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Upcoming Queue Update: Queuebot Got a Little Too Excited Today ...

By Alex in Neatorama Only on Feb 5, 2009 at 11:57 pm


We got a heavy influx from Yahoo! visitors (hi guys!) – and while I was busy trying to keep the servers alive, Queuebot got a little too excited and posted 48 posts from the Upcoming Queue. That’s a lot of posts!

Obviously some of the posts are of dubious quality – I’m going to go through them and fix what I can. We’ll tighten the algo to improve the quality of posts that get promoted.

We’re still working on the issues of search (the folks at Lijit are working hard to improve indexing and relevance) and duplicates (now admins can stop votings on things that are obviously dupes, I think we should enable flagging for duplicates). Like any good project, this one has its hiccups. We’ll get them all straightened out soon. I thank you for your patience!


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  1. philliposophy
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 12:09 am

    Neatoroma, quantity over quality? Not so neat.

  2. Alex
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 12:13 am

    Well, philliposophy, that's exactly why Queuebot and I are going to have a little talk ...

  3. AJ
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 1:01 am

    I'd feel a lot better if a human approved every post on the front page. I visit Neatorama because what you consider neat is often what I consider neat. If Neatorama becomes a social network it could easily become something quite different, watered down, a mirror of what other sites offer.

  4. The Slapster
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 1:02 am

    This is a pretty massive undertaking, stick with it & you'll have one of the coolest user-submitted content sites around!

  5. Alex
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 1:48 am

    @AJ - this is definitely an option. Let's see if we can fix the algo to be more selective, if not, then we may have to resort to manual selection of posts. This is not something I wanted to do, since this takes away the power to promote good posts from voters.

    Thanks The Slapster! I've certainly underestimated the amount of work it's taking to control the Queue.

  6. haptic
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 1:52 am

    Hi Alex,

    Big fan of your blog, probably my favorite on the web, but I have to agree with Phil and AJ. Usually I find upwards of 80% of the content on neatorama to be compelling and fresh. But now with the Que it seems that the site has become almost a junkyard for posts and you need to dig through a lot of garbage to find something cool. I understand that it generates traffic but it also takes away from the quality and personal touch. You've assembled a solid blogging crew and have seemingly continued to attract more advertisers. I hope you guys stick to the music and don't sell out. If I may suggest some advice it would be to limit the Que to a 'Que of the day'. That way your guaranteed to get an interesting read and it doesn't become overwhelming. Other than that, keep up the good work!

  7. Johnny Cat
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 2:06 am

    Queue of the day! Awesome idea.

  8. Dan Smith
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 5:19 am

    yo, thanx

  9. Miss Cellania
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 8:19 am

    The problem with the Queue of the Day idea is that really great links might not make it. I'm frustrated now because I see something great to post, then find that it's in the queue where it will have to wait for votes before going to the front page. And if the link is great, but the submitter did a lousy job writing it up, it probably will never get posted.

  10. Paul
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 8:35 am

    currently, at least for me the submit won't go past the filling in info stage, is this happening for anyone else?

  11. sadtomato
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 9:39 am

    I guess I have to agree with folks above. I used to visit Neatorama several times a day and I read the majority of the posts and followed most links. Now I find myself bored and uninterested. Like Haptic said, there are a few gems in there but you gotta dig.

  12. marcusbacus
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 10:09 am

    I felt a little strange when I saw a gazillion posts and some that weren't that neat as before.

    The speed of what is posted should be controlled too if this queue thing continues (my vote is for a big NO) - sometimes with a trillion new posts, a very good one can be easily buried by useless bot-things. Limiting the number of posts can be a drag because submissions will continue - and raise over time I suppose.

    I wouldn't like to see Neatorama turned into a Wiki. Or a public blog. As others said, I've stopped browsing after the 2nd page of "new" posts.

  13. someoneowned
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 11:05 am

    I, for one, applaud your attempts to make this site more than it already is. Some things may not be "interesting" to one, however are to another. Keep up the great work. I look forward to there always being something new here for me to catch.

    The kinks will work themselves out and you will find the path that you wish to take. It is your site after all, we are just visitors here. :)

  14. AJB
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 11:29 am

    I like the queue (or two or three) of the day idea!

  15. Alex
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    Thank you for the feedback, everyone - The purpose of the Upcoming Queue is to open up Neatorama to its userbase. A blog is essentially a top-down enterprise: authors write and readers read (and occassionally comment). What we're trying to do is to encourage the flow of information the other way: let everyone guest post on Neatorama.

    Obviously, there are kinks to be worked out. The software, VaroCMS by Rommel Santor, is marvelous. I can't say enough good things about it and about working with him. We just have to tinker with the implementation a bit, especially given the intrinsic nature of the blog as it has been for the past few years.

    Re: Queue of the Day. It's a neat idea, but I'm afraid that it may just be too constricting.

    @Paul - I just posted a test submission to the UQ, and found it to work ok. Perhaps clear your cache? We had a massive influx of visitors from Yahoo! yesterday and the servers probably were a bit tired :)

    @someoneowned - yes, you're absolutely right! There have been many times that I thought a post wouldn't be too interesting turn out to be one of Neatorama's most popular posts. And vice versa - posts that I thought were a sure thing turned out to be duds. I've stopped thinking that I can arbitrate what is or is not interesting to other people :) And thank you for the kind words!

  16. Peeves
    Feb 6th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Two Cents:

    Great job trying to get this idea perfected. I think a lot of the problems can be solved with more stringent standards that can only be enforced by humans. That means a lot of work from the staff and I do really miss the old Neatorama. So far UQ hasn't produced anything like a regular post (even if it isn't a duplicate it's usually bland or pretty old) and it seems the staff is posting less and less (or maybe it just seems that way with the number of UQ posts increasing). The trade off hasn't been worth it and if the staff needs to devote even more time to filtering this stuff then that means even less Neato posts.

    I'd just turn it into a way for people to submit tips. If they write about something particularly interesting and particularly well, then post that content and thank them with a link to their blog or something.

  17. Alex
    Feb 7th, 2009 at 12:52 am

    @Peeves - well, we used to have the submit-a-tip method. It was a lot of work sifting through the tips.

    I'm predicting that a small number of dedicated users will dominate the Upcoming Queue. I'm okay with that, as long as the quality of the submissions remain high.

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