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Neatorama Upcoming Queue: an Update

By Alex in Neatorama Only on Feb 2, 2009 at 8:08 pm


Hello everyone! It’s been a week since we’ve launched the Neatorama Upcoming Queue and I’d like to give you all a little update.

Since we launched on January 26, we’ve had about 400 blog posts submitted, of which about 125 were promoted to the front page. Obviously some submissions are of low quality (spam and copy&paste jobs) and many don’t have the appropriate format, but a success rate of 30% is darn good! Furthermore, what we’re asking you to do isn’t easy: the Upcoming Queue isn’t a simple link submission – we’re asking you to write a whole blog post! But I’m not suprised, really, because Neatoramanauts are smarter than the average bear!

If you own a blog, and have unique and original posts, I highly encourage you to submit a post on the Upcoming Queue. As Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips wrote earlier this week, a front page link from Neatorama is worth thousands and thousands of visitors.

The throughput from the Upcoming Queue is actually more than the output of all of Neatorama’s authors on a daily basis. We actually had to throttle the Queue back a little, lest the front page is totally overwhelmed with posts. I’m sure that we’ll find a good number of new posts published daily that will keep you coming back regularly to find new stuff, without being overwhelmed by new posts.

As with any new (and beta) projects, there are bound to be hiccups. Early last week, our database server tripped over itself – the first outage of its sort since we upgraded our hardware. I hope that the fix we did will prevent this sort of things from happening again.

There are also two general areas that we need to improve:

  • Format of the blog submissions
    Despite having a "Please write this in your own words, do not copy and paste" request in the submission page, some of you insist on copying and pasting stuff straight from your blog or website. This leads to incorrectly formatted post (HTML codes showing), so don’t copy and
    paste, mmmkay?

  • Duplicates
    With over 18,500 posts on Neatorama, it’s not easy to remember what has been on the blog before (heck, even I don’t remember!). It’s best to search the blog first to see if something has been posted before, but I do understand that a lot of things we covered some years back are suddenly "hot" again.

    We try hard not to duplicate posts, but part of the fun of the Upcoming Queue is giving up control over the blog. ;)

Finally, I’d like to reiterate our intention of rewarding, rather than punishing, the top submitters. While we obviously like diversity in the submitter pool, the Pareto Principle (or the 80-20 rule) predicts that only a small minority will put in more time and effort into the Upcoming Queue than the majority of readers – and that’s perfectly fine.

So, to repeat the promise: The Top Submitter of February 2009 will win a Free iPod Touch, and the rest of the Top 10 Submitters (also listed on the sidebar of the Upcoming Queue) will get a free Neatorama T-Shirt. Want yours? Start by submitting your posts. It’s easy and fun!

Links: Neatorama Upcoming Queue | Frequently Asked Questions about the Queue


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COMMENT
  1. Johnny Cat
    Feb 2nd, 2009 at 9:31 pm

    I'd like to add a bit about voting. I don't think enough people are bothering to vote, cause I've rarely seen the meter go north of 9 and you predicted the magic number would be 15. It's a dandy, VideoSift-ey widget that is quite overlooked by many, IMO. And that alien is so darn cute!

  2. tringo
    Feb 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 pm

    hi, it's been really fun reading neatorama over the last year or so, but i have a few comments i'd like to make about the upcoming queue.

    1) is it normal that on rss feed, the images of the queue do not show? or am i the only having the problem?

    2) i think it's a great idea to get people to contribute, but i have mostly skipped over whatever is in the queue for the much better quality of posts by neatorama writers. it's a personal opinion, just my two-cents worth and you will, of course, continue to do what you deem fit for the blog.

    congratulations btw, keep up the good work!

  3. Christophe
    Feb 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 am

    I'm happy for you Alex that your crazy scientist experiment is turning out good. The only critic would be the 'new' search engine : checking for double post does not bring up quality results.
    Example, looking up "giraffe" for this post did not bring the original post : http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/30/fighting-giraffes/#comments

  4. Miss Cellania
    Feb 3rd, 2009 at 12:40 am

    I second that. If you want people to search before posting, they should have a front page search engine that works.

  5. stephen
    Feb 3rd, 2009 at 12:53 am

    The word "win" makes redundant the word "free" in the final paragraph unless of course you have in the past or intend in the future to offer prizes that will require payment by the winner.

  6. Alex
    Feb 3rd, 2009 at 2:09 am

    Thanks for the feedback, guys - I do agree that the search can be better. I'm going to talk to the guys at Lijit to see if we can improve the performance of the search engine.

    @tringo - can you elaborate or send me a screenshot of the missing pictures in your RSS feed? This was a problem early on that was fixed.

    Re: quality of the Upcoming Queue post - well, you have to keep in mind that these posts are raw and unfiltered. The good ones - those that garnered the most votes by Neatorama readers just like yourselves - are promoted to the blog's front page. Basically, if you just visit the blog, you will only see the best of the Upcoming Queue submissions.

  7. Lee
    Feb 3rd, 2009 at 9:10 am

    @Alex: It's great to see you take the feedback about the search engine constructively and are going to do something about it! (Or at least look into it.)

    If you're collecting "wish list" items for future upgrades to the application, here are mine:
    - a way to flag for duplicate content (so that everyone reading the queue can see it's duplicate and won't waste their time voting for it)
    - a way for the author to edit or delete their submission (after they've hit submit)

    As an aside, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who blogs about the 80/20 rule!
    http://leesdoodles.blogspot.com/2008/09/8020-rule.html

  8. BadCat
    Feb 3rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm

    I tried creating a post the other day, but got bogged down in the "Select Image Thumb" step. I filled out the first two steps correctly (or at least thought I did), but when I got to the image part, all I get is "No thumbnail images were found at the link address you specified".
    The FAQ had no wise words to assist me, maybe you do?

  9. vom
    Feb 5th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    I can also confirm that as of late, images do not load for neatorama in my reader. I'm using Akregator in Linux, and none of my other feeds do this. And yes it looks like it's specifically Upcoming Queue articles only that are affected.

  10. Alex
    Feb 7th, 2009 at 12:51 am

    @BadCat - if the server couldn't find images in the post you select, then it'll return that message. You can still submit the post, though it probably won't do as well in the Queue because of the missing thumbnail.

    When the server is bogged down or if the link has a lot of pictures, this step can be slow. It's something that we'll have to improve in the future.

    @vom - this is a known bug, which should be fixed as of now. Thank you!

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WRITE YOUR OWN NEATORAMA POST
Got a neat story? Share it with the world by writing your very own Neatorama blog post with the Upcoming Queue. Who knows, you might just win something ...

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