In other words, it’s another conservative conspiracy.

Damned Republicans. Sheesh.

I turned big part into bit part. Oops!

The Recent Comments tab hasn’t worked in ages. The Comments pane doesn’t refresh for hours at the time and doesn’t refresh at all unless I log out, exit IE, and come back in. These facts make it almost impossible to have the kinds of colloquies between posters that were once the hallmark of the site. About the only time you can really do much of that is in the middle of the night EST when there’s very little traffic.

Just my $0.02.

How long did it take for a diary to drop off?

It could be that this site needs another overhaul. I mean it is fine for a few people to blog, but if we are to retake this country, Certain Diaries must be saved and put up for all to access.

I mean certain diaries which are recommended time after time must be popular, significant or partisan. They should be catagorized and set aside as archived popular, Significant, or partisan and removed from the current Recommended list.

We can access them as needed to make a point in future diaries or what not.

Maybe I am in the wrong here.

if there was some way that we could exchange e-mail addresses with other members without posting them in open view. There are some members here that share my home state and/or occupation. I think we could produce fewer/better diaries if we could use other members as proofreaders, BS detectors and for OMG warnings. We have all posted some garbage or deleted something that might have been food for serious thought. These connections would also help us mobilize folks for certain efforts.

This would require folks to opt in or out. It would also require some measurement of trust. About the only way to quickly measure that trust would be longevity on the site. Either that or some moderated “room” where folks could connect by mutual agreement without the whole world knowing.

nt

Limit the time a diary can remain on the Recommend list 24 hours no matter ho many times it’s recommended?

I’m not sure how that would work because I’m not a programmer but mayb put a date and time stamp that is attached when the diary hit’s the top 10 Recommended diaries and have it fall off the list 24 to 48 hours later.

Maybe add more spots to the recommend list…maybe show 20 instead of ten.

For Recommenders, I’ve started going back and unrecommending diaries I’ve recommended a week ago…we need to be more proactive in that as well because we help ourselves by doing this.

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

One issue I’ve seen noted is that people don’t want to do long, “essay” diaries, because they’ll get buried beneath all the “hey, check out this link” type of posts.

Perhaps there needs to be a way to for Redstate to sort and display these different types of post in different ways?

For instance, give the diarist a “diary–essay” and a “diary–short form” option. When the diarist hits the “essay” button, they’re given more panes to write a lengthier post, and a preview button (sidenote: or am I just not seeing the preview option for diary entries as against those for comments?)

The essays can then be displayed in a separate column/field/box on the page(as is done with Redhot), or perhaps even with different formatting, while short posts are displayed elsewhere.

This could reduce the “burial” effect and make diarists more inclined to put in the effort to do more in-depth posts that take time, research, and sometimes expertise.

Neil,

Just a thought – why not have the recommendation itself expire after a set period (ideally, 36 – 48 hours). That way for a diary to persist on the front page it would need to continue to draw active recommends. If you set a cron or something to review the rec list every hour, and then for each diary on the list iterate over every rec and examine the timestamp of the individual rec (not the diary!), and then if time > threshold toggle that rec off.

users could still make an effort and return to teh diary to re-rec it if they chose. Or you could prevent that by adding a field “rec expire?”.

Just a thought. You also might want to factor in an automatic expiration date for rec diaries too as someone else suggested. The two mechanisms for “freshness” could work independently.

I want to respond on at least 2 fronts. I’ll do the second in a second comment, so as to not make this overly long.

First point — I really was told by multiple insiders that the site management had decided on a new algorithm, one that rewarded a greater number of Recs by having the weight of a Rec evaporate less quickly – leaving the Rec List as one might say ‘the best of the best’, where rotation would be alot slower. And that management was entrenched on this matter in spite of some disagreement from insiders.

I wrote my diary under that assumption, so that the tone had a ‘you guys are not HEARING us’ slant. Sorry about that, that’s on me.

I don’t know what to tell you on how Contributors got misinformed so badly, or perhaps I just really, badly misinterpreted what I heard. I know the whole RS Galaxy of Stars is rarely if ever in a single room. But at least 6 or 7 Contributors Rec’d it (not necessarily indicating agreement, but at least empathy) and at least 1 Contributor (Painter) expressed the same frustrations.

So I don’t know, maybe Erick needs to get the troops straightened out on this. Just sayin’.

Second, from programmer to programmer, just a thought. 97% of the time in troubleshooting, the problem tends to be the old ID-ten-T problem, or between the keyboard or the floor, stupid user tricks, etc. But those 3% – we have checked the code 36 times, it’s perfect, the user is just doing it wrong. Until we look, that 37th time, and see that doggoned ++i instead of i++, that messes everything up without seeming to.

Here’s the Rec-List behavior that I observed with my own diary of yesterday. There was only one diary under 48 hrs old, that from user ‘Bill’, in 9th or 10th place. As my diary attained 10 Recs, it displaced a 3-day old diary that had 10 Recs. This happened elsewhere, bumping off the 4th-placer (4 days old) only when it got the exact same number of Recs.

I realize (or believe) that each individual Recommend is weighted based on the time of that individual Rec, not the age of the diary. It would seem reasonable that Recs from the Editors might carry slightly more individual weight. But these variables don’t seem to outweigh what appears definite to me.

These days, you can get 7 Recs for your diary, and in spite of the fact that the 10th-place one has only 10 Recs but is 4 days old, it won’t get on the List.

On the other hand, it seemed in RS 2 that say a REALLY well-received diary with 50 Recs would end up at the top. But by the time 48 hours had passed, it would be supplanted by a fresher diary with maybe 20 Recs. It was extremely rare to have something at the top longer than 60 hours. Now this is just me throwing numbers out there that may not be on the money, but that’s how I recall it.

It’s as if now it’s very, very slow to age the Recs.

So what I’m suggesting, programmer to programmer — take that 37th look at the code, run some simulations if that’s possible off-line, unit test, module test, run on paper by hand-calc what you think should happen and see if the code actually duplicates it. You know, all the trouble-shooting tricks to turn up the most devious little errors.

Because I swear to you, as a math junkie and as a user very jealous of his diaries, it’s hard not to conclude from outside observation, that the Recommends are aging very, very abnormally slowly.

When there’s a lot of traffic, if the php coding isn’t quite right, tables get opened and don’t close properly which overworks the database.

I can live with the recommended diaries easier than I can live with the errors.

I know nothing about running a website and the only way I have ever done anything is by using your HTML tips, but it seems that would at least minimize the problem somewhat.

Also, is it not possible to have a different algorithm for the diaries that are in the list already that would require a higher standard to stay on the list? The standard for the member diaries would be lower thus making it easier to get on the recommended list but harder to stay on.

If it is possible I think a combination of those three things sovles the problems as much as you are going to be able to.

I am a regular reader and used to be a semi-regular commentor and diarist, but the problems discussed above kind of made it less rewarding to post a diary (an hour spent preparing it and 3 comments hardly seems worth it when before it may have generated 20).

A possible way to overcome the change in user behavior might be to weight the recommendations by the length of time the recommender has been a member of RedState. That way, those who have been around longest and who hopefully know how to properly use the recommendation list will have the most voice into which diaries get onto the list. Newbies, who are least likely to behave well, will have the least influence.

Another solution is to let recommendations fade in significance. In other words, each day after a recommendation is made, it carries less weight than the day before. That way older diaries will move off faster if they are no longer significant.

as Neil alluded to, is the explosion of diaries. Sadly, there are many would-be diarists who don’t follow the basic guidelines set forth in bs’s excellent post, and those diaries, because they don’t take long to write, tend to be posted in large numbers very quickly. Rather like a particularly bad virus. These mediocre-to-bad diaries then push the good ones off before anyone notices them.

This tolerance of mediocrity also makes itself known in something else that Neil mentioned: the tendency to reco something for silly reasons. We’re republicans, guys. We reward excellence in the real world; why should the blogosphere be otherwise?

One a positive note: I know it’s been said, but I would just like to express my gratitude to Neil and the others for the more user-friendly interface — y’know, for dummy bloggers (like yours truly) who don’t know html as a second language.

that it has got to be a daunting task to figure out algorithmically, which ones end up on the recommended list. Seriously as a newb around here, you don’t know how amazing it is coming to this site and reading so many well thought out writings that don’t disintigrate into bigoted swipes.

I appreciate the writings here and I find them informative and useful. (And I thank all of the Directors and especially the Blam-man Moe for keeping this site as intellectual as it is.)

As far as getting recommendations, I don’t expect them. One, I am realtively new here and two, my writings are nowhere on the calibre of some of y’all. But I do find it cathartic to write here and if anyone enjoys it, even better.

Welcome aboard, Neil!

not recommend behavior. We had a war over it, remember. Yes, there have been some variations in how the reccos have behaved, but they have ALWAYS been different in the ways complained of, due to the change to 3.0.

So don’t try and put the blame on recommender “behavior”. The problem has been ongoing.

Even diaries that don’t get an inordinate number of reccos stay up longer than before.

Its the software. You can’t fix it. I don’t like to see friends accused of causing a problem that is not due to them. This kind of thing was what enraged me back when we switched after I, I alone begged Redstate NOT to switch to 3.0 after I was one of the 8 people that got to try it out for months

Your accusation would only apply to SPECIFIC diaries hat gets a large number of reccos, not to the functioning of the overall system, and THAT is what is the problem, the

overall system.

As for me, this whole controversy came out of the blue, as I have been pleased with the functioning, AS COMPARED TO HOW IT WAS SOON AFTER THE SWITCH AND DURING THE 500 ERA.

I understand the limits to what you can do to fix this. Why not just admit that?

Instead of putting the blame on users.

I also want to say that i think you do a great job in all but

Customer relations.

You guys need to hire Gamecock for that!

smile

don’t want to argue
this is my statement

And ftr, I NEVER SUTOMATICALLY RECCO ANYONE’S DIARIES based on any group.

I only recco based on merit and request same as to mine.

I also only recco columns that are substantive. The kind that advance conservatism, not tutorials, cute videos or blogs like this on internal affairs.

They all have their place, but in my opinion, the top right hand corner of the site should be about columns that can convert people to conservatism and the gop.

I don’t like to have these non-advocacy blogs in the top ten.

God bless you Neil.

Now, DeVine will get back to substance and endure EPU’s blog taking up space till 2011.

smile epu

Being a newbie myself to Red State I found this interesting, but maybe for selfish reasons since I have never received a comment or recommendation in my very short time here.

We appreciate your hard work, Neil. That goes for all the other geeks working behind the scenes. I believe I speak for many when I now dare to ask:

1. What’s up with the 500 error? Is it server overload? Do we need to take up a collection for Eagle to buy a new server? All we need is a big political story, a mention on Rush’s show (happening more often, by the way) or another link on Drudge to bring this site to it’s KNEES.

2. May I please have a cookie? You know, that little .txt file that on my computer that tells redstate.com who I am so I don’t have to log in every single day (or multiple times!) from the same PC? I’m a Rush 24/7 member and his site recognizes me at work AND at home and I only have to log in about once every two weeks. My Yahoo! never makes me log in. I imagine this would also take a load off your server.

a popular diary can get recommendations over four or five days, resulting in its staying up far beyond the expiration date of its original recommendations!

What if after the diary was a day or two old, all its recommendations started rapidly losing weight? Something like:

if (AgeInHours > 36) RecPoints /= (AgeInHours/24);

I don’t have a strong opinion how soon to start devaluing recs and by how much, but the basic idea is for most Recommended Diaries to rotate off the list within a couple of days, but allow very popular diaries to last longer.

I have no idea how difficult your software makes it to slip in a line like that. If it’s easier to put in a hard limit like 72 hours, that would still be an improvement over the current situation, though less desirable.

This could be used either with or instead of weighting the recommendations themselves by age. My preference is to treat all recommendations equally, and let the diary’s age rotate it off the list. I don’t see why getting 4 recommendations yesterday and 6 today should be considered better than getting 5 recs on each day. But that’s a tangent.