April 19, 2007
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Seeing stars?
Ever since we’ve started hand-picking weblog posts to Feature on our frontpage, we’ve noticed how hard it is to find quality posts on Xanga. It’s hard to find find if you don’t know where to look. Eprops and comments don’t do a good job because almost everyone just gives 2 eprops.
So dave and vikas added “Stars” to Photos and Videos – a low key way that allows visitors to rate your post on a scale of 1 to 5. They’ve been a huge hit! We’ve gotten thousands of stars, and it really helps in identifying good content. So we thought we’d add them to Weblogs too – you can see them below each post.
It’s also a good way for people who don’t like to leave comments to give feedback when they think a post is really good.
Some people might not like Stars though, so we’ve built an optout. If you deactivate Stars, the Stars option should disappear from your site soon. Just go here to turn them off:
* http://edit.xanga.com/editaccountprivacy.aspxBy the way, sorry to have launched Stars without a head’s up! We had planned to post about this ahead of launch, but due to an internal mixup we didn’t get to it in time
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Let us know what you think of Stars!
Comments (104)
How does the system handle the information you get from stars? Some people might not have a lot of readers and so they would receive less votes, but that wouldn’t make their content any less excellent.
that’s a great concern, so we’re constructing a system to go along with this where anything that gets even a few stars has a chance to be featured on a frontpage. we’re currently testing it out and will hopefully be launching this in a few days.
That’s totally cool.
I really think this is the quickest and best way to find content.
Cool beans.
Xanga NewsAttention: Xanga now has a great new feature as part of Xanga Beta.
This new addition is added to pictures and posts. It alows people to see how many people have commented on your blog even if they are added to the ignore list. In addition it shows the number of reviews and shows a system of stars allowing you to show a system of stars. The higher the stars the better the review. This is a form of remote boosting via Xanga Dash. Boosting through this system of stars is now even accepted off Xanga Dash. A more detailed system is being set up for paying members however it works great and is wonderful for non-paying members. There is no way of knowing how this will effect Xanga Boost. We are still trying to find if the stars system will be applied to other sections of Xanga like blogrings and the mini-off-theme logs known as Pulse.
BTW, I can rate my own post (5 stars, yay!).
Is the system meant to enable bloggers to rate their own post?
Just wondering.
yeah – you can add stars to your own stuff. i think we all know when a post is good and when it’s just ‘ok’ right? so figured you would want to vote on your own stuff. however, if you’ll notice you can only vote once. =) no sneakiness!
Very good idea ,I think that it will help find the good stuff!!!
I was SO confused as to what is this new option?!
thanks for the verification post!
yay for stars. we’re gonna be phasing out the eprops soon?
Really an easy way! Good!
are these to replace eprops?
What is the use of the middle space in between the “votes” and “comments”?
I think this is awesome..
apsofuid – no they will not replace eprops. eprops will stick around.
and maths_king2000 – that space will be used for awards in the future. =)
if we turn off the stars, the box is still there showing a tally of the comments received.
since there’s already a side module doing that, is there a way to get rid of the entire box?
stars are fine…how about you make a top friends?
wow…that’s pretty sek c
Will this Xanga Stars be developed to Audio and Pulse soon?
So the visitors see your stars? I don’t see any…..just wondered if I was supposed to or not…thanks, John* Lee – priorities
Good job, special thanks to Xanga.com Chief In Editing and Staff.
Thanks for creating an option to turn them off.
I think they will be great fun for people who want to put their blogs out there.
I think all of you at Xanga are doing a great job of making Xanga a great place for all of us.
if you deactivate the stars, the comments box thing within your post still remains.
is there any way to get rid of that too?
What if you don’t want visitors to come to your page, let alone rate your posts? Will they still be able to do so if you have Xanga Lock?
hey i think getting stars on xanga is cool go to my site see if u like it and leave a comment thanks.
Hi PapalmAMillionaire – your xanga lock will still work! that’s your first line of defense and unless they’re signed in (or your friend if you have friends lock) they won’t be able to access your site to star it either.
good idea, i was wondering what that was about.
hmm. this shall be interesting.
DOD reported this before xanga staff did.
I’ve been using it! its great. Finally none of the fake hollywood things anymore. =]
If you people spent half as much time actually looking for good content as you do adding confusing new systems that conflict with, overlap, replace… or just plain muddle what you already have… you might actually find it. You all frankly have made me sick at this point. Xanga sucks and if you hadn’t automatically billed my paypal for another six months of premium when I already told you not to, via your non-working options page (typical), I would be shutting my site down.
its a good idea, but im not sure i full grasp just how this will deter all of my friends from being all ‘hey! 5 stars!’ sure, you can read my post and be like ‘ok….not 5 star worthy.’ but do you really want to do that for…idk….50,000 5 stared posts that are really (maybe) one star-worthy?
just throwing tha out there.
peace, love, hummer
JP
can users rate themselves, i think it defeats the purpose if i can rate myself.
nice work. hopefully it won’t be abused e.g. a vindictive fellow gets all his friends to rate somebody’s post 1 star
Sounds like a cool idea if people get into doing it.
I just wanted to ask if you had already answered the question previously posed by diov and r21chumz – I turned the stars-feature off, but I can’t seem to figure out how to remove the box that remains (saying “2 comments” on the righthand side of the screen). Is there an option for that?
I haven’t seen where to give the stars or ratings.
i like the stars thingy
good job
keep up the good work
yes to eprops and stars…. awesome add on..
well thats nice, its just like in gather. I hope this will help newbies like me get my xanga out there! thanks xanga!
Nicely done Chris. My only suggestion would be to place the star box below or above the comment box. If it’s on the top, only the first few commenters will remember it’s there. When I comment, I don’t always read others comments, so I just press my “End” key to go right to the comment box. Thanks
I agree with CareyGLY.
In order to make stars more “valuable” like some are concerned about, maybe there could be a way to only give users a certain number of stars to give out over a period of time. I mean, how many subscriptions that you read are really that worthy of stars? So a limted number, maybe ten a week, would make people think about who really deserves them, instead of just handing out as many as they like to all their friends. And yeah, let’s not be able to rate our own posts. That’s kinda lame.
This is great – it’s kind of like “digg” and various other sites.
The nifty thing about this is that is one click to rate.
you know what you should do, make the default radio button checked off as “Comment Only”. That way when people leave comments and want to leave eprops, they have a laboriously click an extra time so they really mean it!
-Eugene (christine’s friend)
Just a thought…What about adding stars to blog entries? Honestly I hardly look at photos on xanga. If this feature is for photos only, I would suggest that the votes show up on the photos page. Right now you can only see them on the selected photo.
The daily tally could then be used as a way to feature BLOG entries on the xanga home page.
neat..!
i see stars~
I like the stars but, I should have used them a minute ago and forgot as they are not noticable enough. Moving them down here by the comment box would be better I think.
I give eprops as that puts my name on the list of commenters. I think people like to know who was here and be able to see it on the left.
I like the stars, but wish you would get rid of e-props ~ they are just a nuisance. One thing ~ it would be nice to know who gave the stars to one’s site ~ is it possible to know?
hey fwren – right now, there isn’t a way to know who left stars. we thought it would be a no pretense way of saying if content is good or not. if we showed who left them, then it would become more social (popular people would do better i think?) which is what eprops kinda does already.
Das einzig interesseante an deiner Lebensgeschichte ist, wie du aus dem Versuchslabor entkommen bist.
I saw a note earlier about not having to be a xanga member to post comment…great idea for those of us who use xanga and want to share it with family and friends who aren’t members but might want to comment
This is a really horrible idea.
Most blogs are about people’s lives. You want to rate that? You want to give people yet one more chance in this world to dehumanize others? Why?
Finding good content is not a problem and you all know it. You have made a very easy place to navigate and search. I do not know the real reason for all these toys. I know that we aren’t getting it though.
Everything written comes off wonderfully like you are trying to make us happy. I appreciate that and believe it too.
I just think that some of the thoughts behind some of the toys have not gone far enough or deep enough.
If one considers rating humans long enough, the reason doing such is wrong will become clear. Not every xangan is invested in his or her blog to the point they would take offense, but many are and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make it right to rate people.
Yes, the option to rate humans can be turned off, but YOU offer it. That is a blight.
MySpace allows people to think it okay to rate their friends publicly. It is not okay and anyone who does it is lacking in something very important. But they have been fed a lie by default. And just because a person disagrees with that, does not mean it’s wrong. Rating people is wrong. Rating one’s friends is disturbingly wrong.
I was happy to have eProps default to something kind. If I had to use them I did it to make a point. That point was made to racists mostly with zero eProps.
Do you understand that if something is not used often that when it is used it is stronger and carries more weight? If a person uses profanity in every blog those words carry no meaning, but if he or she uses them infrequently when they are used they MEAN something. EProps were and are like that. In the reverse for some people too.
Stars do not. Stars default to an unkindness. And they are in our blogs by default as well which is another wrong. You have made it more work to comment on people’s blogs. You have thrown up an obstacle to communication. You have put a tiny chink in the moral character of everyone.
I would like to be able to come to one of these pages sometimes and leave a lengthy good remark, but even the new outside comments have been overshadowed by this little depravity. Also, they have not been explained to us nor shown to us and that process, that is something that would deserve lengthy praise. But it is absent.
The themes might deserve praise if they were usable safely but they aren’t so far, I have to check. If the web stats codes cannot be used yet then the themes are for people who don’t care about safety options only. Likely such people are not who they claim to be on their blogs OR they just don’t understand why it can be very important to have IP addresses.
The forum would deserve such praise if it were open to all topics and if it were linked on the front page at least. I have no idea how to get back there.
I have been here for a year and just now realized there was a xanga team page. Why is that? It is because the banner communication is lacking? or is it because I didn’t pay attention? It is because it doesn’t call attention to itself anymore since it calls attention to itself all the darn time and often for nothing of importance.
OKAY: That was hard and it sucked to write it.
You have something great here. I think if you believe that you’ll stop trying to tart it up and dumb it down.
And by YOU I don’t mean Chris.
Chris, I have no idea who you are or anything about the Xanga team. They have not been introduced to me. Perhaps if I knew a little about them I would be less honest though.
If you really want to see if people want stars or how they feel about them, make them turn them ON not OFF. It would likely be disappointing, but that is because it would be apropos.
Good content. That will vary and people will find what they need with the search and with reading comments. If they do not, they aren’t looking.
If they are truly bothering you with their laziness then send out a boiler plate message that links them to Charles Dickens or Shakespeare or Pushkin or Lao Tsu (I love that guy right now) or myriad others. Or maybe explain how to use those tools?
Oh Chris, I think you might want to reconsider your assertion that comments are not good enough in light of the obvious. They are more than good, they are downright useful and amazing and offer a chance to communicate and solve and support and love among other things.
HEY, here’s an idea that wold be useful if you really wanted to spend time. Make each comment box easier to use. Ital, bold and linking should be simple but it’s a pain in the bum. Fix that and you have something worthy of page length praise.
B
Something that is starred much doesn’t mean it’s good. Just like something that is boosted doesn’t mean it’s good. All it means is that something is starred or boosted.
Here, of you want to know what people think is good then track who links to and what and to whom.
“Top Linked Sites” now there would be something that would indicate at least and interest. People will not go to the effort to link to another in every post unless there is a reason. Oh you will get super interesting stuff from that if you can do it.
I think thats it.
its pretty cool, but its kinda…weird for xanga… but i think it might be too much rating for one entry ^.^”
oh well. they’re cool anyways.
can you I can’t seem to get a new profile picture? The xangateam is seems to be doing a maintance check.. why?
same with me dragon
hello, i am sending this to give you permission to get rid of my old account shika_to_krissy. because due to some privacy reasons i have to shut down that account and had to create a new one. however when i type in my tags i still see my blogs for my old account being shown on the public web. please remove the entires from that account.
thank you.
…..MY PROFILE pic,,,can’t change
halo*
^^”
-0-i don’y understand that…–what should i do
Honestly, I’m tired of Xanga always wanting to be like Myspace. Xanga was better when it was different; not a Myspace duplicate.
+ I would like to be able to change my profile pic.. it’s ridiculous that I can’t even do that.
hihi*
Cool!
I appreciate your work… =]
Yo, why can’t I upload my profile picture?
coool i love it i noticed it the other day i thought wow is it just on my site or what and i started going to other sites and noticed it to love to all shelly.
Hey I noticed that I can’t seem to get a pro pic why can’t I
I wondered why there was no notice to it…the stars are a great idea!
why isnt uploading profile pics working? i really wanna change mine. srry for bothering u about this
nice work : )
good. i thought i can’t take the rating off of my site.
i type b/c i want to, not b/c i want ppl to rate me.
I have quality posts in my xanga, although very few people find it.
I love the stars. Thanks for making them.
I wanted to suggest a feature, but don’t know where to do that. Would it be possible to add a feature in which you could search your OWN past posts? For example, I’m looking for a specific post, and I don’t know which day it is on…I was thinking that if you could add a search the posts feature, maybe only available to the site owner (maybe in edit mode) that you can search your own previous posts for a specific topic, that would be super nice so that we do not have to go through each single page looking for it.
Thanks.
Sooooooo, what’s the point of eprops now?
Hi, my name is Tori. I recently made a site (against_animal_cruelty) and wrote a weblog post about it. I know you probably don’t take requests or anything, but i would like it if you would read it. I researched for nearly an hour on the topic in order to inform people about animal cruelty. I think it is a fairly good weblog post that you should check out. THANK YA!!!! bye
Stars are not showing up on my site… is there a reason?
Thanks,
~Linda~ (ImGODsPrincess2)
You know, I can write better than any of those that the xanga team has handpicked to be featured.
I don’t know why, but I really like all xanga users to view me as “featured” content and I found out that when I search for most discusses or newly updated, why is it that all I see are “chinese/koreans/japanese” xanga users??–and even when I just updated a minute ago, how come I can’t see my OWN username in the newly updated tab?
*confused*
Also…another thing—how come I noticed most of those you feature are Asians? I know I am Asian too—but I am Filipino. I noticed that most of those you feature in xanga frontpage are Koreans/Chinese/etc.
And please…..actually, those you featured are not even worth reading because most of what you feature are xanga users who just had this ONE entry that is good but the rest is not worth reading.
I’ve been writing poems, philosophical analyzations and everything in between for more than a year now and still nothing…
I’ve had ‘stars’ for a week – not a person has used them… so I’m thinking that’s not going to help your “hand-picking” – if the people commenting don’t use it. Thank you for the deactivation link, it’s what I came here to find - but I’m with the person before me – could you please make it ALL of that go away? Clutters and detracts attention from my content.
Thanks for the opt out, and thanks, but no thanks for the stars.
i like them.
Hi,
I was just browsing sites when I came across yours. Anyway, have a great day, and check out this website:
http://www.goodpersontest.com
-Billy
I would like to give others stars, but on dial up, they just don’t come up very quickly, and I don’t want to wait around for the option to come available to me. Is there any way for them to work faster? Thanks!
I agree, please make the box at the bottom of my entries go away. Thanks.
halo*-D
I really like this idea!
I don’t know how I feel about this… I mean, how can you judge what somebody writes like that. After all, it’s like judging somebody’s journal; somebody’s personal thoughts on their life. How can anybody truly judge that?
Enh, maybe I’m overthinking this too much. ^^;;
-Sara
yet another great upgrade
You should de-activiate being able to give yourself stars (and also a way you can erase your stars if you only accidentally clicked on it). I tried voting for the starred entries, and there’s really a lot of mundane, uncreative entries that I just have to roll my eyes at wondering how they ever even got to a point where someone has to vote on them.
If I read another… “im soooOOOooo bored today… leave me a lot of comments!” entry again, I think I’m going to scream.
You should re-instate some nomination method again. Something where someone has to take at least SOME effort to submit your entry for vote. Otherwise voting for these vapid entries is just tedious and no one will do it.
Maybe have something where if it gets enough “1 star” votes or maybe if people nominate it for being taken off consideration for votes enough times, it gets removed from voting.
Also, there is a flaw in this system in that people with a lot of subscribers are more likely to get a lot of votes whether the content is good or not.
Is there any way to stop the LOCK UP in the code that hangs the old BOOST page and now the new STARS page… I have 4 computers that I xanga on and all are locking up on Stars and all locked up on BOOST… I know I have posted about this and many others are having the same problem… ! ! ! Any Suggestions? ? ? ? Bet it is in the Java Script ?!?!?!
Is there any way to stop the LOCK UP in the code that hangs the old BOOST page and now the new STARS page… I have 4 computers that I xanga on and all are locking up on Stars and all locked up on BOOST… I know I have posted about this and many others are having the same problem… ! ! ! Any Suggestions? ? ? ? Bet it is in the Java Script ?!?!?!
Is there any way to stop the LOCK UP in the code that hangs the old BOOST page and now the new STARS page… I have 4 computers that I xanga on and all are locking up on Stars and all locked up on BOOST… I know I have posted about this and many others are having the same problem… ! ! ! Any Suggestions? ? ? ? Bet it is in the Java Script ?!?!?!
Think the boost thing worked slightly better….I liked the Newspaper idea….
xan.ga is good*V*
I can’t read this. Why is it veering off the screen to the right?
I want to know why sometimes the dates of some of my entries disappear. It was there before, but it disappered after a week.
BTW..I do see them now..:) I don’t thnk most of my friends really know what they are or that they are there and what for…when I give stars..I write *stars*! so they would notice..and they message me or mention..what are you writing “stars” for?
ha..only a few ‘get it’…so I don’t know..maybe it needs more attention..or the message made more noticeable..but it is a nice idea, I am sure lots of others will use it…take good care, and thanks for all the work you are doing here *****! Lee
That’s really cool! Thanks. It makes Xanga more fun. =) Not that it wasn’t it’s just more exciting. =)
the stars were pretty cool =) i know my site would never have made it on the featured content without the star stuff cuz i don’t have htat many ppl read my site.. (well until today)
I like it, but the position is annoying. So why I hid it.
Oops… should be “So I hid it”.
Chris, do you know wat happemned to the site mann ?
Everyone gets two eprops because it defaults to 2 instead of 0. Most users don’t care about eprops, they just want to comment.