‘blogs’ that have any audio or video that plays automatically, multimedia advertisements being particularly annoying. On the subject of adverts pop-ups with ads or a chance to subscribe also make me want to spit.
I have thought about finding a firefox plug-in with which I could set up a list of ‘blogs’ that simply won’t open if I click on the ad for them, that or they are replaced with a message saying that I have blacklisted them.
Your solution would work just as well, especially if we could filter out any blogs that score less than 3.00.
I agree some sort of rating system needs to be developed to help filter out the splogers from those of us who take time to write and develop quality content. I wonder what my rating would be?
Making Perfect Sense
How about some QC? There should be some way to report that a site has not been updated since 2007. I think blogs should have at least a month of posting before being approved. We need a “Google-whore” rating, a “fake ads on site” rating, and a “porn popup that freezes browser” rating. Just my ideas.
I’ve gone back an forth on this idea. At the moment, I would prefer a rating system that did not result in public numbers.
More than a rating system, I would like an ignore button. Seeing Splogs, landing page ads, and auto-start music doesn’t really bother me — once. It get annoyed when I hit the same thing again.
I’d like to click ignore on that card and have it not show up in my future surfing. Perhaps the card could turn to “you are currently ignoring this blog” or something similar.
Beyond that, I can see value in the 1 to 5 rating system, but I’m not sure the rating needs to be public. If my ratings are only useful to me, they are still plenty useful. And if they don’t go to some big Entrecard scorecard, they are less likely to be gamed.
The other benefit to keeping ratings private is that I could code them differently. Instead of 1 being bad and 5 being good, I could rate sites a 1 that belong to my frequent commenters, a 2 for my daily visitors, a 3 for my past advertisers, a 4 for just plain good content, and a 5 for stuff I don’t want to see.
It would make my life easier, but of course, I couldn’t legitimately do this if those numbers fed a public score card.
But I may feel differently tomorrow…
I like your idea Turnip. Anything that improves EC I’m down with it.
Hey I guess knocking it before you try it is a new way to go. I get twice the number from SH 1200 unique a day, 26% less bounce rate and 3.8 page views on average. Guess what, I also spend way less time on SH then EC. I am not trying to be an ass but the toolbar has a lot more potential to help EC than anything.
Sorry, saw your poorly produced video on it. Is it that tough to find a button that worked properly? Exactly how many beer stocks in bribes does it take to make a crappy toolbar to go from “conventional” to “unconventional”. As for your 1200 uniques a day, try again. There is a difference between hits and uniques. Anyone can go to sitehoppin, click on any user name, and see the number of hops received. Look at this chart showing how many “hops were received” and look how fast the numbers drop off to nothing. I see two people profitting, 3 if you count max. Is the Brooklyn Bridge for sale as well?
# Username Hops Today Hops This Week Hops This Month
1. Ruggededge 9237 39385 36139
2. Timarcher52 2639 16596 7441
3. AdsenseAddict 502 5994 4970
4. WildClips 362 440 403
5. Max 250 29758 21560
6. Warp9wb 248 248 248
7. Pikeydude 141 714 441
8. Marty0518 93 218 218
9. Rahuliit2003 68 68 68
10. Caeli04 63 63 63
So where would the http://turnipofpower.com be without EC? The idea is to not put all of the eggs in one basket. Yes, I do think that a rating system for EC would be great no doubt about it. But I can’t help but wonder if until then this toolbar will have a positive impact on the EC community. I also can’t help but wonder why the homepage of EC hasn’t been updated lately. They advertise 7,754 blogs on the network but adding up all of the blog under the different categories bring a total of 5,960. Makes me wonder if EC is on its way out. Another point to mention is the fact the numbers up listed above are true until you account that auto surfing sites on SH has been disabled meaning real people are actually viewing the sites now. At least more real people. I doubt people have gone to the length of gaming the SH system like they have EC’s.
Is your last comment designed to attack me, entrecard, or promote sitehoppin’s toolbar? Would sitehoppin even have one user if Entrecard went away? I betting my site would have more. Will you schill Turnip stock then?
Sure I would schill you stock if it was worth anything.
According to http://www.dnscoop.com it was worth $2,400. Now it has a PR3. How many shares would you like?
I guess I cant lose to much at $.01 each.
I do not think, with my being new to EC, that I have found too many splogs yet? [Or maybe the categories I visit aren't spoggly popular.] ButI don’t see a rating system as a waste of time.
I can think of a use by looking at websites in the different categories. “Sort on EC Rank” could be one use.
However…then we go into the area of competitors or haters ranking thier competitors lower while spamming THEIR site and offering credits for high ranks.
I don’t know. I think I can see a case for both. Maybe if EC had a membership application…
Anyway, I am new. I hope I do not find too many splogs.
I think this is an excellent idea and I would love to see it implemented!
And you know what else I’d like to see? Some sort of means that would prevent an advertiser from applying to advertise on your site when they haven’t even had the courtesy to drop a card on you at least once.
I don’t quite understand your 2nd point Cindy. Advertisers and readers are unrelated. If someone wanted to place an ad on my site, whether for cash or credits, I wouldn’t turn them away because they never dropped a card on me in the past.
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