Irishgit's SF Tour

I caught up with Irishgit tonight, live and in person in San Francisco. We hit Zeitgeist, Arinell's for pizza, Casanova, and then Arinell's for pizza again. We gossiped about RIA stuff and talked a lot of sports and politics.

Overall it was a pretty good night.

IG is the third person I've met through RIA. Previously I met JonTheMan and Minkey. It's amazing how well you can get to know somebody by reading what they think about everything.

Rebooting DB Late Tonight

Guys, we are doing some scheduled maintenance late this evening that will required a DB reboot, bringing the site down for a 15-30 minutes.

Automatt, will you comment with the exact time?

Speaking of Trip Reports...

Speaking of using RIA to document trip reports, check out Irishgit's reviews of the places and things that he's seen while driving down the Pacific Coast.

Word has it he will be hitting San Francisco's legendary Zeitgeist beer garden tomorrow at 7PM. I'm in as well - any other local RIA'rs are welcome to stop by.

Obama and Fear

OK, we have a couple of new quizzes live on MS and Facebook. An Obama VP quiz based on GTH's Obama VP Candidate list, and a fear test based on Jamie McBain's list of things you are afraid of.

And to my conservative friends out there, please don't read anything into the juxtaposition of the "Fear" and "Obama" quizzes.

I can't believe we don't have a 2008 Democratic candidate list yet

Who wants to take it on?

Here's the 2008 Republican VP candidate list.

Trip Reports via RateItAll

One of my favorite things to do after taking a trip is to write up the things and places that I saw. I just wrote up my trip to Atlanta for my brother's bachelors party. We went to a ball game, and I reviewed Turner Field, a couple of Atlanta bars, and the hotel I stayed at.

For me, RateItAll is almost a diary of sorts, and this is one my favorite things about the site.

Two New Quizzes

I added a Job Compatibility Test and a Break Up Quiz to MySpace and Facebook. Check them out!

Also, thanks for all of the good suggestions for more compatibility quizzes... I think we need a way for anybody to convert their lists into a FB / MS quiz.

Agree is the New Funny

Sometimes when I'm utterly baffled by a review, but I want to acknowledge that I read it, I will drop an "agree" vote on it.

Often this makes no sense:

Reviewer: "I remember growing up in Kentucky snorting the Grizz four time per day."

Me: Agree

I didn't grow up in Kentucky, and I certainly have never ingested the Grizz. Yet I somehow feel compelled to drop an "agree" vote.

Is there any cure for what I have?

Posting a Video Review: A How To from Genghis the Hun

GenghisTheHun has very helpfully put together a video explaining how to post a video review to RateItAll.

Genghis chose to shoot the clip in sort of a Blair Witch style - minimal light, with only a hand and several eerie lights visible. I found myself overcome with an inexplicable feeling of dread after watching it.

But if you can get past the horror film techniques, his tutorial is quite helpful.

Here are the cliff notes:

- Record your video using a web cam or camera
- Export it to your desktop
- Upload it to YouTube
- Copy the embed code from YouTube and paste it into the review field

But I encourage you to watch the whole video. Thanks GTH!:

Suggestions for New Compatibility Tests?

If anybody has suggestions for lists that could be converted into compatibility tests, please let me know. These tests are a great way to drive traffic to specific lists... if you have a list that you think might work as a compatibility test (it should be mainstream, easily rate-able, and with pictures and images), please let me know.

Down for Everyone or Just Me?

Sometimes when your favorite site goes down, it's hard to tell if the problem is on your end, or on RIA's end.

Here's a cool site to help you answer that question - if you can't get to RIA, make sure to hit: Downforeveryoneorjustme.com.

Religion Compatibility Test Now Live....

.... on Facebook and MySpace. Let's add some quantitative compatibility numbers next to the great debate.

Hey University of Singapore - Knock it Off

In addition to the million or so humans a month that visit RateItAll, there are also thousands of "bots" - non human visitors who crawl and scrape our site for content.

Some of these bots are benign - for example Google, Yahoo, and MSN all operate bots / spiders that are used to index our content so that it can show up in their respective search engines. These bots follow strict rules, and respond to our requests to slow down if they are hitting us too hard. We love them.

But others are rogues. Pounding our servers without regards to our requests, and scraping our (yours and RateItAll's) content so that they can display it elsewhere and try and make money off of it.

Today, one of those rogue bots was hitting pretty hard - we tracked it back to the University of Singapore. They were hitting us about twice as aggressively as Google, which is pretty aggressive.

So if you guys over there in Singapore are reading this, nice work. You overdid it and now you are permanently banned.

RateItAll is Hiring

Guys, RateItAll is looking for developers / engineers. Here's the job req - please let me know if you know of anyone.

The Meaning of Trusted Networks on RateItAll

There's been some debate as to what does it exactly mean to add somebody to your trusted network on RateItAll.

While I don't think there is any one answer, I think Ridgewalker puts it better than most when he says:

When I first came on here, back in '05, I'll have to admit that I was a tad baffled by the "Trusted List", so I asked someone who I respected, what this was all about. I can't think of a better, or alternate title for this list, but it's not always about trust. It can be about respect for a person's point of view and the way they express it. It can be a "thanks" for the helpful information, or for making me laugh. It can mean, simply, that I like you, or appreciate you. It might be a "welcome sign", as some people click on anyone who leaves more than one review. My situation here might differ from most others, in that I had maintained a base of friends even after I left the sight, so when I returned, so did a portion of my "Trusted List", very quickly. As far as genuine trust goes, there's very few people who I would actually trust with intimate information and I'm sure that's true with most reviewers, here. The over-whelming majority of people that have my picture on their page, I like, respect and appreciate. It's obviously not mutual 100% of the time, but I see no risk here in reaching out to others, because I have learned that, whether online, or in real life, you never know what part a person is going to play in your life when you first meet them. I met Stark online...

As far as this suggestion goes, I think it is contrary to the nature of RIA, but is perfect for someone who likes to slip notes under doors and run away...

"New Stuff" page

Guys, we've made some changes to the New Stuff page - the page that tracks new things that have just been added to the site.

We've simplified the hierarchy of links shown for each new list or item, and also give clearer credit to the person who added it.

Two New Features!

Guys, we just launched two cool new features.

The first is our "Friend Finder" feature - this lets you use your email address book from sites like Gmail, Yahoo, and LinkedIn to find folks you know who are already on RateItAll. It also lets you invite friends who are not already on RateItAll to join your trusted network. You can try out this feature HERE (and it's also on the main navigation bar for now under "Friend Finder.")

It's a really easy way to add people that you may know in real life to your Trusted Network on RIA - I just added about 70 people who I had no idea were on the site. It's also a great way to invite new people to the site.

The second feature is an alert email when someone adds you to their trusted network. This email is sent from messaging@rateitall.com so you'll need to make sure that email address is whitelisted if you have a spam filter AND that email address that you're using for your RateItAll account is current.

No more analyzing friend networks to see who just added you.... Enjoy!

A friendly request

Guys, a request. Can we please keep the (intentionally) funny reviews to Weblists? Posting joke reviews of products or businesses is a bit more problematic for me, as more often than not, I end up getting an angry phone call. This includes tongue in cheek posts about Dog Food (you don't want to make those people angry), The Grizz, Magnum Condoms, the movie Brokeback Mountain, the DJ called Donovan in San Francisco, and other listings.

If your well written, genuinely funny, but off topic review of a product or local business gets vaporized, you will know why.

Doing a little DB Maintenance

We will be back up shortly.

Green Compatibility Test

We just converted Kamylienne's excellent list of environmentally friendly activities into a compatibility test for MySpace and Facebook.

Let's see how Green compatible we are.

To check, go to your MySpace and Facebook account, access the Compatibility App, and finish the test.

Like the new Anon Avatars?

If you like them, please leave me some pleasant feedback.

If you don't, you can complain to Automatt.

(I think they're cool)

O, RateItAll

No, that's not the Unabomber. That is RateItAll's own...... GENGHIS THE HUN (cue applause), performing his mega hit "O, RateItAll."



And here are the lyrics:

"O, Rateitall, O, Rateitall, Just what the hell are y'all?

Each looks to each, and cares all flee.

Each looks to each, and blesses thee.

O, Rateitall, thy sacred site, Makes us waste, many a night.

Each looks to each, and cares all flee.

Each looks to each and blesses thee.

O, Rateitall, O, Rateitall, Just what the hell are y'all?

Seems Vaguely Familiar

Anybody else remember this guy?

Plaxo Integration

Any RIA'ers use Plaxo to manage their contacts? Well, they've built out this neat social network called Plaxo Pulse that aggregates all of your web activity into a single news feed for your Plaxo contacts. As of today, RateItAll is now integrated, so you can add your RateItAll Review stream to your newsfeed just by filling in your RateItAll nickname. Here's a screenshot of my feed:

Rating Art

RIA Member Planetary Gear has created some of my all time favorite weblists.

Check out his lists for Dali and Picasso - he's added pictures of each painting. Want an enjoyable and peaceful hour or so? Try speedrating either the Dali or Picasso list and watch the art go by...

MS-XXXXXXXX, FB-XXXXXXXX, and RateItAll.com

There's been a bit of confusion recently about what's up with all the RateItAll accounts beginning with "MS" or "FB" that occasionally show up on the Hottest Reviewers section of the home page.

This is related to the feature that we recently launched for MySpace and Facebook that allow folks to read and write reviews from their MySpace account, as well as to take compatibility tests.

The short version is that users with an "MS" user name are folks who have not explicitly joined RateItAll.com, but are using the site's functionality via MySpace. Similiarly, folks with an "FB" user name are people that have not explicitly joined RateItAll.com, but are using our functionality via Facebook.

If somebody who is not logged into RateItAll.com adds our feature on Facebook or MySpace, we automatically create a RateItAll account for them starting with "FB" or "MS." Existing RateItAll members should make sure to merge their RateItAll / MySpace or RateItAll / Facebook accounts in order to avoid having two different accounts - to do this, just click the "Merge" tab on the Facebook or MySpace feature.

Recently, a RateItAll reviewer accidentally set up an MS account in addition to his / her RIA account, without merging it with their RateItAll account. This resulted in two different, active accounts on RateItAll. By itself, this is not a TOS violation.

However, some way or another, the RateItAll reviewer's "MS" account then applied more than a thousand "helpful" votes to that same member's RateItAll account. The only way this could have been done was via manual clicking of the helpful button on each review. It probably took a long time.

And because we have IP tracking, we know that the vote giver and vote receiver were operating off of the same Internet connection - in this case, the RateItAll reviewer's home.

This is where we run into trouble. While accidentally creating duplicate accounts via MySpace or Facebook is totally understandable, using this dual account status to pad your account with helpful votes is not.

As a rule, I don't like to make disciplinary discussions public. But in this particular case, the reviewer involved made some pretty outlandish claims that their account had been "hacked" as part of a conspiracy against them, and that the 1,000+ helpful votes that had been padded onto their account were a result of a glitch in the system.

There is no glitch in the system. The only way to access somebody else's MS account is to know their MySpace.com login. The only way to give another user helpful votes is to manually click the helpful buttons associated with their reviews. And our IP tracking tools leave no doubt as to the fact that the votes were given and received from the same location.

So what's the lesson here? Well, the first one is Please Don't Cheat. Our tools will catch you, and it might be embarrassing. The second one is that if you are using our MySpace and Facebook features, it's probably a good idea to merge accounts so that you are not diluting your reviews over two different accounts.

I hope that helps.

Compatibility Detail: Coolness

Guys, we've just launched a Compatibility Detail feature for Facebook that lets you drill down into your compatibility score with someone and see exactly where you are and aren't compatible.

Here's a screenshot of my compatibility detail on the alcohol compatibility test with Genghis. It is suddenly clear that he likes martinis, while I do not.

Some Fun Friday Compatibility Tests

1980's

Monkey Compatibility

Guys' Haircut Compatibility

MTV Compatibility Test Now Live...

.... On Facebook and MySpace.

Bible Compatibility Test Now Live...

.... on Facebook and MySpace. Many thanks to lmorovan for his help and guidance on this test.

Dog Compatibility Test Now Live

Hey dog lovers, we now have a Dog Compatibility Test live on MySpace and Facebook.

Two Quick Housekeeping Updates

1) There's now an easier way to merge your MySpace / Facebook accounts with your RateItAll account. We've added a "Join/Login" tab to the main navigation of both apps - just click that link in the app header and then fill in your RIA login information if you haven't already merged your accounts.

2) We've started backing up the database every four hours.... this should reduce the risk of lost data should we have any more db growing pains.

Actor Compatibility Now Live...

.... on Facebook and MySpace. We're going to try and roll one test in per day.

RateItAll Panel for your MySpace Home Page

Guys, for those of us who use the RateItAll Compatibility App on MySpace, we just added a cool new tool.

It's a panel for your MySpace "Home" page (not your profile page) that displays new compatibility tests as they come on line. Here's a screenshot:






















In order to make this panel show up on your page, here is what you do:

1) Open the Compatibility App

2) In the upper right hand side, click on "View My Apps"

3) Click on the "Settings" link next to the Compatibility App icon

4) Check the box that says "Show on your Homepage" and click "Update"

That's it. This will be a neat way to stay on top of new tests that are getting published. I wish that Facebook had something similar.

Simpsons Compatibility Test

I just pushed a Simpsons Compatibility test live onto Facebook and MySpace.

If you have a Weblist that you think would make a good compatibility test, let me know.... but here's the catch - every item will need to have a picture and description.

Baseball Compatibility Test Now live

Check it out on MySpace or Facebook.

General Compatibility Test

Guys, I made some tweaks to the general compatibility test on MySpace and Facebook. There was feedback that some of the items were too obscure for a general test, so I replaced several items with more mainstream things.

So, if you login to the app on Facebook or MySpace, please take a few minutes to complete the remaining items of the general compatibility test.

This is cool

Trebon is my friend on Facebook and on MySpace. We both took the Star Wars Compatibility Test.

Now when I open the RateItAll App on either Facebook or MySpace, I see my compatibility score with Trebon... it's like RateItAll + MySpace + Facebook is all one site.

Star Wars Compatibility Test Live

The Star Wars Compatibility Test is now live on Facebook and MySpace. Many thanks to Numbah for his advice and counsel in this area.

and we're back...

....

Site Maintenance is Beginning Now...

.... we are estimating 30 minutes.

MySpace Testers - I'm Ready for You

Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in testing RateItAll for MySpace - it appears that a lot of RIA'ers also have MySpace accounts.

So here's what I would like you to do:

Step 1

Login to your MySpace account and go the RateItAll for MySpace page (we call this feature "Compatibility").

Step 2

Add the app ("app" stands for "application" / feature) by clicking the big button.

Step 3

* Before doing anything, merge your RateItAll account with your RateItAll for MySpace account*

You can do this by clicking the "My Reviews" tab, then clicking the "Join RateItAll and share ad revenue...." link in the right hand column.

Then scroll down and fill out your RateItAll login information in the "merge accounts" section and hit "Merge."

(make sure NOT to join RateItAll again by filling in the info at the top, only fill in the "merge" section)

Step 4

Have at it. Try a compatibility test. Try the search engine. Try reading and writing reviews.

Anything you post on MySpace will show up on RateItAll under your regular account (and on the recent reviews page), and you can accumulate helpful / funny / agree votes on MySpace from friends who have the Compatibility App that go to your RateItAll totals.

Once your MySpace friends add the Compatibility app, you'll be able to see their reviews (and award helpful votes), via the "Friends' Reviews" tab.

Stuff that does not yet work

Currently, none of the invite tools work (MySpace hasn't turned this feature on yet). So if you finish a compatibility test and check the boxes next to the names of your friends that you want to invite, they WILL NOT receive your invitations. The only one to invite them currently is to manually send them a message with the link.

We also don't yet have a Profile Module to display your reviews and compatibility tests - that should be coming in the next few days.

Please give it a whirl and let me know what you think....

Scheduled Maintenance Tonight: 1:30AM EST

Guys, we're dropping some more memory into our new database server late tonight. This shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. Really.

Video Game Compatibility Test Now Live on Facebook

We've just launched a Video Game Compatibility test for our Facebook app. Many thanks to RateItAll member ILikePie who contributed many of the suggestions for this test.

How to Merge Your RateItAll account with your Facebook RateItAll Account

1) Go go Facebook and open the RateItAll Compatibility App.

2) Click on the "My Reviews" tab

3) In the right hand column, click on the link that says "Join RateItAll"

4) Scroll down and fill in your RateItAll login information in the section that says "Merge your Facebook account...."

That's it, your done.

Back Up!

OK, we're back up.

At about 7:30AM this morning we tried to replace a damaged drive on the database and the system would not detect the new drive. When we went back to the damaged drive, it wouldn't detect that one either.

So we had to replace the whole database server. What was supposed to be a 15 minute exercise turned into an all day affair as we scrambled for and configured new hardware. Data was restored up until about 27 hours from the time the site went down - anything that was posted after around 2AM EST yesterday has been lost.

We will also be running the db on 2GB of memory for the weekend (it was 4GB), but will be ramping up to 8GB on Monday or Tuesday. The site might be a little sluggish until then.

We're taking steps to ensure that this doesn't happen again, including refining our db backup process.

Update

What was supposed to be fifteen minutes of downtime has turned into a larger exercise. We're still working on swapping out the failed drive on our database. It might be a while.

Down for Maintenance

Guys, we're replacing a faulty drive on the DB. We should be back up shortly.

Have a MySpace account? I could use some testing help

Hi All, we are very close to rolling out a RateItAll feature for MySpace. It might be as early as tomorrow.

If you have a MySpace account and would like to try out this brand spanking new feature, please let me know... by messaging me on the site, sending me an email, or commenting on this post.

The new feature basically allows you to do RateItAll stuff - rate things, read reviews, accumulate helpful votes, take compatibility tests - all from your MySpace account.

New RateItAll Group on Facebook

Guys, I've found a better tool for us RIA members to find each other on Facebook - it's the RateItAll Group.

It's an open group - anybody with a RateItAll account can join.

Join Us.

Music Compatibility Test is now live

We've turned on a Music Compatibility test on Facebook. It's a long one - 28 items I think - but should give you a good idea of who your musical neighbors are.

As always, to check your compatibility, add the RateItAll Reviews App on Facebook, and become a fan of the app on the same page so that other RIA'ers can find you.

Fix to Compatibility Tests

We've just rolled in a fix to the compatibility tests. There was a problem with how we displayed compatibility test results - if somebody "skipped" an item on the test, our system was not processing a friend's compatibility score. So even if you finished a test and your friend finished the same test with a skip, the compatibility score was not being generated.

We've fixed this now so that the system is smart enough to accept "skips" and still crank out scores.

However, in order for this fix to take effect on tests that you've already taken, you have to go back and finish the tests you've already taken - choosing the "skip" option is fine now.

More Tests!

We now have a Spain compatibility test, courtesy of Jose the Wonder Intern, and a St Patrick's Day compatibility test.

Movie Compatibility Test Live on FB!

Check it out.

This link will only work if you have joined Facebook already and added the Reviews feature.

RateItAll on MySpace

We are working very hard to build a RateItAll feature for MySpace that will let you do cool things like post reviews, read your MySpace friends' reviews, and check your ratings compatibility against your friends.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, my goal is to make RateItAll available on ALL of the sites that folks spend their time on - blogs, Facebook, MySpace - it shouldn't matter. I want you to have access to all of your reviews, and to be able to accumulate helpful votes wherever you spend your time on the Web.

Stay tuned....

Compatibility Test Results Now Displaying on FB Profile Pages

Check it out

Lots More Compatibility Tests on FB

We've launched a few more compatibility tests for our Facebook App:

• March Madness Compatibility
• Test in Men Compatibility (I did not make this test, not that there's anything wrong with that)
• NBA Compatibility
• Web 2.0 Compatibility

We have more in the works as well.... Star Wars (thanks for the suggestions Numbah), Movies, Music, etc..


To check them out, add our FB app.

I am 64% Politically Compatible to Wiseguy

That seems to be about right.

Want to test your own compatibility against me or Wiseguy? Go get the RateItAll for Facebook App, find us here, and challenge us to a compatibility test.

We also have compatibility tests for beer, the NBA, San Francisco, Taste in Women, and more....

If you are on Facebook....

.... please become a "Fan" of the f the RateItAll App here. This way RIA regulars can find each other on Facebook.

Also, feel free to post your RateItAll nickname in the thread so that folks can decide whether to add each other as friends on Facebook.

Why would you want to be friends with RIA'ers on Facebook? Because we have these cool Compatibility Tests on RateItAll for Facebook that allows you to check how compatible you are with other folks in things like Politics, Taste in Beer, etc.

Wiseguy is completing the politics compatibility test now... and we'll find out once and for all how politically compatible we are. I'm not overly optimistic that we're going to be very compatible :)

Tampa!

Is going on live on RateItAll's local business review directory.  Here is the Tampa Directory.

Let me know if anybody else has city requests - Twansalem has been adding stuff to Iowa City and it's starting to take shape.

Changes to Recent Reviews Page

Have you noticed that they Recent Reviews page looks a little different?

We trimmed down the time stamp that was displaying seconds, we reduced the breadcrumb trail to show only the item name and the list, we put the item name in bold, and we've added the image of the reviewer to the review.

Looks better, no?

We have one more tweak in the works as well....

Database Clean-Up (with some collateral damage)

Guys,

I'm sorry to report that any ratings / reviews / and lists posted yesterday are gone. We had to revert back to our backup db that was updated through Monday at 1AM.

Here's what happened:

A long time ago, we set up our system so that non registered users could rate and review things. These reviews would not post live on the site until the person registered, but we had to save user information about EVERYBODY - registered or not.

Well we quickly realized that people found this system confusing, so we scrapped it. However, we did not scrap the process that "remembered" anonymous users. So every day, we were accumulating thousands of these "anon" users in our database, that were just taking up space.

So as of yesterday, we were up to MILLIONS of lines in our database of worthless anon info. We kept putting it off, and putting it off, because a clean up of this magnitude is a big exercise.

RateItAll's CTO last night made the call that it was time to clean this stuff up. In the process of removing all of these anon listings, there was a problem with the db. We were forced to go back to Monday morning's backup (this is why we do backups every single day).

The good news is that all of those ANON listings are out. The bad news is that we lost a day's worth of data.

We're making a concerted effort to get our technology in order, to make the site faster and better. This was a very unfortunate side effect, of an initiative that in the long term will improve site experience.

San Antonio is now Live

We just turned on our San Antonio directory in RateItAll's local business review channel.

Add your city to RateItAll Local

Twansalem recently suggested that we add Iowa City to our local business directory. Unfortunately, I didn't have the data. So what we've done is added a skeleton Iowa City Directory with a couple of categories - Iowa City Pizza, Iowa City Restaurants, Iowa City Bars, etc.

Twansalem can now add his favorite establishments at his leisure, and if is participating in the RIA economy program, get a rev share on any any local business listing that he adds to the directory.

Let me know in the comments if there are other cities that you'd like to see represented, and I can see if we can work something similar to what we did for Iowa City.

Two New Cities in RIA Local

We've launched two new cities as part of our local business reviews section: a Richmond, VA Directory and a Madison, WI Directory.

You can now rate restaurants, doctors, hotels, mechanics, bars, and much more in both Richmond and Madison.

Best Song from the 1990's?

I don't know what it is, but you can probably find it on Jamie McBain's Music from the 1990's list.

I was speed rating this list, and I couldn't get through it. Nearly 800 song titles, all with descriptions.... incredible. Remember, on these song lists, you can actually embed the track by grabbing song widgets from Imeem.

Found that Phoenix News Story about RIA

Here's the link.

Weblist on Phoenix Local News

I've heard from a couple of reliable sources that HistoryFan's weblist "Worst Valentines Day Gifts" was featured on the Channel 10 local news in Phoenix.

Nice work HF.

Check out RateItAll

Don't burn yourself....

... on RateItAll's screamingly fast web pages.

RateItAll's new CTO, Mathew, was up most of the night working on our database. He upgraded some software that allowed us to fully use more of the machine's memory, and he fiddled with some settings.

In poking around just now, the site is flying like I haven't seen before.

Nice work Matt.

Scheduled Maintenance Tonight: 12AM PST

Guys, we're bringing the site down tonight at midnight PST for no more than 2 hours while we drop in some new db software that should help performance.

Thanks for your patience.

Profile Page Fix

Several of you have commented that the links from the section on the profile page called "Reviews from My Trusted Network" weren't working. Well, they're working again.

Super Bowl Ads

We have the 2008 Super Bowl Commercials list up, and each commercial has the video embedded. Try speed rating it... it's cool.

Some Good News from the RIA Community

Slow databases? Broken web pages? These aren't problems. Problems are what ZB describes here. If you have a sec, send some congratulations to this man and his family. They've earned it.

Some Small Fixes / Changes

Couple of things we've been working on:

• You can now read RIA's entire database of reviews on Facebook. Before you could only read your friends' reviews and write reviews. Try it out - the easiest way to see the new functionality is to try searching for something, then click "read reviews."
• We've fixed a design issue that caused the hottest reviewers section on the home page to occasionally jumble.
• Also on the Facebook App, we've made it easier to see what your friends are reviewing. To try this out, click the "Friends' Reviews" tab.
  

Debrief on Yesterday's Performance Issues

Pretty much all day yesterday there were performance problems with the site related to rating things, and adding new things to the database.

As this site is called Rate It All, these sorts of problems are pretty devastating.

Here's what happened. When unregistered reviewers rate something, we create a "state" that remembers their review so that when they go on to register, their review can post. These folks are stored in the database as "Anons." As you know, no review can go live on RateItAll until there is a registered user behind it. We have to do it this way, or the spammers would overwhelm us.

Well, it turns out that a lot of folks abandon ship once it gets time to join RateItAll.

We hadn't cleaned out the Anons in a little while, and there were 2.7M (yes, MILLION) Anon accounts that were jamming up our database.

This is why things were sluggish yesterday, and we're still working on cleaning these accounts out. Going forward, we'll create a process so that these abandoned Anon accounts are deleted if they do not complete registration...

I spoke too soon...

....we're still working on it.

I think we have things working again

Cross your fingers.

Man, this has been a long day... up at 4am and still working. My eyes hurt.

downtime imminent

Guys, our database is acting strangely. We're going to reboot it, and it may take another hour or so until things are running smoothly again.

I'm noticing a bunch of performance issues on the site

I'm having problems rating things, and submitting new item suggestions.

We're looking into it.

Speed Rating Just Got a Lot Better

I think that Speed Rating is one of the better developments on RateItAll in recent months. But one thing that really bugged me - if you clicked "skip" on an item that you didn't know, it would eventually feed you the item again.... sometimes almost immediately.

Well, we've fixed this. If you skip an item while speed rating, you will not see that item for the rest of your session.

This also applies to our compatibility tests on Facebook. Hopefully, this will eliminate reviews like this one.

BTW, if you haven't tried the compatibility tests on our Facebook app, you should... they're fun.

Be Careful Out There

Don't be fooled into thinking that the Internet is this parallel universe in which stuff we write and post doesn't have real life repercussions. Check out these guys who got arrested for their YouTube video.

It can feel sometimes that RateItAll is a small, insulated, private corner of the web. It's not. We get a lot of traffic, and a lot of people are reading what you post. Please be careful of saying things that you might regret, and that might get you in trouble in the real world.

Two Weblist Tweaks Went Live

We rolled in two new changes to how we manage Weblists today.

Change #1 - On RateItAll, we let people leave whenever they want, removing all of their content in the process. We firmly believe that your thoughts are your own, and if you want to leave - for any reason - you can do it, with no questions asked. We're pretty unique on the web that way.

However, one point of contention has been that when disgruntled reviews self purge they not only remove their own reviews, but by deleting weblists that they had published, they remove all of the reviews that others had posted within those lists. At times, this has bordered on the catastrophic. Hundreds if not thousands of other peoples' reviews deleted in one fell swoop.

Well we changed this today. You can still leave whenever you want, deleting all of your reviews, comments, helpful votes, profile, etc - but from now on, all public weblists and their associated reviews will be relocated to this account should the list's creator choose to leave. This will eliminate the scenario in which a disgruntled member has the power to delete the reviews of others.

Change #2 - As some of you may remember, we have a "User Page Only" status that can be manually applied by admins to Weblists that don't adhere to our guidelines. Typically, this status is only used on lists that are exact duplicates of lits that already exist on the site. This User Page Only hides the list from our main index, and prevents reviews posted from showing up on the recent comments page. Today, we've also hidden these lists from our search results. The idea is to avoid confusion for new users who may see numerous identical lists and listings in the search results.

Couple of Fixes Went Live Today

• We added the HOF link
• We darkened the link color a little more (yes, I know I said I wasn't going any darker)
• We've added "add description" and "add image" links to Rate-O-Matic / SpeedRate. So if you're speed rating, and an item doesn't have a description or a photo, you can add one. This sort of editing is really helpful for your fellow Weblisters (and RIA)
• We've added the Yahoo! shopping ads to the right side of the Speed Rate pages. This is one of those instances where I think ads actually make the experience better, because of the photos. For example, I was speed rating an actor list today, and it was helpful to see photos for the folks I couldn't identify from their names.
• We fixed a bug so that the text is now showing up besides list and item page images, as opposed to below
• We blended the AdSense ads into the site better (this actually happened two days ago)
• We fixed an annoying bug where none of our Drama Movies were showing up in the search results. Now they are.

Thanks to Jan and Peter for their hard work in getting these fixes out today. Next week we're making some fixes to our FB app and hopefully, rolling out a Bebo app.

* Oh Yeah, one more: It is again possible to post YouTube videos, and other Flash widgets, in reviews (as long as you're posting from the item page."

RateItAll Hall of Fame Link

We've added a HOF link to the main nav bar - you can see it right next to the "about us" link on every page.

This page tracks the top 100 all time reviewers on RateItAll in terms of helpful votes. We've also added columns that show total Funny votes, and total Agree votes.

Couple of things jump out at me:

- Numbah is running away with the funniest reviewer title.
- LadyJesusFan gets an impressive number of "agree" votes
- One of the folks with tons of reviews and not a single "funny" vote is my friend in real life Wiggum. Coincidentally, Wiggum is not very funny in real life either.

Expect to see some changes to the helpful rankings... I'm still working through the best way to deal with some of the helpful vote giving shenanigans that were going on a few months back. The best thing I've been able to come up with is to come up with a cap that represents the most helpful votes that an indvidual could have naturally, and in good faith given to another individuall by this date in time. All votes beyond that number coming from a single individual will be erased.

As always, I don't blame the receivers of unnaturally high levels of votes. It happens, and for the most part, it's out of the person's control. But I will request that for those of you who are determined to manipulate the helpful rankings, without taking into consideration the quality of the post..... please stop. It sort of breaks the game for everybody else.

I don't have a timetable on when this is going to happen.... but it is going to happen.

Who knew there were so many Dingo related advertisements?

Watchmouse: RateItAll Trounces Facebook in Terms of Performance

There was an interesting study recently published by a company called Watchmouse that looked at some of the biggest social networks and how they did in terms of site speed and staying up.

I'm happy to say that RateItAll trounced Facebook in terms of overall performance.

I'm less happy to say that of the 104 major social networks profiled, RateItAll is one of the slowest and one of the worst performing.

When RateItAll is sluggish, it's something that literally makes me sick to my stomach. If you ask RateItAll's developers, or RateItAll's host, or my wife - they'll all tell you.... I turn into a monster when the site is down, or when pages aren't loading as fast as they should, or when things lock up. It's such a basic thing - a slow loading site can ruin even the best features and content.

Over the past year or so, we've tried everything. We've brought in database experts. We bought a massive, state of the art, quad database. We've added load balancing across three web servers. We've removed features and functionality.

I think we're making progress, but we're still not there yet.

But trust me... making RateItAll faster is something that is almost always on my mind and we're going to keep plugging away at it.

Kids - Please Learn How to Program

There is nothing more frustrating in my job than not being able to help with hard core technical issues that arise. This morning, we had an issue with a table in our database. It cost us about three hours of uptime.

My role in getting this fixed? Firing off emails and texts to our lead developer and host saying stuff like "it's still timing out." Why? Because I didn't know how to go in and fix it myself.

It was an incredibly frustrating and helpless feeling.

Anyway, my personal motto is "don't be a victim." So, I'm checking out some programming classes at the local community college.

Our Database has Locked Up

.... rebooting now.

Argh.

New Item Suggestions Cleaned Out

I'm happy to report that due to the efforts of Jose the Super Intern, we are caught up on new item suggestions for the first time...... well, let's just say for the first time in a long time.

Here's a little refresher as to how we handle new item suggestions for lists:

For the RateItAll and Local lists, we respond to them as quickly as we can get to them.

For Weblists, we try and wait seven days to give the list maker a chance to make a go or no go decision on the suggestion. What this means is that if you suggest a new item for a Weblist - even if the Weblist's owner is not active on the site - it will get responded to in about 7-10 days.

And remember - if you suggest a new item for a list (RateItAll, Weblist, or Local) by clicking the link that says "add a new item to this list" one any list page, you get credit for that page in terms of revenue sharing. This is an extremely powerful way to "claim" important pages of the site that also helps us out a lot as well. For example, if there is a hot new cell phone coming out, why not submit a listing? When everybody wants one of these phones next Christmas, you might have some real earning potential.

Couple O' Tweaks

We made a couple of small tweaks last night:

- Based on repeated pestering from Genghis The Hun and others, we've darkened the orange link font a bit more. This is as dark as we're going to go dammit, so don't bug me anymore :)

- We've added a new RIA for Facebook icon in the top right corner of every page. Thanks Dan.

- We've added a bit more padding to the text column on the information pages like this one, to make them a bit easier to read

- We've added item descriptions to the right column of the SpeedRate /Rate-o-Matic pages to make it easier to identify the item that is being rated

Server Maintenance tonight at 1AM EST

Guys, we're going offline for about half an hour tonight. We've added more memory to the database and have to reboot with the new settings. Hopefully we'll see some nice performance bounce.

Closing out 2007

I hope that everyone is having a safe and joyful holiday season. I've been more or less unplugged for a few days, eating too much and spending time with family. It's been great.

But now it's time to get back to work.

You may have noticed that we've been featuring some 2007 lists on the home page - I think that we're just scratching the surface on what can be done here. If you have some ideas as to some themes that might make good lists capturing aspects of the year that was 2007, now's the time to push them out into the world. If they're good enough, we'll put them on the home page.

Name this movie

We get tons of feedback messages at RateItAll. TONS. Occasionally, we get requests like this:

You may help me with my search. I am now 63 years old and I saw a movie (drama?) in the second half of the 50´s or all along the 60´s but I do not remenber the name of the movie, the actors etc. The only thing I remember is part of the story. At a certain time of the movie one man is given as dead by a train accident. However the autorities were wrong because this man himself saw in a newspaper his name as the one who died. He did not say anything to the autorities and his family which thought he realy was dead. He never show up again to his family and start being a beggar. Afterwords the christmas season is coming and at the christmas eve he came to his house but did not knock at the door. One of the sons saw him through the window and came out asking to the beggar if he had no family and if he wants to join them inside, without recognize him as his father. This is what I remember from the movie. I understand it is very dificult to help me with only this description but could you try? It is a very emotional movie. I appreciate a lot.

Thank you

Can anybody help this person out? MA Duron?

Widgets and Apps

Most of the RIA regulars know by now that I'm pretty obsessed with widgets and the fragmentation of the web. I even write a blog devoted to widgets. In the world of RIA, this widget obsession means doing whatever I can to make sure that RIA content and functionality can be enjoyed not just on RateItAll.com, but all over the web - on social networking sites like Facebook, on blogs, and on any other site with a social component.

Over the past year or so, we've started putting together the tools to make this happen. I've taken a shot at summarizing all of the different tools available on RateItAll that allow you to enjoy RateItAll on other websites. Check out this summary of RateItAll widgets.

Wrapping Up the Redesign

We're just about done tightening up the redesign. The Google ads have been added back to the profile pages (for all of you participating in the RateItAll Economy), and we've made it through our entire list of tweaks.

The always politically correct GoinDownSlow has nicknamed this redesign the "Queer Eye Makeover" - and I'd have to agree. The Fab 5 themselves couldn't have done a better job.

If anybody else sees anything that's broken, now is the time to bring it up. We're just about to move on to the next big project.

Darker Font, TIghter Design - So Fresh and So Clean

Based on your feedback, we darkened the font, fixed some typos, and generally tightened up the design. I'm pretty happy with it.

Real Time Reviewer Rankings in Three Hour Blocks

One of the things I REALLY like about the new home page is the ability to see which reviewers are hot at any given moment. If you look at the reviewers module, you are seeing a real time ranking during the last three hours of which reviewers have posted the most ratings, scored the most helpful votes, and notched the most funny votes.

The order goes like this:

1 2
3 4
5 6

So in the current snapshot, new user SecondRoad11 is leading the last three hours activity rate. Clicking through to his / her profile shows that they have posted 141 ratings. Want the top spot in real time? Rate more than 141 things.

SecondRoad11 is leading GTH (#2 for this time block), Twansalem, and AngryJed.

And that's just for rating activity. You can also check out helpful and funny leaders for the current time block. Refresh the page and the rankings may be different - again, this module updates in real time.
























A little competition never hurt anybody. The obvious next step here is to blow out everybody's personal stats so that they can get a day by day breakdown of new votes for their reviews.

Font Color Update

I'm hearing your feedback on the link color being a little painful on the eyes. We are going to moving to this shortly:

Tighten Up - Tweaking the New Design

Guys,

Here's our tweak list for today. If you see anything else on the site that needs to be fixed and isn't already on the list, please post it in the comments:

Most Urgent

• Fix the search box - it's not working on any page except for the home page (FIXED)
• We're going to make the orange links a bit darker site wide (the designer will provide us with the RGB code for the style sheet)
• Caching on Browse Tags isn't working. The page consistently times out. Let's just hardcode this page as for now
  

Home Page

• We need to align the right side of the testimonial exactly with the right side of the gray nav bar.
• Home Page Typo: News and Tips: should be "Adding Background Images to Display Widgets" (we're missing the "g")

Sub-Home Pages

• get rid of "trusted recommendations box (and text)" on sub-home pages
• left align category names (e.g. Computers and Internet) with subject names (e.g. Web Site Directory) (do this for the whole index on this page)
• "Topic Categories" needs to be height aligned with the top of the first module in the left sidebar

Category Pages

• left align subject names with topic names (again, do this for the whole page)
• "Browse Category Name" needs to be height aligned with the top of the first module in the left sidebar and left aligned with the Category intro / description (if there is one)

Subject Pages

• Let's get rid of the yellow alert box and text that says "get trusted recommendations"
• Let's height align the top of the Subject Tilte with the top of the first module in the left sidebar

Topic Page

• Align Topic Titles with Topic Descriptions
• On the topic page, let's get rid of the yellow box around the "Add this list to your MySpace page" and "Speed Rate" - but let's keep the links. Just get rid of the box.
• on the topic page, get rid of the space between the bottom of the line of google links (belwo the description), and the line of text where the yellow box was)
• The icons disappeared in the "actions" box
• We need to reduce the width of the musestorm widget on the topic page below the list, so that it right aligns with the list

Item Page

• Yahoo Maps are misaligned (local items)
• Align Item titles with Item descriptions
• On the item page, let's right align the review box with the gray description box
• We need to left align the "reviews of item name" (on the item page) text above the reviews, with the rest of the column's content
• The ratings breakdown graph is not showing up on the item pages

Multiple Pages

subhome / cat / sub / topic / item: Top Left Google ad module needs another line or two of whitespace after breadcrumb (for logged in users only - not logged in see the RIA intro box)

Recent Comments Page

align content to width of header on recent comments page

Breadcrumb Navigation

I'd like to make the breadcrumb navigation at the top of every page, black

we need a line of whitespace above the breadcrumb navigation below the nav bar

New additions page: right aligment of boxes need to match header

about us: let's get rid of Hottest Topics / Hottest Weblists (i assume this is why the about us page is so slow)

Search is Broken - Except on Home Page

Jose the super intern just noticed that the search box isn't working on pages other than the home pages. This will be our first fix Monday AM.