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I'm under the impression that the voting is getting more and more importance than the reviewing and I disagree with that. Just take a look at HEDIR Next and you'll see that positive reviews aren't counted at all anymore. In fact, you're only required to have a total of 10 reviews. Whether they're positive or negative doesn't matter. Only the votes count: you need 75% or more. This is truly ridiculous. Why on earth should we review then?
Voting is not running away with the honors here. Review also plays an equally important part. I have already mentioned the parameters that we use in this thread http://www.hedir.com/community-submissionguide.html
If you try out the approval-rejection list (right menu at the bottom, visible only to the moderators), you will see that all the sites over there meet our selection criteria as mentioned in http://www.hedir.com/community-submissionguide.html
Now the chances that any site which is getting 75% people voting yes will get many negative reviews(remember that we need at least 10 reviews for a site to get into this list) are very thin.
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the mandatory 10-reviews-before-inclusion rule was taken out. I found out when I was checking for submission guidelines. I never knew this was changed. In fact, if you take a look at the wiki in the HEDIR Next section, you'll see that Lakhya states "we do not have a consensus on this". My question: if there's no consensus about this, why change it before hand? I absolutely do not agree with taking this rule out.
baggeroli, we have seen the effects of making reviews mandatory. Yes, we can make review mandatory before inclusion, not before submission. But then there are people who are not reviewers/webmasters and want to just forward a great resource to the community. If review is mandatory, such resources will never get listed in hedir.
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My second concern is about the reviewing system itself. This problem can be divided into two sub-problems: the lack of an ordering system in the Review forum and the mixed voting/reviewing system.
Review forum at present cannot be ordered. I do not want to give you false hopes. We have tried to arrange things here but the situation demands a restructuring of the hedir architecture, which you will agree, we can not afford at this moment. Norah has tried it in alpha but the result are far from satisfactory. So we have put the review list on the right menu(where you can select the latest sites for review). We do not want a half baked system here. Please give us more time here.
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There is a priority list at the top-right "Today's sites for review" but it only gives 5 sites without any further detail and it never works for me. I never get any sites.
baggeroli, is the 'more sites on review list' button not working for you? Please let me know. I will fix it up quickly.
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I think the voting undermines the whole principle of HEDIR. It's anonymous (even guests can vote), not accountable and uncontrollable. Therefore it's meaningless compared to argumented reviews. I understand that it's easier for automation reasons, the code can do all the hard work, but it takes away the uniqueness of HEDIR. That's why I don't like it and I'm not even speaking of the remote voting. IMO that's asking for trouble and it will be the death of HEDIR (if you can find anyone who'll actually put the script on his/her site). I understand HEDIR needs back-links but this is not the way. Let quality and time do their work.
As i have mentioned previously, voting is not the sole criteria for selection. We have reviews and user's hedir points.
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I suggest an integration of the voting and reviewing. No more reviewing and voting. The review becomes the vote. The vote can only be casted together with a review. That way you have the advantages of both systems: you have a argumented, accountable review and you have a vote to work with code-wise.
Pardon me if the hedir next page do not reflect anything like this, but we are developing a system in alpha like what you have suggested.
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I don't plan on leaving HEDir. We just need to get a few things fixed to make this an even better experience. The important issues have been well known for awhile. Its now time to act on those issues.
Thanks Google junkey. We are trying...
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Personally, I was, and still am, agasint the mandatory review requirement for submitters.. It's a strip of duct tape stuck over a larger problem since it will be very rare that we gain and retain real members of the community.. Most are sticking around, if they do at all, to bang out 10 quick reviews and move on..
I agree completely.
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I think that the biggest issue at this point is organization of sites to be reviewed.. It's very hard to keep track of what you have reviewed, what needs to be reviewed, and things that you are watching for improvement before voting one way or the other.. I know that I spend far too much time reading older threads to see if I had voted or not and where they are in the vote process..
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In an ideal world once I vote on something it goes away and I never have to look at it again.. Then if I don't vote and just click a "watch this thread" button it will go into a different area where I can come back to it later without having to hunt for it.. Or getting an eMail alert every time someone posts to the thread.. Or having to bookmark it..
I just had a meeting with my programmer. We will work on this. _________________ Evolution is always better than revolution. My attempt at Blogging!
If I go through all the hard work of getting my site out there for everyone on HEDIR to see- get accepted- and then all of a sudden disappear, all my hard work will be for nothing. It can become then a popularity contest of who can get the most posts and not a resource for quality content.
A very good point. But then hedir is unique in many ways. Just consider this - which directory at present gives you fresh results? All directories accept sites based on what the site is offering at that moment. The quality of the site is also relevent to that point of time only when it was picked up for listing. Now, say after some time the quality of the site falls, then? I have seen sites listed in certain categories in DMOZ which are totally junk/porno sites. Obviously quality has fallen or site has been changed later. This happens with all the directories and is one of the reasons why people are less interested in using a directory.
Hedir with its open review/voting system allows quality fresh sites to get into the listings.If the site owner/webmaster keeps up the quality of the site, it will remain at top with positive reviews/votes.
In offline business world one cannot maintain status quo for a long time without any internal development efforts. We have tried to implement the same principles in hedir. _________________ Evolution is always better than revolution. My attempt at Blogging!
BTW, we've been having some serious family issues the last few weeks (we are averaging a death a week since the year started) and I am spending far less time online than I used to.. I hope that changes soon..
Steve, i am so sorry to hear that. You must be having a tough time. I hope and pray that all goes well with you in the coming days. _________________ Evolution is always better than revolution. My attempt at Blogging!
Yes, we can make review mandatory before inclusion, not before submission. But then there are people who are not reviewers/webmasters and want to just forward a great resource to the community. If review is mandatory, such resources will never get listed in hedir.
... and...
feydakin wrote:
Personally, I was, and still am, agasint the mandatory review requirement for submitters.. It's a strip of duct tape stuck over a larger problem since it will be very rare that we gain and retain real members of the community.. Most are sticking around, if they do at all, to bang out 10 quick reviews and move on..
lakhya wrote:
I agree completely.
So, in your opinion, lakhya, you think it's ok for someone to come in, drop a "great resource" in the submission forum, and never return again. If that's the case, then you're relegating Hedir to become "just another directory."
If a site is REALLY worth it, then I should be willing to stand up for it. After all, this is meant to be a COMMUNITY review system, right? If I believe in a site and feel it is valuable enough to be listed in Hedir (and, vice-versa, that Hedir is valuable enough that I want it to have a link to this site!) then it should be no sweat at all for me to PARTICIPATE IN THE COMMUNITY and bang out 10 reviews of other sites.
I've accused you in the past of a "utopian" vision. I have no idea why you keep believing that you're just going to "magically" attract this giant army of people who spend endless hours reviewing the submissions of people who CRAP them into the submission forum and leave. Yeah, you might occasionally find a few saints with endless patience (cf. baggeroli), but even they are going to burn out sooner or later. The fact is that people work based on INCENTIVES. If I would like my back scratched, I'd better make sure I've got some decent nails, myself.
Feydakin, I've heard this argument that people are only going to review 10 sites, then bugger off too many times. WHO CARES if they leave after only reviewing 10 sites? It's CERTAINLY better than nobody reviewing ANY!!!
With all due respect, you were not around in October when the submission forum was, in my opinion, the most "healthy" it has ever been. Yes, we certainly had a handful of users who came in and reviewed 10 sites and we never heard from them again. But they still gave 10 reviews that were helping other sites to be approved! And the percentage of submitters who reviewed EXACTLY 10 sites was a lot lower than you might expect.
We had quite a few users who reviewed 10-20 sites; a few less who reviewed 30-40 sites; and a handful of users who stuck around for a few months or longer -- a very few are still around today! I can say with SUPREME CONFIDENCE that most of the longer-term users ONLY stuck around because they were "forced" to review those initial 10 sites... then they got the Hedir "bug" and did MORE than they were originally required to do, because they found they enjoyed it!
I have read in numerous posts how "addicting" Hedir site reviews can be. As bad as this sounds, the main concept of requiring reviews is to GET THEM HOOKED. I believe that's the only way that you will ever make the community review concept work.
Again requiring reviews:
A) ensures others sites actually get reviewed! Even 10 reviews are better than none.
B) helps build the review community and the Hedir community-at-large by "hooking" the occasional user into the Hedir concept.
I'm one who thinks reviewing should be required, and I thought, until now, that it was required. Right now, sites that have no negative reviews, and with their submitters actively reviewing, are languishing because they can't get 10 reviews.
I've been getting the feeling that the view is "if you build it they will come", and we're just waiting for things to pick up. I don't believe that's going to happen, something more proactive is needed.
On the other side of this issue if we are to make 10 reviews mandatory why not take it to it's logical conclusion.. If you submit a site, but have no site reviews after 7 days (seems a fair amount of time) then your submission is automatically deleted..
It would certainly go a very long way to clearing out the dead wood backlog and convince people that drop in from time to time to drop more links that the 10 review minimum is serious..
All you would have to do is start at the bottom of the list and start deleting submissions that have just 1 post from their submitter..
And as an example of a way around this problem for submitters, since I already have my 10 review minimum, I will happily submit your site for you for $20.. PM me for my paypal account
At the moment it feels like we are in some sort of limbo between required and not required reviews.. We need a firm decision on this issue to move forward I think..
Either the submitter is required to review 10 sites, or have at least a post or two, in the following what 7 days after submission or their submission gets deleted.. It might not be a bad idea to even toss them into a holding area until a review is seen before releasing them to the general review thread..
Or, we don't require the 10 reviews and we keep going forward.. and try to dig out from under the backlog somehow..
I'm easy either way, but this really needs to be locked down so that we know how to proceed.. Right now we require 10 reviews but don't delete the submissions which is just cluttering up the site..
Well, it took me a couple of days to respond because I'm rather disappointed by your reply. Apparantly you don't share ANY of the concerns and I think that's a pity.
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Voting is not running away with the honors here. Review also plays an equally important part. I have already mentioned the parameters that we use in this thread http://www.hedir.com/community-submissionguide.html
I have to disagree strongly but I guess discussing this will prove to be futile because soon(?) the voting and reviewing will be integrated. I hope that with the new system, voting isn't allowed without a review.
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baggeroli, is the 'more sites on review list' button not working for you? Please let me know. I will fix it up quickly.
No it's not, as I've mentioned a few weeks ago. I never use it anyway, but it would make life easier for reviewers if it worked correctly. ADAC's suggestion sounds cool too.
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Review forum at present cannot be ordered. I do not want to give you false hopes. We have tried to arrange things here but the situation demands a restructuring of the hedir architecture,
Maybe it's time to make a fundamental decision. As Feydakin mentioned: it could be that phpBB (in its current form) isn't the right tool for this. What are we talking about here? A week off-line? Two weeks? Personally, I wouldn't mind. But I don't know all ins and outs in this regard.
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baggeroli, we have seen the effects of making reviews mandatory. Yes, we can make review mandatory before inclusion, not before submission. But then there are people who are not reviewers/webmasters and want to just forward a great resource to the community. If review is mandatory, such resources will never get listed in hedir.
This is simply not true. Owners of a "Great Resource" will never submit their site to any directory. Why? Because it is a "Great Resource"! Any true great site doesn't care about backlinks, directories, PR and SE's. They fly above us, like eagles, and look down at the internet and its inhabitants who are desperately fighting for a visible spot. IMO, the really great sites have to be submitted by others (like Norah and php.net). (Just go through the backlog and tell me how many really great sites you see )
Another thing: if the mandatory review before inclusion isn't implemented, the backlog will grow to unknown proportions. Ask anyone about the no.1 flaw of The-Directory-which-shall-not-be-named. The inclusion time, hence the backlog. Do you really think we should take this path to a Mount Everest of backlogs?
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Currently hedir supports maximum 25 sites per category. If your site is 26th in the category, it will not be visible among the category listings ( it will be accessible in the forum though)
and
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Hedir with its open review/voting system allows quality fresh sites to get into the listings.If the site owner/webmaster keeps up the quality of the site, it will remain at top with positive reviews/votes.
Have you ever clicked the "thumbs up" icon in the HEDIR directory? I don't see anyone clicking it. Does anyone go to the "Added sites" forum to review or vote for a site? I think not.
All action in HEDIR takes place in the forums with emphasis on the Review forum. Am I the only one with this opinion? I really don't get it. HEDIR is (barely) alive because of the reviewing that takes place. I think this has got to change.
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If you try out the approval-rejection list (right menu at the bottom, visible only to the moderators), you will see that all the sites over there meet our selection criteria as mentioned in http://www.hedir.com/community-submissionguide.html
The community submission guide speaks of 10 reviews, I see sites in the list which don't have 10 reviews but do have 10 or more messages.
Hedir web directory is based on a community review system. Our community tries to collect the best resources across the World Wide Web. Help us grow - join Hedir community and submit useful sites.
first: 95% of the sites currently listed never went through the communtiy review system
I have put a link to site submission forum in the home page.
So that's it then? All that's left of the notion that Hedir is a community reviewed directory is a link to the forum in case someone might get the idea to review some sites just for fun? That's not even a request for people to review sites.
So what am I missing? I've been around for a while now, and I have no clue what's going on here. A huge backlog of sites sits around, and when someone bumps a bunch up, they prove to be invalid anyways. Almost no one is reviewing, but hardly anyone is concerned.
So am I just an unwitting pawn stupidly taking part in what seems increasingly to be a hidden agenda? Was the whole idea of being the next DMOZ just a scam? How is Hedir any different now from any other web directory?
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