This is to add my .02 on alternative method of blog points/ranking. I added it on a wiki page, but thought of posting it here so it can be bounced around some more.
The <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/wiki?path=/display/community/blogrankingalternatives-community+discussion&">wiki page</a> is here. Same suggestions are below
<b>Blog points</b>
Like the forums, audience should be allowed to give points to a blog, and SDN moderators should leave it to that. It can work like this -
- Every member has a fixed finite amount of points to give (say 500).
- A member can distribute points to any number of blogs that (s)he likes. But (s)he has a limited amount of them so (s)he has the responsibility to distribute it wisely.
- In addition, one can give unlimited number of one-pointers (like yellow stars in forums) to the blogs one reads. This will ensure that a good first impression of a blog will get it enough such points.
- One can always redistribute (say I spent my points, but there is a new blog much better, I can reassign points from older blogs to this).
Practically speaking, a member may be able to read and appreciate only a finite no of blogs. With this in mind, a fixed amount (say 500) should be enough to award all the blogs that one appreciates.
If the above results in a blog getting high score because of assistance from blogger's friends, another option is to counter-balance it with
- Every member can choose to assign one negative point (-1) to any blog one reads and it doesn't count towards the 500 he has. So, if a member thinks that a blog has been unfairly rated, one can assign -1 (say a red star) to it. The no of community being this large, any unfair assistance will be quickly addressed with this (20 friends assigning 500 points each will be balanced by 10000 members seeing it as unfair and assigning -1 each resulting in a 0 (or -ve) score). Getting 'red stars' would also mean that people perceive the blogger to be unfairly promoting the blog.
With this, we can ensure that the blog points reflect the quality/usefulness of the post from the audience's perspective. It will also address the issue of a blog being rated low because it is in a niche area. (People feeling passionately about, say a blog in MDM, can assign all 500 to it, as against someone in BI who will distribute it among 10 good blogs).
It can then be leveled with current blog scores - say the highest ranked blog has got 4450 points, all blogs can then be leveled as "score = pointe * 120 / 4450".
<b>Blog main page - listing the blogs</b>
To ensure high visibility of good blogs, the highest rated blogs (say 10 of them) of last 30 days should occupy the top space (it will also be an incentive to write something that runs to the top), followed by the list of blogs in time sequence.
<b>Blog categories</b>
'Ranting' is a good start. Another category might be 'opinion'. People writing 'opinion' pieces are writing it not for the audience, but for themselves (in the sense they think they have something to say). As such, it should fetch no points. It should still be listed the same, in the 'latest first' sequence.
Bluesky
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