Testing on New RIA Has Begun

If you signed up to be an alpha tester of the new RateItAll, you probably just received a link from me.

Thanks for everyone who offered to test!

I'm hopeful that we'll launch a live beta for everyone within a week or so.

Here's a screenshot of the Alpha home page (click for a larger view):

Immigration Reform

A topic that seems to be on a lot of folks' mind right now is the issue of immigration. Louiethe20th has set up a Weblist that looks at various ideas for immigration reform.

Promoting Weblists

We're very close to launching a new feature that's going to help a lot in the promotion and discovery of Weblists.

The feature is called Weblist Tagging, and here's how it works:

We've added a new field in the Weblister tool that allows RIA members to tag their weblist with one word "keywords."

For example, on the Mexican Beer list, I might choose to assign the following keyword tags:

cerveza
beer
mexico
tecate
corona
taco

Once I submit these tags, they will help other people find my Weblist whenever they are searching for any of the keywords that you used as tags. So if a new visitor to RateItAll does a search for Mexico, among the search results they see will be Magellan's Mexican Beer weblist.

But wait, there's more. By aggregating all of these tags, RIA can actually provide an alternative search service, specifically for Weblists.

Here's how it works: RateItAll creates a single page on the site called "Browse Weblists." On this page will appear the top 100 or so Weblist tags that people use to describe their Weblists. This is what's called a "Tag Cloud", and the tags that appear most frequently will show up as bigger words. To see an example of a tag cloud, check out this page on Delicious.

Now, imagine a tag cloud like that, made up of keyword tags that people have assigned to their Weblists. Clicking on the Weblist tag, "Mexico" will display ALL of the Weblists that people have tagged with the word "Mexico." I think this is going to be a really neat way to discover Weblists about the things you are interested in.

One final point about how we can use these Weblist tags to make it easier to find stuff on RIA. Because of these tags, it is now a very easy thing for RIA to draw correlations between Weblists. For example, someone on the Mexican Beer weblist might see a box called "Related Weblists" that shows the top five rated Weblists that share the same keyword tags. Again, it's an alternative way to discover and promote new Weblists.

I find it amazingly cool how many neat things can be done simply by allowing people to assign keyword tags to their Weblists.

Profile Page URLs

One of the things that I'm finding really handy is how just about any RIA profile page can be reached by typing in http://www.rateitall.com/NICKNAME directly into the address bar. It really makes it easy to link to people's pages, and also helps with the navigation of the site.

Here are some examples:

http://www.rateitall.com/castlebee
http://www.rateitall.com/irishgit
http://www.rateitall.com/abichara
http://www.rateitall.com/vudija

Where the system breaks down a little bit is if the person has a space or a symbol in their nickname. For example:

GTH's page is:
http://www.rateitall.com/genghis%20the%20hun

EO's page is:
http://www.rateitall.com/Eschew%20Obfuscation

For this reason, I'm recommending that folks with spaces and symbols in their user name get rid of them. For example, GTH could become GenghisTheHun.

If you want to make it easy for folks to find your profile page, it might not be a bad idea.

Some Weblists of Note

Wow, folks are getting pretty creative on these Weblists.

Here are a couple interesting ones that have gone live recently:

Little Known Facts about Leonardo da Vinci (IJR)

Epidemics (Vudija)

Manned Space Expeditions (Vudija)

Jessica Alba Movies (GTH) (RIA, not to mention Numbah, was crying out for this list)

Site Maintenance

Sorry RIA night owls, site's going down for about 45 minutes for maintenance.... should be back up at around 12:15AM PST.

Some Redesign Screenshots

(click on any image for a bigger view)

Here's the new header and logo:





Here's what the item page will look like...



and here's the ratings list page (images not showing up yet, but they will):


here's a partial view of the profile page:

Attack of the Killer Reposters!

As many have probably noticed, we are under attack from a ruthless band of reposters. Folks who, for whatever the reason, feel the need to constantly post and repost their same comment over and over again. Want some examples? Try here, here, here, and here.

Why do they do it? In some cases its to provoke others, in others it's to erase not helpful votes, and other times it's to make sure their ideology is at the top of the list.

As annoying as it is, reposting is not currently against the rules - unless I deem it to be a deliberate provocation of another user (and yes, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference).

I am looking at ways to eliminate the incentives for reposting the same tired stuff over and over again... suggestions are welcome.

(Editor's Note: There are, of course, perfectly legit reasons for reposting... fixing typos, making changes to your original points, etc.)

Beta Tester Update

Thanks to everyone who has volunteered to beta test the new RateItAll. Everyone who responded and who is a regular on the site will be provided a password and login sometime this week.

We're getting close.... I gave JonTheMan a walk through here at the (very professional and office-y) High Command yesterday, and I think it's starting to look pretty good.

Errors when Messaging through RateItAll

Some folks are reporting errors when replying to or sending personal messages through RateItAll. The errors are on the email alert side, and NOT on the message delivery side. In other words, your messages are getting through...

We're aware of the issue and are working on it.

Who's the stranger in the red cowboy hat?

It's JonTheMan.

On a recent tour of San Francisco, one of my favorite RIA reviewers stopped by the RateItAll compound, joined me for some Mexican food at Buen Sabor in the Mission District, and yes, even sat down at the RIA control panel.

Nano

If you haven't checked out Ridge's Nano Weblist, you should probably do so. Exhaustively researched and educational, this list provides an excellent overview of some of the amazing things that are being done with Nanotechnology.

Looking for a few good testers

The RateItAll redesign is now lurching towards completion. I will most likely be opening up a closed, password protect beta of the new site some time next week, and I'd like some help trying to break it.

Anyone interested in testing the new RateItAll should send me an email to lawrence AT rateitall.com with the title, "RateItAll Redesign."

Please make sure to include your RateItAll user name - for now, I'll only be accepting RIA regulars as testers.

A couple of cool Weblists

Monopoly Spaces from Geog84

Famous Bridges from caphillsea77

Locations of Legend and Mystery from Djahuti

Got Facial Hair?

If so, do you want some feedback?

Then submit yourself on this Weblist from Numbah.

Annoying Little Bugs

We've been slow on the bug fixing recently, as I've been trying to stay focused on getting the redesign up.

That doesn't mean I'm not paying attention though. Here's some things that I'd like to see fixed:

- Everytime I resubmit or edit a comment, all my helpfuls go away
- Whenever I hit "submit" on a new Weblist, my Weblist description gets erased.
- The ratings scale for a Weblist itself (ie when you rate a Weblist itself), is populated by the ratings scale OF the Weblist. This is wrong. It should be a simple 5 = great, 1 = terrible scale.
- The local filter on the recent comments page isn't working
- If I visit the local home page and then leave RateItAll, when I return to RIA I show up on local.

Anybody have other ones that they'd like to add to this list? hmmm... maybe I should make a Weblist for these....

Spam and Errors

We're under attack from another spammer who is submitting thousands of bogus "suggestions" to Weblist publishers and RateItAll. This guy's address is:

marek2004@yahoo.com

If you'd like to report him as a spammer to Yahoo, you can do so here.


Here is his site:


nice-travel.info

It's a typical, bogus, Adsense spam site. It steals content from other sites and slaps Adsense on its pages to try and make money. It then spams other web site looking for links, so it can rank in the search engines.

If you'd like to report this site as spam to Adsense, you can do so here.

Anyway, the thousands of bogus "suggestions" that this guy auto-submits is sporadically choking our mail server. This is resulting in error messages when RateItAll reviewers try and send messages to each other through the site.

These errors are due to the RateItAll server not being able to send an alert to the recipient of the message - the good news is that the personal messages are being delivered via RateItAll to the recipient. The bad news is that the recipient is not receiving an email alert.

We're working on solutions to better screen these vandals from hitting the site.

Filters vs. Authority, Signal vs. Noise

I've referenced in recent posts about how a natural side effect of RateItAll's growth has been the increase of noise - content which is either 1) lousy and uninteresting (e.g. a review of President Bush that says "He Sucks!!!!") or 2) not of interest to the reader (e.g. sports reviews and Kamylienne).

This issue is not just a RateItAll issue - it's something that's happening all over the Web, as sites start to do what RateItAll has been doing since 1999 - open up publishing tools to their visitors, and as blogs proliferate.

Well, there's a heated debate among experts in this field about what the best way is to handle this explosion of content and noise. There seem to be four primary strategies that people are recommending:

1) Control and Administrative Authority. Under this model, some centralized authority is responsible for quality control on all content on a Web site. Publishing tools, if even available, are extremely limited, and overall quality is kept very high. This approach is typical of many of the giant media companies of today - the so called Main Stream Media, or in my jargon, the Web 1.0.

2) Self Restraint. There's a very smart guy named Seth Godin who believes that publishers who want to preserve their personal brand in an environment of exploding content will need to show restraint, and publish less, but with a higher hit rate of quality content.

3) Community Authority / Wisdom of the Crowds. This is often equated with the "Web 2.0" approach. Give your online community the tools to decide what content is most compelling, and based on the community's decision, give the highest rated content the most airplay.

4) Filters. Provide members of your community with tools that lets them focus in on content that is of interest to them. An example of this would be the RateItAll Recommendation Engine, which filters RateItAll's database of reviews by self-selected networks of trusted reviewers. Under this model, everyone sees something different. For a good discussion of filters, see this post by Scott Karp.

Exploding content, to the scale which we're seeing it today, is a brand new problem. Nobody really knows how it's going to turn out, and if you read any of the recent comments on this blog, there are very strong feelings about it, both from site administrators and participants.

My personal feeling is that I believe very strongly in items #3 and #4 - a focus on community based tools and filters to A) try and automate things so that the community determines which content gets the most airplay; B) Allows each person to customize their site experience so that they see the stuff that they are most likely to be interested in.

But I also see the value in some human, administrative intervention to highlight content that would otherwise get lost. That is why tools such as Featured Comment have not gone away, and why we'll be introducing similar features such as Featured Reviewers and Best of RateItAll.

The risk of relying on community based tools to determine airplay, as Kamy has pointed out, is that everything gets reduced to the lowest common denominator. In RateItAll, that would mean that President Bush and Britney Spears would be featured every day, because that's where most of the traffic is. That means that a lot of interesting, quality stuff gets lost in the noise.

That's it. It's not a black and white case, and there is still plenty of room for debate on this issue.

But from my perspective, I can tell you with a lot of confidence that what you are going to see on RateItAll is an emphasis on community based tools that enable collective decision making by the RateItAll community, and the provision of filters that lets each RIA member customize their own experience on the site.

I think this approach best suits the soul of the site, and I believe that we are just scratching the surface in terms of neat features that will let people find what they want and what they didn't even know they wanted - both in terms of reviews, and other reviewers.

As always, stay tuned as this is a work in progress....

Big Monday?

I'm hoping that those of you participating in the RateItAll Economy program had a good day today. The site had an exceptional day in terms of overall traffic and network wide CPM.

There's a variety of factors that will influence your earnings through the Google Adsense / RateItAll Economy program. The three primary factors are:

1. Traffic (known as impressions in your Adsense reports)
2. Subject Matter (a list about digital cameras will earn a higher earning per click than one about Britney Spears)
3. Market for Online Advertising (how much advertisers are willing to pay to appear on Google's ad network)

Items #1 and #2 are somewhat in your control. Finding the proper balance between a profitable niche and a high traffic niche is a challenge. Remember - one click from a quality niche can be worth 100 clicks from an unprofitable one.

As we get deeper into this program, I'll be sharing more tips and advice as to how to optimize your RateItAll Economy earnings.

And a word of advice: everyone participating in this program should pay extra special attention to the Google Adsense Terms and Conditions.

Spammer

Well it seems like some enterprising spammer has written a script to auto submit new site "suggestions" to one of RateItAll's categories.

So if anyone feels like sending an email to nataly2005@gmail.com to try and sell her prescriptions, online poker rooms, mortgages, feel free.

Here's a screenshot of a few of the hundreds of spammy submissions added by nataly2005.

Damn spammers try and break everything. Get a real job, folks. Like telemarketing or drug dealing or something. Oh yeah, many of you ARE drug dealers.

Because of bozos like this, eventually we'll have to add one of those annoying "captcha" things where you have to decipher some handwritten letters before submitting. Argh.

RateItAll Rising

The graph below is compliments of Alexa and shows what RateItAll's traffic looks like over the past few years.



Our growth has been steady - I think, because the more people that use the site, the better it gets.

But with growth also comes problems. While there are more quality posts, there is also more noise.

So the question becomes, how do we make it easier for our members to find the good stuff?

Well we're working on a bunch of new features to make this happen, with our recommendation engine at the heart of it all. My hope is that by giving people the power to choose their own trusted networks, we are in essence giving them a filter to isolate the opinions that they find most valuable and entertaining.

When the redesign launches (targeting April 1), I think you'll see the recommendation engine play a more prominent role on the site.

Going forward, we will look to roll in better and more sophisticated tools to facilitate introductions with folks whose opinions you might value. Stay tuned.

Congrats to Genghis the Hun...

... on being the first to have 100 RateItAll reviewers add him to their trusted network.

Album Covers

m.a. duron has built a list of more than 100 top album covers from pop and rock. Pictures have been added for most of them. This list is worth a look.

Speaking Engagement in Boston

I'm going to be speaking at an Internet conference called Pubcon in Boston. The conference runs April 18-20, and Malcolm Gladwell, author of "The Tipping Point" (and one of my favorite writers) is the keynote speaker.

I'm speaking about social networking, online community, Web2.0 and all that good stuff.

But what I'm looking forward to more than Pubcon is a talk that I'm giving on April 17. My grandmother lives just outside of Boston and has invited me to give a presentation about the rise of Google to her retirement community.

I can't wait to get a glimpse of her generation's take on Google and the Internet in general... I'll definitely report back on what I learn.

RateItAll Economy - February Earnings

Some cash earnings from the RateItAll Economy program are being posted HERE. RateItAll Economy participants should feel free to add their own earnings to this list.

I'm encouraged so far... we haven't even integrated revenue sharing on actual reviews yet, and people are making money. We're working very hard to include reviews themselves into this program - the plan is to launch a review rebuttal feature simultaneously through which people can debate specific reviews. So, when each review has it's own url, we'll be able to serve Google advertisements "belonging" to the reviewer on those specific pages. We're a couple weeks away, but it's coming.

There's some good stuff on the horizon folks, and I'm hopeful that in the not so distant future, hundreds, if not thousands of RateItAll reviewers will at least be making enough to pay for their monthly Internet connection.

watching hoops

As some of you know, I am a basketball fanatic. I think this is just about the best basketball video I've ever seen.

Brainjams in Berkeley

Brainjams is a grassroots tech conference that RateItAll has been involved with for a while now that focuses on the evolution of the social media and other Web 2.0 related topics. The next Brainjams is tomorrow in Berkeley.

It's more like an un-conference - the focus is not on speakers and presentations, but discussion and exploration among the conference's particpants.

Brainjams is open to people from all industries, and if you're in town and interested in this sort of stuff, I highly recommend it.

Friday Beers

If anyone is in the San Francisco area and wants to meet up, Minkeydude and I are grabbing some cheap happy hour beers at the Elbo Room tomorrow night, a fine watering hole in the Mission District.

We'll be there at 5:30'ish.

New Site Rule

This one applies primarily to the RateItAll Local side.

Discussion of current, past, or pending law suits against local businesses and merchants is now officially off limits.

These sorts of things are beyond the scope of RateItAll to verify, and can be very damaging to a business' reputation.

Here are is the full list of site rules.

Site Performance Issues

The site is VERY sluggish at the moment... we're aware of the issue and are working on it.

Helpful Vote Shake Up

You may have noticed a shake-up in the most helpful reviewer rankings. This is because we rebuilt these stats following the departure of GoneAway and PBeavr - all of the helpful votes that they had given over the years were removed from the database.

Today's Game: Snake

RateItAll Economy

I'm really happy that so many of the RIA regulars are taking advantage of the RateItAll Economy program to get paid for their content contributions.

As far as I know, RateItAll is one of the ONLY sites on the Web to allow members of its community to earn real cash for their contributions.

To those that aren't yet participating - especially those in the top 100 or so reviewers - I say, what are you waiting for? Why leave cash on the table? If you need help getting set up, message me here.

For the full details on the program, click here.

Race Based Weblists

I'm not a fan.

Historically, we've deleted them as, without exception, they have ALWAYS deteriorated into non-constructive hate speak.

We've allowed GTH's list to last longer than most, as it was built on the premise of "contributions to society," but even so it is treading on thin ice.

I'm going to let this particular list stand as I almost always believe it is better to discuss something that let it fester unsaid, but I'm not going to allow a outpouring of race based weblists.

Fortunately, there are lots of places on the Web where those with the desire to do so can rant about race.

Tetris Wars

A little not so friendly tetris competition has broken out on the RIA blog.

Andrew Scott currently holds the lead, but PlanetaryGear and Kamylienne are threatening.

I've played several hours of Tetris over the last few weeks, but am not able to crack the top ten.

Heroes of Turin

We've set up a list of the heroes of the Turin Olympic games. Let me know if I've missed anyone.

On my recent flight home from Chicago, I watched about thirty minutes of riveting curling action. It's better than just sitting there, I guess. Here's the entire list of winter games events.

Site will be down for about 15 minutes

Doing some scheduled maintenance... sorry for the hassle.

PBeavr

Long time RateItAll reviewer PBeavr has requested complete removal of his account. We honored this request last night, and all of his comments, helpful votes, ratings, etc, have been deleted from our database. You should see the top 100 list of most helpful reviewers reflect this change in the next couple of days.

I'm sorry to see PB go, but my sense is that he needed to move on. Per his request, his Weblists are now housed under a "PBeavrsGhost" account.

I wish PB well!

Brilliant Post....

from Randyman on what it means to be Chicano.

Going to Chicago Next Week

I'm going to be in Glenview on Monday night and am looking for a fun place to watch the Villanova / UCONN game.

Anyone know Glenview?

Another Screenshot...

This is what a Weblist Index is going to look like... as you can see, the Weblist Rating is going to be MUCH more visible.

Tetris Break

I found this cool service called bunchball that lets you embed old video games in your blog or personal Web site.

Here's Tetris.

Another Sneak Peek

... the redesign is coming along nicely. We will hopefully begin implementation this week or next. Here's a quick peek at what a Weblist will look like (click on it for a larger view):

Help Zuchinibut Name his Son

Long time RateItAll reviewer zuchinibut is soon to be a dad. He's looking for some guidance on names.

Can you help him out?

Some More Vision Stuff

Here is my vision for RateItAll:

A place where you can find, share, or solicit opinions on any topic.

A place where you can meet and interact with people that share your passions.

A place where you can share in the advertising revenue associated with your content contributions.

A place where you own and control your own content completely - you can edit, add, delete, and otherwise manage all of your content

A place from where you can distribute your opinions to destinations all over the Web. In other words, a place from which you can take your content with you as you leave your imprint on the Web.

A place where reputation is transparent - where you can click through to any site member's profile page and view a complete record of their site activities.

A place where you can leave any time you want - including the complete removal of your account.


We're not there yet on all of these points, but we're making progress. RateItAll's lawyer is working on a revised Terms of Service as we speak. We are adding in tools for account removal, and deletion of Weblists. And we will be reinstituting the delete comments tool for Weblist owners.

Until we get these tools up on the site, if anyone needs help with account removal, deletion of Weblists, etc - please let me know.

Some background on who is who

RateItAll was founded in 1999 by four friends from grad school - Lawrence (me) (aka Magellan), Rob (aka Wiggum), Craig (aka Shafty), and Brad (aka Ruby). We had all been roomates at business school at Emory University in Atlanta. I am the only one of the original founder who is currently on board full time.

My guess is that most of those who read this blog already knew, or at least suspected, that I was Magellan. So now it's official.

So let me give you a little background on how and why things are set up the way they are.

I currently have four RIA handles - Magellan, RIA Administrator, Lawrence, and Weblister. The RIA Administrator account was set up to speak for the site and to enforce site rules, the Lawrence account was set up as a link for new members into the RateItAll trusted network system, and the Weblister account houses orphaned Weblists.

I've been feeling increasingly uncomfortable with this arrangement, primarily because it is a violation of site rules to operate more than one account (as pointed out in this pleasant comment.)

But because I have two distinct roles on the site - as a site member (Magellan), and as an enforcer of the site rules (RIA Administrator), I do think it's necessary to maintain two distinct identities. In other words, Magellan's views do not reflect the views of RateItAll the business, and vice versa.

I think the other two accounts should go away. RIA Administrator and Lawrence will be merged, and the Weblister account will be shut down. More on this to follow.

Do you want to make your RIA posts into a book?

A new company called Blurb can help you - worth a look for those of us who have been on the site a long time.

Asteroids Break

Don't forget to plug your Adsense account ID into your Profile Page!

It seems like a recurring problem with the RateItAll Economy / Google Adsense program is people forgetting to plug in their Adsense ID number to their RateItAll user page.

Once you get accepted to Adsense, there's one more step before you'll start earning. Here are the instructions:

"Once you have been approved for an Adsense account (usually within 24-48 hours), log into your Adsense account HERE, and then click the tab at the top that says "Adsense for Content."

Scroll down to the section that says "Your Adsense Code." The second line of this code will say "Google-Ad_Client = 'pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'

This number is your Google Adsense ID number - carefully write it down.

Now go to your User Profile page and click on the link that says "View and Change Your Registration Information."

You will see a field that says "Google Adsense ID." Fill in your Google Adsense ID number that you wrote down earlier (just the number, not the "pub" or the quotation marks)."

Super Bowl Commercials

The 2006 Super Bowl Commercial list is being put together in real time...

Technical Difficulties

We're experiencing some technical issues - some pages are currently not accessible.

We're working on it...

Local Newscasters

We just added a new section for local newscasters.

The RateItAll section on national TV newscasters is one of the highest traffic sections on the site.

For those of you who would like to submit your favorite local news personalities, now would be a good time. If you do submit suggestions, make sure to include the city in parentheses following the name of the newscaster, like this - John Doe (Chicago).

Looking for Some Testers - Make Money on RateItAll

There is some big RateItAll news today - I think we're ready to launch a trial of the rewards program I referenced in a previous post.

We're tentatively calling this thing the "RateItAll Economy," and the idea is pretty simple - if you contribute to the RateItAll community - whether it be by creating Weblists, creating new listings for existing lists, creating a user profile with a picture, or referring friends, we want you to share in the advertising revenue associated with those contributions.

(We're working on incorporating the posting of reviews into this program, but that part isn't quite ready yet.)

Google Adsense

The RateItAll Economy leverages an advertising network called Google Adsense. Google Adsense allows Web sites to make money by displaying targeted advertisments from Google's base of advertisers. Google then shares the advertising revenue with the Web site who is displaying the ads.

So what we're doing is taking this Adsense program one step farther. We're going to allow every RateItAll member to submit their own Adsense account number to their RateItAll registration information. Once an Adsense account number is associated with a RateItAll reviewer account, that RateItAll reviewer will immediately begin sharing advertising revenue on qualifying pages.

Making Money on RateItAll

So what can you do to earn money under the RateItAll Economy program? Here's the initial list:

1) Publish a Weblist

Publishing a Weblist entitles you to a 50% share of the Google Adsense advertising that occurs on pages that you create within your Weblist, and on your main Weblist page.

Those RateItAll members who already have published Weblists will be eligible to immediately begin earning money on those lists.

(Note: You are not eligible to earn Google Adsense advertising when someone else submits a new listing to your Weblist)

2) Add a New Listing

Adding a new listing to any existing RateItAll ratings list (RateItAll, Weblist, Local) entitles you to a 50% share of the Google Adsense advertising that occurs on that page.

New listings must be approved by RateItAll staff or Weblist publishers to qualify, and must include a complete item description.

3) Create a Profile with a Picture

Creating a user profile that includes a picture entitles you to a 50% share of the Google Adsense advertising that occurs on your user profile page. The picture doesn't have to be of you.

4) Refer Friends

When you refer friends to join RateItAll using the Refer A Friend tool on your user profile page, you are entitled to a 10% share of the Google Adsense advertising that occurs on all of the qualifying pages that your friend contributes.

For example, when a friend that you referred publishes a Weblist, your friend would earn 50% of the Google Adsense revenue associated with those pages, you would earn 10% of the Google Adsense revenue associated with those pages, and RateItAll would earn the remaining 40%.

In my personal opinion, the referral feature has the potential to be the real money earner here, as it has the most potential to scale - in other words, folks who are successful in referring new RIA members can build their own mini-empires of revenue earners.


How to Get Started


Apply for a Google Adsense account by clicking the Adsense Icon at the bottom of this post:




- For "Account Type," select "Individual."

- For "Website URL" type in the web address of YOUR profile page (for example http://www.rateitall.com/castlebee, http://www.rateitall.com/irishgit, etc.). The easiest way to get this address is to go to your profile page on RateItAll, and just copy/paste the URL from the address bar.

- For "Products" select only "Adsense for Content"

Once you have been approved for an Adsense account (usually within 24-48 hours), log into your Adsense account HERE, and then click the tab at the top that says "Adsense for Content."

Scroll down to the section that says "Your Adsense Code." The second line of this code will say "Google-Ad_Client = 'pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'

This number is your Google Adsense ID number - carefully write it down.

Now go to your User Profile page and click on the link that says "View and Change Your Registration Information."

You will see a field that says "Google Adsense ID." Fill in your Google Adsense ID number that you wrote down earlier (just the number, not the "pub" or the quotation marks).

Hit submit. You are now earning money. You can check your stats by logging into your Google Adsense account - they update every couple of hours.

It sounds complicated, but this whole sign-up process should only take you about ten minutes.


Questions?


I am REALLY excited about this program, and it feels great to be able to allow every RateItAll contributor the opportunity to share in the site's success.

As always, feel free to message me here with any questions. You can also IM me on MSN IM at lawrence AT rateitall.com

Much more to follow on this subject.

I have been getting some grief about...

.... removing movie "reviews" from the Brokeback Mountain listing that were political in nature and from people who had not seen the movie.

Just to clarify where I stand on this stuff, I feel pretty strongly that a review should be of the item at hand (see the site rules.) I also feel pretty strongly that political statements, if left unchecked, can infect virtually every topic of discussion.

And that would be bad for the site, IMHO.

So you if you want to create a Weblist about moral decline or moral progress that includes the movie Brokeback Mountain, knock yourself out.

Just don't pollute a page for movie reviews with your politics.

It sounds pretty simple but...

If you haven't seen a movie, don't review it. I just had to remove about 15 bogus, off topic reviews (both positive and negative) on a movie that people hadn't seen.

The good news is, there's plenty of places to sound off on your politics.

Rethinking UP-ONLY Weblist Status

OK, in light of the recent feedback about the user page only status for personal Weblists from some respected RIA members, I've softened my position a bit.

While I still reserve the right to UP-ONLY Weblists that do not comply with the Weblist guidelines - specifically ones that don't work with a ratings format or have no theme - I will no longer be applying the UP-ONLY tag to Weblists just because they're personal.

I'm going through and releasing a few Weblists now - if you come upon a Weblist that you think should be released, shoot me a note at RIA Administrator.

Two Big Things on the Horizon

RateItAll has two very big things pending. The first is a redesign - we haven't touched the design of the site since 2000, and things have gotten very, very cluttered. We are making progress on a completely new look & feel that will hopefully make it significantly easier to find and share opinions and interact with other reviewers. Here's a sneak peek - you may start seeing changes to the site in the next couple of weeks:


I can't really talk too much yet about the second major development yet - but I think it's going to be HUGE. Without going into too much detail, it's a rewards program that will enable each RIA reviewer to earn cash for their contributions. And I'm not talking points or discounts or anything like that - I'm talking cash. A check delivered to your house every month.

Watch this space for more details.

User Page Only Status (continued)

I've been getting some (unhappy) feedback about the recent decision to assign some entirely personal Weblists and some Weblists that don't meet the guidelines to "User Page Only" status.

I'm definitely interested in hearing all viewpoints on this - as such, you can sound off HERE.

Slight Weblist Tweak

Occasionally people create Weblists that are completely personal in nature. Usually these sorts of lists are explicitly about a specific reviewer, and as such, most likely do not mean much to the vast majority of people that visit RateItAll.

Examples of these sorts of lists include Songs I Play on the Guitar, Reasons SZinhonshu is Everyone's Least Favorite Hypothetical Dinner Companion, numbah's job search, etc.

However, just because these Weblists are personal, doesn't mean they don't have value - it's just that they don't have value in the context of ratings and reviews. Where they do have value, I think, is in telling people a little something about the Weblist creator.

So what we've done is to create a "Profile Page Only" status for certain Weblists. What this means is that these sorts of lists will be accessible via the Profile Page of the creator, but comments on these lists will not be visible in the recent comments page or in the main Weblist index.

We may also use this feature on Weblists that don't exactly work in a ratings format (Choose One, Help Me Out Here, etc.)

Slight Issue with New Profile Page URL Format

I'm hearing reports that people with user names that contain the character "_" (e.g. "bobble_head") are having problems getting to their profile page.

We are working on the problem...

This is cool

ok, check it out

http://www.rateitall.com/irishgit

http://www.rateitall.com/castlebee

http://www.rateitall.com/tboneya

get it?

As you can see, there's now a much easier format to remember your user page url... this works MUCH better for one word user names.

For example:

http://www.rateitall.com/Andrew%20Scott

We're working on ways to convert this to:

http://www.rateitall.com/Andrew-Scott

But it adds complications...


In the meantime, you may want to consider getting rid of the spaces in your user name.

New Years Resolutions

Read what others have said about their New Years Resolutions on this Weblist courtesy of zuchinibut.

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!

New Section on RateItAll

We just added a section on Newspaper Columnists - make sure to add your favorites by clicking on the light bulb icon on the respective topic.

So far we have sports columnists, political columnists, humor columnists, advice columnists, and technology columnists.

Another New Feature

You can now add descriptions and images to any item page on RateItAll - these are the descriptions that show up in the "About" section in the upper left hand side of every listing on RateItAll.

For those of you familiar with the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, this is a similar, group-editing type feature. Currently, however, you can't edit existing descriptions on RateItAll - just add new ones.

A global audience

This is a snapshot of where RIA's overnight traffic came from last night. The larger the bubble on the map, the more visitors are coming from that particular geography. Our top performer last night in terms of visits was Lancaster in the UK. The two blips in the Middle East are Riyadh and Dubai.

As you can see, we are getting visitors from around the world. In fact, only about 75% of RateItAll's traffic comes from the US.

RateItAll's top 10 countries in terms of visitors are: 1) United States; 2) Canada; 3) United Kingdom; 4) Australia; 5) Germany; 6) France; 7) Netherlands; 8) Italy; 9) Mexico; and 10) India.

The top 100 are rounded out by: 99) Ghana; and 100) Guam - which both sent us nine visits in the last week.

I think it's kind of neat that so many folks from around the world are reading what the RIA community has to say.

Adding links to your reviews

Apologies for the slow blog posting recently - it's been pretty busy around here.

We've just added some new functionality to the site. It's the ability to link out to other Web pages from your reviews. I think this is a pretty important feature - many times, it's helpful to reference other resources when writing a review.

So now, if you write a link in this format:

http://www.google.com

It will automatically hyperlink out to that site like this:

http://www.google.com

You can also make words links to other pages. For example, if wanted to do this:

There's this great search engine called Google that I use all the time.

Here's how you would do it:

There's this great search engine called (!Link Url="http://www.google.com" Name="Google"!) that I use all the time.

It looks kind of messy, but I think it's easier than you think. All you do is copy / paste this format for the word you want to link, and fill in the url and word:

(!Link Url="xxxxxx" Name="xxxxxx"!)

We're working on ways to integrate this functionality into the RateIt pop-up window.... stay tuned.

Spell Checker Live on the Search Engine

Check it out

Intelligent Design

Yesterday the Kansas Board of Education ruled that arguments against the theory of evolution, raised primarily by the Intelligent Design movement, will have to be taught in the state's public schools.

RIA member Szinhonshu wonders what issues the Kansas School Board will decide to tackle next.

Here's more on Intelligent Design, evolution, Darwin, and creationism:

Theory of Evolution as a political issue

Is Intelligent Design based on the bible?

Creationism as a Christian sect

Should evolution be taught in public schools?

Charles Darwin the Scientist

Charles Darwin as one of history's most influential figures

Scopes Monkey Trial

Origin of Species as a Banned Book

What should TO do now?

Numbah poses the question.

New Tool

As promised, there is now a tool to let you view and manage your trusted network. If you go to your profile page, click the link that says "Edit your trusted network of XX users."

Clicking "delete" next to any user name listed, will remove that person from your trusted network.

*Note* clicking delete will NOT affect whether or not that user trusts you.

Parentheses

On the site you will notice that every user name now has a ( ) after it, with a number inside. This is the number of RIA members who have indicated trust for that particular reviewer.

The purpose of this is to 1) give the thousands of readers of RateItAll an idea of which reviews come from a reviewer who has earned a reputation in the community; and 2) help new members figure out who might be a good person to add to their trusted network, in order to generate quality recommendations using the RateItAll Recommendation Engine.

In the next couple of days, we will hopefully be launching a tool that lets you display and manage your trusted network, without having to surf around to the various profile pages.

Stay tuned.... lots more tweaking of this recommendation stuff to follow.

RIA Contributors List

The top 10,000 RIA contributors list is now located in the "shortcuts" tab.

Remembering Rosa Parks

Numbah and zuchinibut weigh in.

Two New Features

On your user page, you now have access to two new feature:

- The RateItAll Recommendation Engine. This engine generates customized recommendations and comment lists based on your trusted network (people you trust). For the most trusted recommendations, select "one degree away" and for the most data, select "three degrees away."

- Invite Friends Tool. This tool allows you to invite friends who are not yet members of RateItAll to become members of your trusted network. If they accept your invitation, they will be automatically added to your trusted network, and you will automatically be added to theirs.

We have a tool that will hopefully go live tomorrow that will let you easily view and edit your trusted network.

Have fun with these features - I think they go along way towards making RateItAll a more helpful tool to exchange recommendations with those you trust, and to help filter out the noise.

A Sneak Peek

Logged in users can now take a sneak peak of the RateItAll Recommendation Engine.

The recommendation engine / trusted network FAQ is now live as well (though some of the features referenced are not live yet).

Recommendation Engine Trial

RIA moderators now have access to the beta version of our new recommendation engine.

I think we're going to keep it like this for a week or so, see what works and what doesn't, and then roll it out to the entire community.

If you're curious for a preview, send a message to one of our Mod Extraordinaires and maybe they'll share some info.

Rolling in some code changes....

.... site performance could be sporadic for the next 30 minutes or so....

save your work!

More Recommendation Engine Stuff

So we now have an early beta version of the new RateItAll recommendation engine. It's not live on the site yet (only admins have access currently), but it should be in the next week or so.

Just to recap, this is a feature that is going to allow every member of the RateItAll community to quickly find the reviews written by their "trusted network" of reviewers on any subject, as well as the reviews of the folks who are linked by trust to those in that network.

I've spent the last couple of hours playing around with it, and I have to say that I think it's pretty powerful. A couple of things jump out at me:

- The quality of reviews that have been left by folks in my Trusted Network (working with a test account), are infinitely better than the more random sampling of reviews that can be found in the recent comments page, for example. So when I use the engine to find movie reviews from folks within 2 or 3 degrees of trust from me, I'm seeing good stuff - recommendations that look intriguing.

- I think the deciding factor of who you put in your trusted network is going to be pretty simple - do you like reading their reviews? If so, add'em.... you don't have to agree with them, you don't even have to like them. Conversely, just because you like someone personally doesn't mean that you'll want to have them in your Trusted Network.

- This engine is going to be helpful for a lot more than just products and services. It's a quick way to see a compilation of what all your favorite reviewers are talking about on the site, whether it be MP3 Players or Things That Smell Bad.

Stay tuned.... hopefully we'll get this thing launched for public consumption in the next couple of days.

A random smattering of amusing posts

Traderboy laments the fall of the Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Big Mac.

Sperryc insists that the Rolling Stones still rock, despite their age.

Alpepper advises you not to wear live strong bracelets near electrical equipment.

And Dodneh reviews the classic movie, "The Bad Seed."

WebList approval bug is now fixed

You should now be able to approve new WebList suggestions that have reviews associated with them.

Let me know if anything else broke...

Some More Comments on Site Search

So very quietly, we have been tightening and tweaking the new search engine. I think we're getting close, and in my personal opinion, the new search engine is already far more useful and flexible than the old search engine.

The next step is to roll in a spell-catcher for search queries - this should happen in the next couple of days.

As always, feedback is welcome....

Animated Banner Ads...

... are being filtered off the site as we speak.

If you come across a particularly obnoxious, slow loading ad that slows down page performance, please let me know and we can nuke it.

Recommendation Engine

So I just thought I would share with you guys how I envision the first iteration of the RateItAll recommendation engine.

The idea is pretty simple - provide a tool that lets us specify what sort of recommendations we are looking for (TV, Movies, Books, Restaurants, Travel, etc.) and how far outside of our Trusted Network we are willing to go to find those recommendations.

Clicking "Submit" will spit out all of the reviews that meet your parameters.

Eventually we'll move to being able to filter any ratings list page in a similar fashion - so that you can see what the "RIA Universe" thinks, as compared to what your trusted network thinks.

And this feature doesn't have to apply only to products. Some of the most interesting discussions on RateItAll apply to areas like politics, religion, and celebrities. These trust filters will be a neat way to allow you to read the reviewers that you find most interesting, and ignore the rest.

Stay tuned....

Web 2.1 Conference

I went to a really neat "un-conference" on Friday called Web 2.1 put together by a very nice and smart guy named Chris Heuer. The basis of the conference was a discussion of the direction of the Web, with a focus on how the Web is getting more and more "participatory" in that media (news, postings, reviews, video, etc.) is increasingly being generated from the ground up via sites like Blogger, MySpace, and Wikipedia, as opposed to by big media corporations.

Anyway, there was about fifty of us Web nerds there, and the discussions ranged from how we can use the participatory Web to prepare ourselves and respond to Katrina-like disasters through projects like Recovery 2.0, to a very neat service called Zazzle which lets you upload artwork and pictures to be applied to custom t-shirts and gear, to a walk through of RateItAll.

I spoke specifically about my vision of transforming RateItAll to a customized recommendation engine for everybody, using the power of trusted networks.

Here's a somewhat blurry picture of my presentation, courtesy of Miss Rogue at HorsePigCow.

The Animated Ads...

... seem to be really slowing down the recent comments page, and the user profile pages.

I'm going to work with our agency to try and filter out the animated ones on Monday.

Sorry for the annoyance.

Lance and President Bush

LanceRoxas expresses the betrayal that some conservatives are feeling regarding President Bush's appointment of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

Speaking in Vegas

It looks like I'm going to be speaking at an Internet conference in Las Vegas in November. The conference goes from the 15th to the 17th.

I'll be speaking about things near and dear to my heart like online community, social networking, and consumer generated content.

If anybody is in Vegas around then, drop me a line!

Deleting Accounts, Comments, etc.

As there has been a lot of misinformation spread about this subject recently, I thought I would clarify a few things about how RateItAll deals with things like comment deletion and requests to remove entire accounts.

First and foremost, I suggest that everyone read the Terms of Service. This document has been virtually unchanged since the launch of the site in 1999, and covers quite specifically issues regarding RateItAll's liability on accuracy of reviews, ownership of reviews, indemnification, and all that good stuff.

On an operational level, here is where I stand on this stuff. Once a review has been submitted to the site, I believe that it has become part of the conversation. Posts tend to reference each other, and pulling a specific review from the conversation can tend to make the entire thread difficult to follow.

For this reason, other than in extreme situations, I am not purging accounts anymore. Users that get in trouble with things like Site Rules will more often than not see their accounts disabled, as opposed to removed. In fact, as a security precaution, I have made it very difficult for even Administrators, to remove accounts.

This wasn't always the case - folks who have been around a long time on the site probably remember instances where long time users, due to repeated site rules violations, had their accounts completely erased. Fortunately, we now have a "disable" tool that allows me to shut down an account, without removing comments/helpful votes/ratings from the conversation.

That being said, there is nothing stopping a reviewer in good standing from deleting their own reviews. As much as I don't support removing a review that has been submitted to the conversation, RateItAll has never prevented anyone from removing a post that they authored. While it is conceivable that the site could decide to restore a review after it has been removed by its author, this is an unlikely scenario as far as I'm concerned - and has never happened to date.

Weblists are a different story. Because Weblists are almost always populated by reviews from lots of different members of the community, I don't think it appropriate to allow Weblist authors to simply delete Weblists and all their associated reviews from the site.

I hope that helps to clarify some of these issues. As always, feel free to email me directly (lawrence at rateitall.com) with specific questions.

Check it Out

So I think this is a pretty neat page. It's a summary page, by user, of the Top 10,000 RateItAll members across a variety of categories.

Here are some definitions:

Total Contributions = Reviews + WebList Listings + New Item Additions

WebList Listings = The total number of items within all of that member's Weblists. So if I have 10 WebLists, each with 10 items, my WebList Listings would be 100.

New Item Additions = The number of new item suggestions (triggered by the Light Bulb icon) that have been submitted and accepted on RIA (Main, WebLists, Local).

Trusted By = The number of other RIA members that have indicated trust for that particular member.

RateItAll Member Since = The date they joined RIA.

Last Site Activity = The date of their last activity on RIA.

We're working through a few bugs on this page - The Trusted By column doesn't seem to be synching up with the Trust summary page, and the Last Site Activity is showing some inaccurate results in some places, but this page is close to being finished.

You can also sort this page by category, by clicking on the appropriate heading. For example, this page shows a ranking of top 10,000 reviewers by New Item Additions.

The other new page that we've created is a summary page of all of a particular user's New Item Additions. RIA Member m. a. duron has submitted 371 new, approved items to RIA.

Please feel free to mess around with this page, and let me know if you see anything screwy.

Couple Interesting New Weblists

I think Spartacus007 did a very good job with his Weblist breaking out the various GOP Factions. Each listing has images, and what would seem to be even-handed and thorough descriptions.

Also, RateItAll newcomer Kairho came up with a list of Power Tool Brands and Weather Web Sites that are worth checking out.

Helpful?

So I mentioned in a blog post a while back that I thought the "Helpful" button might be broken, and may not be the most accurate way to gauge a RateItAll member's on site reputation.

So why do I think this? Let's look for example at the page devoted to Cartoon Network. Scroll down the page a bit a take a look at the post that Magellan left. His comment, "Great!" received two helpful votes.

Is this really a helpful comment? Or did this comment receive two helpful votes based on the fact that he's been on the site a long time, knows a bunch of folks, has been known to leave helpful comments elsewhere, has a "moderator" tag, etc., etc. All kinds of possible reasons that this comment was considered helpful - unfortunately, the comment itself, was probably not one of them.

On a larger scale, this sort of use of the helpful button can be deceptive. For example, there is a Top 25 RIA user (no longer active with the site) who received nearly 40% of his/her helpful votes from a single user.

Is this cheating? No, of course not. There are no rules as to what constitutes a helpful vote. Is this misleading? Perhaps, when you consider that the purpose of Top XX tags is to indicate to readers of the site whose opinions have earned a little more respect among the community. To continue with this thought, if the reader knew that 40% of the helpful votes resulting in that Top 25 tag came from a single user, perhaps this would cause them to think twice about considering that reviewer one of the elite members of the site.

So how can we get around this sort of issue? How can we come up with a measure of site reputation that alerts newcomers to the site of a reviewer's reputation, as gauged by the community?

There's no easy answer to this. One of the things that I've been looking at is a consideration of all the different factors that might go into what might a "trusted" reviewer look like, from a purely statistical point of view. Things like tenure on the site, number of helpful votes, distribution of helpful votes, number of folks trusting that member, reputation of those trust that member, who the member trusts, etc, etc.

My goal is to come up with a formula that converts all of these helpful type behaviors into some sort of a tag to help readers know who has earned a reputation on RateItAll.

That's not to say that a newcomer to the site who has only left a single post cannot be trusted. Of course not. All we would be doing with this tag is to say that statistically speaking, you're better off trusting someone who has demonstrated a bunch of these behaviors than someone who hasn't.

My guess is that everyone who is reading this blog has earned a TREMENDOUS amount of reputation here. The point of this is not to separate folks into tiers - but to provide some quantifiable measure of how to recognize those who have helped make RIA the community what it is.

We're still a ways away from this. It's actually pretty complicated math to come up with something that scales, so it's a fairly big project.

However, in the next couple of days, we should be rolling out a summary table that tracks things like reviews left, new items suggested, weblist items managed, incoming trust votes, etc. The purpose of this table will be to recognize folks who have contributed to the community on a variety of different fronts - not just by receiving helpful votes.

Stay tuned for more info....

Known bug alert...

Both Genghis the Hun and Ridgewalker have alerted me to a bug in approving new Weblist submissions that contain a paragraph in the associated review.

If you encounter a Weblist suggestion that has this problem (you'll see an error message when you click "submit"), please just leave it in your inbox until we have fixed this bug.