Wrapping Up 2005

As 2005 draws to a close, I thought it might be worthwhile to pull together some of the Weblists that summarize the year's events. Feel free to point me towards ones that I've missed.

Events of 2005 (spartacus007)

2005's Dead Celebrities (zuchinibut)

Biggest Sports Stories of 2005 (magellan)

ABC CBS NBC Rate the Pilots 2005 (dawnsdinos)

RIA Events of 2005 (specialboothvicjr.)

Any other best of 2005 lists pending?

Hottest Weblists / Hottest Topics

Here's another interesting tidbit that might be useful to some of you Weblist publishers. The Hottest Topics and Hottest Weblists listings that appear throughout the site are generated by computer algorithm - they are set to display the topics and Weblists that have received the most ratings within a certain period of time.

Here's a current snapshot of the "Hottest" sections:

So one good way to give your Weblist a little added exposure, is to start rating your own Weblist! This is an absolutely legitimate way to promote your Weblist, and will have the added benefit of possibly inserting your Weblist in the Hottest Weblist section.

Did You Know....

.... that only Weblists with a cumulative community rating of 3.0 or higher appear in the main RateItAll index?

I'm not talking about the average rating of listings within the Weblist, I'm talking about the actual Weblist rating. For example, this very personal Weblist created by RIA Moderator Magellan has a rating of 1.0, and therefore is only accessible via Magellan's user page.

Here is a screenshot of where you can find the Weblist rating:














So this is one way that the RateItAll Community determines what ratings lists gets the most airplay.

** Note, Weblists that have not yet been rated by default show up in the Index.

We're in the process of redesigning some of RateItAll's pages, and this is a feature that is going to get more emphasis, so make sure to give your feedback on Weblists as they get published. A great way to do this is by checking the New Additions pages.

Doing some maintenance.

Unscheduled maintenance that is.

We should be back up by 1:30PM PST or so.

In the meantime, here's a good article about why it's OK for a site to go down every once in a while :)

(doesn't stop me from ripping my hair out during downtime, though)

More Maps

So I showed you what RateItAll's traffic patterns look like across the Atlantic Ocean. Over here in North America, RateItAll's top sources of visitors are represented by the orange bubbles:

Each bubble represents hundreds - and in some cases thousands - of visitors.

New Wiki Feature

I'm thrilled that so many people are making use of the new wiki editing tool that allows anyone to add images and descriptions to any page. For those who haven't checked this feature out yet, I'm referring to the link that says "Edit This Listing" located in the upper left hand side of every page.

Descriptions and images go live immediately, no approval required (though we do check them after the fact).

As is usually the case with these new features, there have been unforeseen benefits. For example, I think folks are finding that the wiki editing tool makes it much easier to quickly add descriptions and images to your own Weblists than the existing tool that requires you to go through your user profile page.

One request - please try and keep these descriptions and images as neutral and unbiased as possible. You're more than welcome to be as biased as you want in your review - in fact, we expect it. But the purpose of the description is to provide a quick, unbiased blurb that helps the reader identify exactly what they are rating.

Site Search

After months of tweaking, I'm finally at a point where I'm happy with the RateItAll search engine. It is now consistently returning exactly what I'm looking for, and I find it pretty easy to locate specific listings, or specific topics.

One thing we're considering is to make the default search site wide (RIA, Weblists, RateLocal), as opposed to forcing people to indicate which section they want to search.

Any thoughts on this? Feel free to email me or respond here in the comments...

Holiday Spirit

As we approach the Holiday season, here are a few lists to get you in the mood:

Christmas Carols
Christmas Songs (some overlap with Carols, but a little broader)
Christmas Day
Hanukkah
Holiday TV Specials
Holiday Gifts for Men
Holiday Gifts for Women
New Year's Eve Necessities
New Year's Eve
Christmas Movies
Christmas Traditions
Christmas Guffaws
Favorite Things to Do Christmas Day
Favorite Things to do New Years Day

If there are any that I've missed, please let me know!