When I blogged frequently, I was also not a fan of the way the top blog system worked for the same reason.
A nice feature would be for readers to thumbs up/thumbs down the recent top blogs to affect how they're displayed.
(And I agree with the remark about the blogs that are sometimes just a dump of a famous old game -- it's hardly even a blog!)
I hope this can be addressed as well. I actually felt very guilty any time I posted a blog because it would remove what was almost always a far more interesting blog from the top billing.
For those of us who have been around for a while, we of course have our favorite bloggers tracked... but the true top bloggers are a great resource to the site (in my opinion) and newer members should have as much exposure to them as possible.
I understand your frustration and appreciate that this is an issue. I blog less frequently these days, but I have found myself on both sides of this; I have spent a long time on a blog entry that I put a lot of care into and found that shortly after I posted it, it was knocked off 'featured' status in barely minutes, which limited it's audience. I have also accidentally knocked a great post off the 'featured' list with a relatively throwaway blog post.
It would be nice for bloggers whose items are normally 'featured' automatically to be able to have an option 'do not feature this blog'. I sometimes refrain from writing a blog entry because I wouldn't want it to be featured (that might just be me being strange, but there you go).
As for ensuring coverage of good blogs, I don't know what the answer is. I read your blogs (batgirl) because I track your content, not because it is 'featured'.
Perhaps the 'featured' blog could somehow take account of a variety of factors (recency, no. of people tracking, rating) to decide on the 'featured' status.
Ultimately, I think it's up to users to find and track good content for themselves (and to create their own!), but the easier this can be made the better!
Would anyone care to post a blog (or an article or a forum posting) on the essential difference between these three writing forms?
I have just posted a blog which is an index into the forum topics I have started, primarily as an aide memoire so that I can find individual topics more easily. There doesn't seem to be an obvious place to locate such an essentially private record within chess.com - except by creating a private group-of-one, and using its forum.
The trophies... I don't know what to say. We put it out there and people vote. I'm open to suggestions.
Blogs... this isn't an easy issue. But yes, it needs to be fixed. One of things we will fix in 2009 is how we handle "content" - Blogs, News, and Articles. It needs a total overhaul, and it is planned for this year. I'm sorry to everyone negatively affected by this. I know the current system isn't perfect. Please be patient as we work this out this year!
Good points raised by batgirl. [though i voted for her in all categories she was in ... because this trophy-vote thing was there..][ next year I'll do the same: it is up to the 'winner' to refuse... Sartre refused the Nobel prize; Lennon returned his MBE, ...]
But that means one can delete trophies - let me figure out how to delete one of mine..
Batgirl, thank you. Both areas needed airing.
Site Trophies: While it's good for the ego to get a mention in dispatches, so many of the votes there are for a handful of people who get their friends (or teams) to vote for them ... not because they've done something worthy of a vote, but because they went campaigning. As you say, it's meaningless.
Top Blogger: I agree 100% that the length of time your post appears on the chess.com home page determines the number of readers who will visit your blog. Top spot is best, of course, but the numbers continue as it approaches the bottom place, dwindling as they descend. They all but dry up when your post falls off the list altogether.
At present there are about 20 people on the top bloggers list, but there are quite a lot of people who have recently dropped off. They've gone, not because of lack of ability, but because they haven't posted for a while. When they decide to start writing again the numbers will increase and the problem will be exacerbated.
One possible solution could be to eliminate the top spot and replace it with a Javascript element that scrolls through the top blogs posted during the previous five or six days. (I don't know if a link could be shown that way, or whether there'd have to be another way to get from the display to the blog post.)
Another possibility is that no top blogger can have two items displayed on the front page at the same time. This would mean that if they put up a second post while they still have one of their own showing on the list, it would be their own post they knocked off. The programming shouldn't be difficult.
batgirl: The useless blurb from the first sentence in the blog could be eliminated also - this would give more room for the changes. A very good idea!
And Loomis's idea of thumbs up/thumbs down has a lot going for it.
Dozy: Another possibility is that no top blogger can have two items displayed on the front page at the same time. This would mean that if they put up a second post while they still have one of their own showing on the list, it would be their own post they knocked off. The programming shouldn't be difficult.
I posted that comment yesterday. This morning (it's about noon, Saturday, in California) two bloggers completely own the front page. Phobetor has three spots (Magnificent Puzzles 1, 2 and 3) and Batgirl has two (How Mephisto Was Caught and Mephisto - Promotional Material).
It doesn't leave much space for anybody else, does it!
Well, this thread has lit the fire to get me blogging again. I had the plan in the works, but now I've actually posted my first blog of the grand re-opening.
I also just looked at the top blogger list. The top 5 people post a little over 1 blog post per day combined. And the remaining 15 people each post once a month or less.
I like the idea of a script that lists the 5-7 most recent blog posts on the front page, but in random order (where random can give some preference to recency).
Actually, I posted "How Mephisto Was Caught" Friday afternoon. It stayed on the top spot overnight. This afternoon I posted "Mephisto - Promotional Material." It stayed on the top spot about 15 minutes. I had worked on the two in tandem investing about 4 hours in each one, not even counting the time involved in actually researching and locating the information and I spread out the postings.
That said, I totally understand how you feel when you say: "It doesn't leave much space for anybody else, does it!"
Whatever the master plan is concerning changes to blogs, atricles and news, it seems that to fix this particular problem, even if it's just a temporary, stop-gap remedy, would be relatively easy - eliminate the top spot, rotate the top spot, have a bunch of top spots, whatever. But I'm not a programmer, so I'm talking through my hat.
The more folks who blog on chess topics, the better - but the system encourages less blogging, I believe.
batgirl: Actually, I posted "How Mephisto Was Caught" Friday afternoon. It stayed on the top spot overnight. This afternoon I posted "Mephisto - Promotional Material." It stayed on the top spot about 15 minutes...
It's frustrating. I can guess at the amount of work that goes into your blog and, as I've indicated in other places, I value it very much.
The fluff pieces I throw in are very simple by comparison: they swim around in my head for a couple of days then usually only take an hour or so to put on paper. Well, virtual paper anyway .
The solution will be difficult to find.
Obviously the more quality blogs we have on chess.com, the more interest will be generated among our members and that, in its turn, is likely to generate more bloggers. When that happens the competition for that top spot will be even stronger. And, if good and interesting posts are bundled off the front page too quickly, the incentive to write is likely to diminish.
One partial solution I had considered was putting a feature box on my blog called "Have You Seen This" where I could draw attention to a few posts I thought had died before their time. (It's a similar idea to the list of topics you posted yourself a while ago.)
loomis: Well, this thread has lit the fire to get me blogging again.
Great news, loomis. It's been too long.
There are probably a dozen different ways to improve the way the top blogs are presented to the public.
One nice feature to add that is standard on other blogging services is tags and categories. Chess.com could also have a list of standard categories and the top blog list could organize blog entries according to the standard categories. The blog page (http://www.chess.com/blog/) could also be organized based on the categories and tags used by bloggers, instead of the mostly useless list by most recent (or most read/most comments).
At the risk of redundancy, I'll restate my earlier idea that reader feedback can be used to rank blogs so that people are directed to top quality blogs.
Well, Dozy, I wouldn't consider finding an idea (sometimes the hardest part), pondering it for a few days, i.e. developing an idea into a workable plan and then spending an hour or two laying it out and making it work a simple process, even relatively speaking. It's all an investment in time, thought and energy and deserves some payback. Your writings are among my favorites and hardly classify as fluff.
Actually, I don't care how many people read my blog since I write to a very specific audience. But regardless of how many people read what I write, the exposure isn't just a nicety, it's a necessity in order to reach that specific audience. On my various web sites (which I've mostly supplanted with my blog here) I easily get 1000 or more visitors each day. But these are people who actively seek out certain information usually through Google or some other search engine or through some link somewhere. It doesn't work like that here. Only a few people go back and read a blog entry from 6 months ago but my little page on Love, Sex and Romance in Chess that I made several years ago gets a couple hundred visitors a day.
So, there's an entirely different approach to reaching your particular audience - and in making the expenditure of all this time and effort worthwhile.
I agree with all of you that the current system is not ideal. The whole system of "Top Bloggers" already looks a little random to me (how can anyone who is not a Top Blogger ever become a Top Blogger, if his blog posts are never on the frontpage?), but the showcase of the top bloggers is even worse, when, like you said, you could be off the top spot in 1 minute just because another "Top Blogger" posts a new post. When I look at my own blog, I also see that my best posts have actually gotten the fewest views, while the one erik featured on the frontpage got 10 times the usual number of views.
However, I don't agree with the "I spent more time to it, so mine should be featured more"-argument. The quality of a blog post can only be judged by the viewers, and should thus only, if at all, be judged by the viewers.
First time I'd heard of your Love, Sex and Romance in Chess, batgirl. Delightful piece! I've read about a third of it and will read the rest later today.
Erik, in his January 12 post, has promised a review of blogging this year, but also wonders how to fix the problems. With a site as successful and complex as this he must have his hands full in many different ways,. We may need to wait and see.
I agree with all of you that the current system is not ideal. The whole system of "Top Bloggers" already looks a little random to me (how can anyone who is not a Top Blogger ever become a Top Blogger, if his blog posts are never on the frontpage?), but the showcase of the top bloggers is even worse, when, like you said, you could be off the top spot in 1 minute just because another "Top Blogger" posts a new post. When I look at my own blog, I also see that my best posts have actually gotten the fewest views, while the one erik featured on the frontpage got 10 times the usual number of views.
However, I don't agree with the "I spent more time to it, so mine should be featured more"-argument. The quality of a blog post can only be judged by the viewers, and should thus only, if at all, be judged by the viewers.
I was wondering the same thing a while back. I think the system recognizes Top Bloggers based on the select few who were already ones... This means that no one else can have his/her's on display! No matter how hard I tried to make MY blog good enough, it was not cut out to be one.
ADK
"However, I don't agree with the "I spent more time to it, so mine should be featured more"-argument."
That's not, nor ever was an argument. My reason for even having mentioned the time-consumption is to illustrate my own personal perspective in judging my own personal decision whether or not to continue swimming against this current, indicating how important this particular topic is to me.
"I think the system recognizes Top Bloggers based on the select few who were already ones... This means that no one else can have his/her's on display!"
I believe all you have to do is write the Admin and request that status. There's nothing random about it.
At the risk of being mistaken for a scratched vinyl record, I'd like to re-mention two things that continue to be irritants to me.
The first one is minor - the charade referred to a Site Trophies. I had received, and subsequently deleted, two "of-the-year trophies." Did I do this because I don't like peer recognition? No, of course not and I apologize to anyone who had cast a vote in my direction. I did it, first out of protest, and second because, due to the apparent abuse - which hasn't been addressed at all in spite of everything - the trophies have the value of confederate dollars - in short, they are meaningless.
The second one I consider rather important (important to me, that is). Nearly a year ago I suggested a minor revision of the so-called "Top Blogger" system. My reasoning is simple. People write blogs for an audience. To get this audience, a writer needs exposure. The ultimate exposure with blogs on chess.com is "top billing" or featured posting, however you want to call it. My experience has convinced me that such "top billing" can attract 10 to 20 times the audience, depending on the length of time it sustains that status. Now, the problem is that only one blog can have top billing and the posting by another "top blogger" immediately removes a blog from that spot.
So, with this in mind, picture this not-so-rare scenario. One blogger spends oh, 10 hours, preparing a posting. He publishes his article and it immediately steals the top billing position from the previous top blogger. 30 minutes and 10 visits later, another top bloggers posts something, let's say a classic game that most likely took 20 minutes to post. This posting stays in the top position for 4 days and recieves 368 visits.
By the same token, when one goes to post something and notices that the person in the featured position had just posted not too long ago, one hesitates to post his own entry.
There's obvious something wrong with a system that allows this. And for a blogger, it's a very important wrong. The remedy, on the other hand, is quite easy. The "top billing" position needs to be eliminated completely or expanded to feature a half dozen or more blogs. The useless blurb from the first sentence in the blog could be eliminated also - this would give more room for the changes.
I can't over-stress the importance of such a change. I'm serioulsy beginning to view it as a deal-breaker.