Disqus - Latest Comments for soldierant

Re: authors:maptest [Building Web Reputation Systems]

soldierant — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:09:32 -0000

So that third map is smaller tiles. 128x128. I tried to find a place in the code to specify tile size but was stymied. Any thoughts?

Re: I Killed This Dog

soldierant — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:59:42 -0000

Thanks Perry, for your kind words. :-) We too have our own 'special project' dog (Kirby, a 12+ year old German Shepherd) that we found on the street almost 4 years ago. He's enriched our lives in ways we never would've imagined. I'm still sorry that we couldn't help this poor pit, but I too hope her story might inspire some. Thanks again.

Re: chapter12 [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

soldierant — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:41:56 -0000

This is a great idea. I had a Lit. professor in my undergrad days at Bowling Green State University (Michael Mott, now retired) who had a great feedback mechanism for student papers. Down the right-side of the paper, he would trace an 'attention line' with a fat-edged marker, indicating how well the writing was holding his interest as a reader. The stronger the writing, the bolder and more sure the line. Rough patches would get shivery, broken lines. It was very effective and communicated a lot (of course, supplemented with his notes and observations.)

I've often thought, if there were some way to reproduce that online it would make a fantastic content quality input mechanism... ;-)

Re: First Mover Effects

soldierant — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:26:19 -0000

Hi Csaba -- that approach may help ameliorate some aspects of first-mover advantage, but my response is two-fold: first, question whether you truly need leaderboards or not (is the activity your community engaged in competitive by nature? If not, then why apply the trappings of competition to it?)

And, secondly, first-mover effects will still apply—to some degree—to monthly leaderboards. It depends on the inputs that feed into the system. Even though you're 'resetting' the board count each month, the factors that favor early winners in the community might still be in effect and--month after month--those folks will continue to enjoy an unfair advantage.

Let's assume, for example, that you weigh the number of "Favorites" for something as a component of some quality-based reputation for that item. (Favorites is good, because it indicates quality and not just simple activity.) HOWEVER... the number of people that might favorite an item is directly related to the number of people that might SEE an item. Posters who have been successful in building a following (the first-movers) will have a lot more eyeballs on their contributions, a lot more opportunity to have that content seen and favorited. Resetting the counts each month does very little to change the first-mover equation.

Re: chapter3 [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

soldierant — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:50:44 -0000

Welcome Csaba! Would love to hear more about your site as it launches. Please do come back and share..

Re: Tag, You're It!

soldierant — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:38:55 -0000

I think the tagline is intended to -help- sales, Randy. ;-) I'm not sure I'd know from either of those what to expect between the covers. More and more, I'm liking your 'Ratings, Reviews' riff that you did early on. How about:

"Ratings, Reviews, and Karma in the User-Contributed Web"
or
"Harnessing the power of community to improve content quality."

blech. those are awful, but... my two cents.

Re: Tag, You're It!

soldierant — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:51:35 -0000

Also — just in case it escaped your notice (like it did mine, until just this week) — the official title for the book is now 'Building Web Reputation Systems.' (We've dropped the '2.0' that was in there before.) We're going to be cleaning up mentions and references to the old title where we find them, but… yay! New cleaner title!

Re: Tag, You're It!

soldierant — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:49:57 -0000

This is an excellent point, Amanda. We'll compile a list of other O'Reilly taglines and add them here soon.

Re: Good Deeds

soldierant — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:46:21 -0000

Thanks for dropping by, Jason! I meant it -- really well-considered little widget that leverages social incentives well. I'd be interested to hear how it performs for the site over time.

Re: wiki_preface [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

soldierant — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:49:00 -0000

Testing Disqus/twitter integration.

Re: "If I May" by Ethan Coen

soldierant — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:18:50 -0000

Now, Aida—THIS is how you choose to use your stay-cation? Frequenting the lonely nether-reaches of the internet? Shame on you. :-)

Re: FRANCE-FILM-FESTIVAL-CANNES-ENTER THE VOID

soldierant — Fri, 22 May 2009 23:00:28 -0000

Nice cannes.

Re: Xbox Live Customer Support

soldierant — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:59:17 -0000

Best of luck Mike. Strangely enough, I had to contact support myself last night (first time since I posted this back in 2005.) It appears as though someone had been accessing my account, even though I've not signed on in ~8 months or so. I do have to say, the quality of support seems to have seriously declined since my last experience: really crummy phone line w/a ton of noise. And the support techs were nice but mostly clueless and reading from a script.

Re: chapter8 [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

soldierant — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:55:58 -0000

I mentioned this to you before, Randy, but I keep playing back something in my mind related to the differences between Content Reputation and Karma (People Reputation.)

By way of building upon the distinction that you've already laid out (simple vs. complex), I think there's some insight to be gained from looking at the types of decisions that an observer may be trying to make about a piece of content: Will I enjoy this? Is it worth reading/watching/buying? Is it good? These can typically be answered with a fairly narrow range of responses—yes or no are often good enough. (Or, possibly yes or no with some qualification.)

Juxtapose this with the types of questions an observer might have of a person: Can I trust her? What's he likely to do next? will he cheat me on this transaction? Is she funny? Any one of these judgments is fairly nuanced (therefore, complex) one, with a much wider range of possibilities for responses. A simple 'no' for any of these questions would quite naturally lead to the follow-on question… "Well, why not?" These type of questions almost beg for qualification.

So, really, just a long-winded way of saying "People are multifaceted" and the models we choose to represent them should be as well. But another thing that comes to mind: unlike a piece of content, a person's facets or descriptors are not static.

A piece of content—once authored—is mostly static and unchanging. The 'output' from that content is fairly predictable and any evaluation of it (be it of quality, humor, what have you) is not likely to change over time. Ppl are different: when modeling karma, we must accept that people's actions and intentions can vary wildly over time.

Re: open:animal [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

soldierant — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:04:03 -0000

That was a months-ago google-wander for 'animals and reputation' that landed me on an amazon search-inside-the-book page. Sheer luck, mostly.

Re: open:animal [Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems]

soldierant — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:05:19 -0000

I'm gonna suggest the stomatopod, for reasons that will become clear once I post them. :-)

Re: Yahoo Get’s A NeW CEO, Officially

soldierant — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:13:23 -0000

Hire new developers, huh? Wow. You really have no conception of how product development takes place at the scale and rigor of a property like Yahoo!, do you? We've got fine developers, and plenty of 'em. And I guarantee that 99.98% of em are smarter than you. Guarantee.

Re: DISQUS for iPhone: Mobile comment moderation

soldierant — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:13:57 -0000

Heh -- I'm sorry. I was being just a teensy bit of a dick there. I'm actually tapping this out on a G1 and, yes, rather dissapointed that mbile Disqus doesn't support me yet (and actually kinda wondering what kinda iPhone-specific hoo-ha the devs did to keep me from it: i can SEE all comments. just not act on 'em! c'mon guys - make the actions little statis buttons... links even. and you're done!)

Re: DISQUS for iPhone: Mobile comment moderation

soldierant — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:13:57 -0000

Re: DISQUS for iPhone: Mobile comment moderation

soldierant — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:13:57 -0000

Re: DISQUS for iPhone: Mobile comment moderation

soldierant — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:01:24 -0000

Bitter much? :-p

Re: DISQUS for iPhone: Mobile comment moderation

soldierant — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:01:24 -0000

Bitter much? :-p

Re: DISQUS for iPhone: Mobile comment moderation

soldierant — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:01:24 -0000

Bitter much? :-p

Re: Reputation Systems are Everywhere!

soldierant — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:05:26 -0000

Thank you for the suggestion, Bridget. This is exactly the tension that we're trying to balance in this first introductory chapter (giving the subject a real-world "grounding" and giving readers a good vernacular understanding of the concepts while still showing the Web-geeks how this is going to be relevant to them.)

Sounds like we're erring too far on the hand-holding side right now... We'll definitely work on this in subsequent revisions for this chapter. (Our editor has warned us that most authors drastically rewrite first chapters later in the process, as they work out voice and scope of the book.) Thanks again!

Re: Metaware

soldierant — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:13:30 -0000

Wow. Best use of $50 EVAR!