Earlier this week I posted about how featuring content works here on current.com, and it resulted in a series of responses that made it clear that we had some more explaining to do. metalcookiesxy70 and Ricky84 both asked a series of very valuable questions that simply could not go unanswered. I’ve posted responses to their questions, but thought that a broader blog post highlighting these concerns was in order. After all, if two people are asking, there must be many more of you out there with similar concerns, inquiries, or just general bewilderment. So, here are their questions, along with my answers.
First up, metalcookiesxy70:
metalcookiesxy70: “User-created content does not go on Tv anymore, and most users are saddened by so…”
Mario: we’re sad too, but it isn’t gone for good. as mentioned in several other posts, we had to pull the “community submissions on TV” piece of the Current News concept. The reason this was pulled was not because we no longer wanted to support it, but rather we wanted to do more with it but the system needed refinement. Our goal is to have popular community news headlines from all 8 homepage channels appear on TV. admittedly, it’s taking us much longer than we’d hoped, but soon the content voted up on the popular list of each channel will make it to TV. This means, MORE of your guys’ content on TV…we just need to reach that finish line.
metalcookiesxy70: “Staff usually pull up most of the stories, and leaving them on “#1″ for a long time, which does not allow more stories come up as rapid as the previous layout..”
Mario: There is a difference between the #1 position and the “featured” positions. On the homepage, the featured spot for each channel is marked with a “star” icon. ?We editorially feature community submissions in our featured sections, but the numerically ordered popular list is determined entirely by the votes, comments, views, and shares of the community. Note: when content starts getting pulled to TV again, we prefer to highlight the top items from the popular list, not the content staff has chosen to feature. Also, we realize that the line between popular/community-picked” and “featured/staff-picks” is blurred in the present design. We are working on some changes that will hopefully improve this going forward. As for the previous homepage layout vs. the new channel-centric homepage — you’ll see modifications here and there, but ultimately some variation on this format will remain. The homepage now serves as an overview of what is available, for a more focused/rapid experience we hope people will join a channel and engage in that way. In the coming weeks, if you can’t find a channel that interests you, you will be able to create your own channel group and people can join that.
metalcookiesxy70: “Useless(rather pointless to post) stories have came to the top, or stay in one rank(usually around the top 10 stories) for a long time (maybe for several days)”
Mario: This actually relates to one of the reasons we needed to pull down the “get on TV” portion of Current News. We recognized that our community is comprised of people who share varied “news-related” interests that span a broader spectrum, which is why we rolled out our channel structure. However, our algorithm and scoring for items is sitewide, which causes complications when calculating popularity on individual channels. We have a PhD on staff named DrGary who will be working on a vastly improved classifier and channel-based scoring system, but this is pretty involved work. the first step is to find ways to classify and organize all of the content in the current.com eco-system. You can see some of the groundwork he’s covered on our sitemap. The sitemap updates frequently, so if you ever want to take a look at this click on the “sitemap” link in the footer of any page.
metalcookiesxy70: “Newer stories would usually be much more harder to reach to the top, than it was in the previous layout….”
Mario: Have you tried voting on new stories in a channel? Voting and sharing is actually quite effective in raising an item’s popularity. Also, voting old/stale content down is a huge part of helping clear out the old. Note: “why is this still popular” comments posted on old items only increases their popularity. If something is old, hit the red vote button and alert some like-minded friends to do the same.
Next up, Ricky84:
Ricky84: “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out current has changed its game plan. So what’s the new niche current.com is trying to fill? Is current.com first and foremost a place to show case current.tv’s various interests or tv shows?”
Mario: Our game plan hasn’t changed at all, but our approach has shifted slightly. We’re a TV station and a social media website, so we need to be able to serve both of those concepts on either platform (TV or web). Our goal is that current.com becomes a place where groups can be created to help inform others about issues and causes ranging from the socially aware to the frivolous. Our TV shows will all be groups on the site as well, meaning you can join the official infoMania group, start an infoMania reviewers group, or create the “I <3 Conor” group. Or, you could go the other route and start up the “Public Health Care Awareness” group. It’s entirely up to you.
Fundamentally, we realized that in order to achieve some of our loftier goals, we needed to be able to give you guys (our community) more tools to create and curate content on your own. So, by rolling out groups and our curation tools you will all be able to do more with the content you and your connections submit to current.com. Additionally, all of this will roll up to our top-level homepage channels, making those much more rich and interesting than they are right now, and then eventually the most popular content in the top-level channels will appear on TV in regular bumps.
Ricky84: “Beyond that is current.com going to play host to various lifestyles or political groups through its system of channels? If that’s the case who creates the channels, viewers or staffers?”
Mario: Right now, because it’s still in alpha, staff has to manually create the channel group on our end. However, the individuals who are curating channels right now responded to our call for interested testers. They weren’t handpicked, and they selected the
channels they are curating. It didn’t make sense to include some of the more hot-button topics in our alpha test, but once launched the door will be wide open. In early July you will find a “start a group” button in the green navigation bar on the homepage which will walk you through the process of setting one up a group of your own.
Ricky84: “Lastly does the voting system have a place in current if the site takes on a feudal system of curators, featured submitters and commenter’s?”
Mario: Voting will always factor in because it relates to how content trends in popularity on current.com. Content submitted to a group will rise and fall based on popularity, same as always. group moderators will be able to “feature” content in their individual groups, but that won’t deter a story from rising to the homepage and eventually TV via one of our homepage channels.
And now it’s your turn. Do you have questions about some of the design or functionality changes over on Current.com? Ask them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to clear things up. Do you have feedback or suggestions? Our Get Satisfaction page is open and welcome to your insight.
Thanks for reading.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:42 pm
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