April 26, 2007
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boost + stars = most starred
We’ve been working on ways to find good content on Xanga for a while now.
Boost was good at finding pretty good content, but not so good with the multiple step nomination process.
Stars are good cause it’s really easy to vote (already 250,000 votes!), but it’s also easy to game and give ‘fake’ stars.Then we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could take boost’s ability to find good content and combine it with the ease of voting in Stars?
Starting now, if enough people give a lot of stars to a weblog, photo, or video, it will be automatically submitted to http://star.xanga.com. There the academy of xanga users (aka you!) can provide checks and balances by voting on what’s best. This should make it pretty hard to game Stars. If the academy of xanga users agrees that the post is really good, it must really be something – so we’ll give it a rare “Star Award”!
We also built in a system where if people try to game it by giving out fake stars or not honestly voting, the academy will fix it and the person’s star power will go down. We hope this system will be easy to vote and show the best content on Xanga.
Please check it out and tell us what you think!
Comments (158)
looking good
As with Boost, it doesn’t work for Safari.
great idea!
haha most my readers don’t bother to boost, but they’ll star me. yay ;P
hey there sup yall im hannah i just youre name on my xanga coooolnessss mannnn
something you may want to consider to reduce the number of unwarrented stars given, is to revoke someone’s ability to use a star. a simple method of childhood psychology, if someone abuses something, take it away. i’m only not sure of how realistic it would be to hunt down those who are truly gaming; as well as how you should differentiate between who’s gaming, and who’s simply enthralled by content that really isn’t worth a star.
Well, I’ll just have to give this post a vote.
That’s a really interesting idea. I checked it out after spending the last few weeks using boost. It looks okay. I hope it works well. – JN.14:27 Rom.5:8
I still hate it so much that I cannot get the words out to compliment you and your colleagues on the outstanding job done with the outside commenting. That deserves praise HUGE. People who use the stars do not. They deserve a boot to head. I do include myself in that as well. I’ve already pity starred friends and family.
Wait a minute! This allows people to opt out of being featured by not having the stars and identifies those who are self-promoting and needy! Awesome!
I change my mind. I always wished that people would wear tags that identified them as what they were. This does that. Nice.
That is one cute pooch.
I really like its simplicity. So far it seems less cluttered and less ”buggy” than Boost, which is very good indeed (Boost would often freeze up on me while I was voting). I’m glad the leaderboard is still there as well.
One thing I think I liked more about Boost however was the ability to easily nominate content (kinda like Digg). If I knew I’d eventually get to vote on the content I nominated, it made voting on the rest of the nominations more enjoyable.
Pete
sweet!
I like it if one does not feel like commenting can give stars. Lots of good content on Xanga. Judi
I think this is a really good compromise. Not too easy, not too hard. I hope the staff is still trolling around and looking for good content themselves to nominate as well. Kudos.
Am giving you a 5 stars then….
Slight problem: This post, rated 4.5 stars with 10 votes, ranks lower than a site with 5 stars from 2 or 3 votes. There ought to be more weight given to the number of votes, don’t you think?
Does that mean Boost is dead ?
Does the star system mean only those that have a huge following will get enough stars to get the coveted award. What about good content that has only a small following.
I am not really aspiring to have a STAR blog in terms of popularity…so although I think it is a cool idea, it will probably not change my Xanga behaviour.
awesome. more new things to xanga.
I love it how you guys are always trying to improve Xanga. I originally started blogging with LiveJournal, but switched because a lot of my friends used Xanga instead. I still preferred LJ for a while, because it had more features, but over time I fell away from using it altogether and Xanga has really stepped up. It’s great that everything is so customizable but you can still opt-out of pretty much whatever you want. Props to the staff!
not a bad idea
Sorry but I hardly see how it will determine good content… it was obvious with boost that if you would show a little booty or boob or take a scanky picture in the mirror of yourself in some degrading position… you would wind up on the top… Quanity does not mean quality… do we loose our ability to make a post inappropiate?
That should have said MARK a post inapropiate…
Is it possible to just have it for one’s subscribtions? I’d be more interested in seeing my xanga buddies’ best posts – that’d be pretty sweet.
Ok, I wondered what those stars were for. lol
woo!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
hey ive done everything i could for the star thing its just not working…will u b my friend!?!
sounds interesting!
How do you exactly “boost” a content? I don’t see any links which I will click in order to “boost” someone. Where is it EXACTLY in the xanga website? Is it in the right hand corner?
Can you explain fully how it is to BOOST people?
Duh.
Actually, the xanga team should be the one who will LOOK for good content to be featured, not the xanga users themselves.
After all, there are those who will give LOTS of stars to users who don’t have good content and if it will be submitted automatically, then what’s the point? All you feature are those who are popular (a.k.a. lots of comments) rather than good content–and by good content, I mean THOSE weblogs who have worthy entries to read–like philosophical thoughts, world news and not just some random blabbing.
There are LOTS of people I would nominate to be featured–I just don’t know how this boosting thing works, whether I will click something or what.
I’ve been in xanga long enough but I don’t really get all the service here.
Also, how come pictures I uploaded in http://www.tinypic.com (an image hosting site) isn’t working? It used to work before because that is where I uploaded my pictures.
may we opt out of it?
and if so, how.
everytime i turn around there’s something new
added and it’s set to auto default as “yes”.
so i have to click around to find it…and then opt out of it…
and…grr.
wow, y’all peeps at xanga are definitely going crazy–but it’s kinda cool what you’re coming up with. So what’s the issue with boost? ie: why wasn’t/isn’t it good enough alone that you needed to add the star system to complement, supplement, whatev?
Just curious.
~the utmost
Hey!!! Can you put the worst blogs too?
I think a lot of the time people just read a post and don’t bother grading it – with stars or anything else. I don’t like to give someone one or two stars. Even if it’s a poor post. If it’s a ‘deserving’ post I like to give it five (or at least four) stars.
What am I grading anyway? The person’s use of the English language? Correct spelling? Proper grammar? Or is it okay to grade strictly on the writer’s ideas?
David
sounds like a kindergarten teacher giving out stars on a kid’s drawing…
interesting…and exciting…now im gonna ask my visitors to give me stars… lol…
Cool.
I can’t seem to figure out how to vote…and ther doesn’t seem to be much to pick from. PICK ME Ha ha.
I have a really cool site if your into the Catholic thing.
hi
ok..I dont know what to say…how ever is this going to work when people dont come to your xanga?
wa~ So more Star ~ woo~~~~
Another feature that doesn’t work for me. First the Pulse works once a month & now this. Instead of always adding new bells & whistles, why not make certain the ones you already have work for everyone? I’ve been a Premium member for years too.
Please explain this one!!! === i saw this at http://www.xanga.com/h0tpink20 discussion!
—————————
Weird because I just saw your BLOG address at xanga STARRED in frontpage, and then i click it, my browser had
error after I click your blog site! I saw my modem connection failed! So i connected again and when i browse the
who starred in xanga, your site is no longer there!!!!! Weird! And your blog is at #1 because your blog had the highest
comment and stars and the ones retained there after were those below 10 comments. Weird, how did it happen?
Good thing, I browsed my HISTORY page and there I saw your blog URL!!! Thank!
Posted 4/30/2007 1:13 AM by han
My reply
HAN, it happens! One click your blog is there, the next thing you know, it’s gone!
It happens and it’s really weird because it MUST be Placed in an ALphabetical order or better most updated depending on the dates for MUCH EASIER BROWSING!! That only I suggest so it will not be hard to search esp when the SEARCHING icon is too slow…. it happens most of the time, I hope xanga fixes this!
Posted 4/30/2007 1:16 AM by georginawilson
dr_phil_36 - spam!
¦n¥D·N§r!
huh~check the pilot run
Any type of option that helps to prevent abuse is great, now if the pseudo feature content on the front page changes more frequently….
wo
good idea!
Well I don’t really want many ppl to know my Xanga site…
Can we opt-out of being put on the star frontpage?
Give my friend a wish~~~
HappyBirthday_to_You
Thanks~
you should give us a code to disable this star thing. A lot of these new options are kind of homogenizing — not everyone uses Xanga for exactly the same purposes, so not all of us are going to give a darn what the rest of Xanga thinks about anything.
When are you guys going to support OpenID? I’d like my Livejournal friends to be able to add me to their friends lists so I can see friends-only posts without signing up for a Livejournal account.
I love the idea!! 5 stars for you!
Er. Sorry if I sounded rude; I didn’t meant to be. I appreciate the work you guys do to make this place more interesting, I just kinda wish we could more easily choose whether or not to take advantage of stuff like this.
coolio!
As flawed as the boost system was, it was brilliant in a big way. Smaller sites stood a chance at getting nominated. It only took one person to find quality work and nominate it. This new stars system has already become a popularity contest with the same old faces getting high stars just for saying, “comment here, peeps”. That is such crap. Now the small sites with quality content have no way to get any recognition. In addition, the old and worn out “comment whores” still dominate. Thanks for nothing.
How does one opt out of having stars?
good idea!
what kind of dog is that?
Hey do u guys think that having a music player on xanga is going to be coming up anytime soon? something that we can upload a song from our computer & like have it play on our page each time somebody visits?? or are we going to have 2 stick with finding a music player code and going that route?
boost isn’t working on
I was looking at your picture of your dog, and I must say, he is quite adorable! What type of breed is he?
I feel like a star with this …… soo gooood
what happened to the tags showing up in public view?
could you bring that back?
my content is quite good
and I never have the boost
Nice one!!!! Gina Bling
HALO,,§Ú«Y»´ä¬JªB¤Í¥J=)”
Getting eprops/stars depends on popularity, not content. Excellent content gets you kudos from your audience, from rating sites and mentions in all sorts of other sites and attracts a number of people who are looking for somewhere to publish their own carefully thought-out blogs. Popularity, attracting a reasonable no. of kids in a class, gets you more kids, gets you more of a target audience for your appalling ad.yieldmanager.com popups, gets you more subscriptions even. So all this catering for the lowest common denominator will earn you more money, and being a commercial (and American) company, naturally its the bottom line you care about. But you won’t get quality that way.
Nice idea!
Whats Up, Chris?? Cool site btw. love it. ttyl.
Looks like a good idea .I like this site and it looks great
I guess you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. Do people blog to get stars and ratings? I guess some do. There are people on here that I honestly have no idea how they are capable of keeping up. Posts, comments, messages, stars, eprops. It’s a full time job, and I must admit I’ve lost a lot of sleep since I began
The double edged sword however, is you can’t get recognized for good content if you don’t have a TON of readers, and the only way to get a ton of readers is by posting content that people like and posting it often. I find a marked decrease in my readership when I go a weekend without posting. Now if I was only posting for “myself” that shouldn’t matter, right? But I’ll admit that vanity sometimes gets the best of me when people like what I write. Not that I’ll ever be the next Perez Hilton or Just Jared (who would want that! Yuck). I’d be happy to be the next Cakalusa though (when he gets married and retires to the suburbs of course.) Though I doubt I could ever have the stamina. LOL 
Could you please post the story i have on my xanga page somewhere it will get seen. it’s about Madeline the three year old british girl feared abducted in Portugal.
Thank you
getting better everyday
chris, how on earth do you get your post featured? i understand that the post must be a good one and worthy of many comments, but is there an application process or some link we go to to submit our post?
Dear Chris,
I think ,if these people, were, in Kindergarden the stars would be a great idea. I have read peoples profile’s on Xanga’s Home Page and looked at the graphics thinking W A I T ,,, am I visiting “My Space”? They are using Xanga. I beleive if you give out a free site it can and will be exploited. No way should TRASH be acceptable.
If anyone submitted a nice picture, created by them could you put that on your Home Page for a time? Just a thought.
Phillipians 4:8 tell us , from the Bible how our Xanga sites should look.><>:)
Sounds good to me it wiil be intersting to see who gets to the top!!!!!!!!!!
p.s. check out my site and the soon to come site of me and two of my friends if you like Star Wars and/or make up your own story lines. the site of me and my friends is La_La3000. (don’t ask me why it’s called La_La3000, they did not talk to me first, but that is OK) (:~#~~~~~~~~~~ <girl with a long ponytail) lol
p.s. that dog IS cute. lol ^-^ I have a dog too, and maybe someday I will have a pic of him on my site!!!
p.s. his name is Sandy and he is a boxer/cocker mix, he is sooooooo cute. but he can be a handfull sometimes. ^_^
hi chris i just got an xanga & i am having trouble finding friends!!!!!!!!!!!
HELP
omg this is like retearted!!1
Thanks. Now only the people who game the system, ever have a chance to reach the user evaluation level. Gotta love your logic
Oh, this is pretty cool. I like it.
hey, found a bug? cannot visit “explicit” pages, did the age verifier long time ago, i am above the age of 18. any suggestions?
what’s going on with explicit posting? i have been verified, but now i am unable to see my friends explicit sites. a lot of people are having this problem, apparently. so what’s the deal?!
Hey, am I banished from here or what? I just paid you fro a Premuim account and no one can view my page and I can’t view anyone else’s — you rated me explicit I did your age bullshit, what now??
Are you going to fix this or I’m just one of those uppity undesirables Jews that’s unworthy to have a weblog here viewable by other undesirables here??
What do you want to fix it? Money? what?
♥
sounds nice
i want you to put my stuff back.
oh. . .and it would be nice if you answered my e-mails…it the past year you have not answered once. what is the point of allowing us to write to you if you have no intention of answering???
k thnx
Hello. I was wondering how I suggest a Xanga entry for Featured Content, or if that is possible. I thought this Xanga entry would be good: http://www.xanga.com/rsxsensazn/549557843/item.html?nextdate=last
It’s kind of controversial, and it brings up a good subject.
????very hppay,??go??^.^
Good idea.
hey dude i would love you but i dont i heart jesse mccartney & zac efron
LOSER
For the stars!
coolies~
i want stars~~ ^^
Sounds good to meh. =D
can u tell people to comment me????
-aliccea-
Yay! How exciting….-.-
I don’t think the star system is particularly effective. It seems to reward those with a particularly large readership to begin with. It’s a good idea though.
I feel as if Xanga does not know what direction it is heading. You guys seem to be reacting to the developments of other sites. Many of your new features seem to be based on some of Facebook’s features. I feel as if you guys have strayed a bit too far from your weblog roots. The nudges, the profiles, the reviews . . . all that stuff makes Xanga seem very cluttered.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Xanga. Or rather, I’m so entrenched in it that it’s hard for me to move on. 1990+ days. And I’m still a cheapo who refuses to go premium -=)
Anyway, I hope you guys keep on coming up with some newer developments, and hopefully a more focused vision of what you want Xanga to be.
it would be nice if we could get a link to to star page on our private pages.
this is a really good idea
But what if you don’t get many reader’s? How do you get more reader’s on you site? That is a good idea though
Have a wonderful and blessed afternoon.
God Bless!
Shelby
haha
WOW! weird but kool site you got. *-* hi whats up! and how r u?
from Athos
But people are asking me for the link to do Xanga themes and the video showing “how to”. They like mine. I didn’t bookmark it. Where is it? I didn’t dream that did I? LOL!
wusp
you very stupid
89777
_ _
_ !!!!
M M
_
u got a dog
What is up
whio the fuck are you and why did u leave me tht shit on my xanga
idc abt any crappy stars
ok thanx
bye
How do you get rid of them? I’m sure a lot of people love the star idea but I don’t, I think it’s cheap-looking and tacky.
good!!
hey um are you the guy who invented xanga?
you got my vote
At first I thought it was a good idea. I voted for some friends content that never saw it to a vote because of few readers. (Very good nature photography involved.) Instead many of the pictures up for a vote were suggestive pictures of girls and very few original presentations.
Hey Chris, I thought you’d get a kick out my friend’s latest comment on my Xanga Woes post
kool
Hey.
I’m trying to get a song to play on my Xanga.
Is there a reason every method is failing?
I want the option to not have something of mine that i post get auto added to added to http://star.xanga.com i don get stars often but still would rather have that choice.
hey,please leave me a comment becouse i bairly ever get comments (not even from my BFF) so please leave a comment! =D =)
ehy,cuite dog in that pic! =D
hey,leve me a comment !=) =D
hi- I have a question- what is a “nudge”…
thanks.. cn
This isn’t about the star system (which I don’t plan on using) but I don’t know who else or where else to comment about this.
PLEASE stop putting links to movies, etc. in entries. For example, when I write “Pirates 3″ it creates a link to the Pirates of the Caribbean 3 trailer. I hate this. If I wanted a link in my entry, I’d put one.
I hope I’m not the only one annoyed by this.
Thank you, because aside from that, Xanga=AWESOME!
Cool, thanks for the increased usability.
A pair of five stars are 10? but you only have five then…
hey waz up
interesting stuff
wa~~~woooo!
alivefishers has an awesome photo from Montana…just an idea for featured photos.
alivefishers has an awesome photo from Montana…just an idea for featured photos.
you guys may want to mod the what appears on the xanga front page because i see things that are worth another heavy fine there.
I like the idea – does it help to provide opportunities for featured content on the home page? If I may humbly say so, I think my post today (as well as others) but today in particular is a great start to a Friday
Keep up the good work!
i have a better idea. shut down bad xangas DEATH NOTE style.
i’m a turtle when it comes to this kinda thing…but xanga rocks!
good…
i love xanga….can’t believe i just sprung for a xanga-life account on a random spur of the moment.
good idea but whats up with all the blogs not working?
How do get people to find my postings by doing a search on the net of my name? I’ve searched for my name on the net but could not find my xanga profile. Do I need to change my username?
please feature this. It’s too good. Its amazing. Just because folks haven’t starred it (we’re not used to it yet).
http://www.xanga.com/My_HAT_is_older_than_you/601295232/by-the-way.html
I just checked the voting site out and, sorry, but I was extremely over-unimpressed. I do not see how family pics and when it is someone’s birthday and what sign they are born under is fascinating stuff, nor is it riveting to read the first line: I shouldn’t be on Xanga and see a lot of pictures of a person on the beach. Obviously these people are nominated by endless stars/eprops from friends which is fair enough. Friends like pictures of each other and to hear what someone bought in the mall and how its their birthday so ‘head on over and vote for ME!!!!’ As Marion said on one of her last blogs there are these people you see on footprints who visit you all the time but who never comment and seem to hope to intrigue you enough to visit them and hopefully comment and give them stars. One of these people did comment on her blog and what he said proved what she had said.
So now you have eprops, boost, stars, ‘star of star’ and what will be your next award to try and identify quality writing? On the other hand, perhaps popularity is more popular than quality!
I don’t see why the Xanga Team even has a Xanga avaliable for commenting. They never respond to anything you comment them about. So what’s the point?
Also, I have a very pretty picture I took that A LOT people like, it gets all five star votes all the time. But yet these pictures of anime porn, naked dicks, & stuff like that are up for the “coveteted” (sp?) star award!? What kind of shit is that?!? Seriously. That’s fuckin’ stupid. Really, really stupid. Not to mention, that’s also sick in more ways than one.
So therefore, along with auto-mated thing I think you should atleast have an actual person go through & look for shit like that. I even reported all of these sites with this nude stuff up for a star award because one of them was even underage. But does anyone do anything about it??? Hell no. So come on people. Get a life, and do something about it.
Yeah. Not that anyone from the Xanga Team will ever read this. Atleast Tom actually reads things on MySpace & pays attention to people once in a while. (Just like the “friends” thing wa sooo copying off of myspace. Get some orginality. And by the way, the “Xanga Themes” look like crap.)
As much as I like Xanga & have used Xanga in the past, I think I’m starting to like MySpace better. I should write a blog on it, not that you guys would feature it.
Brilliant!
hey um, i have a question…you see, i’ve had a xanga for a few years now and i decided i wanted a different username so i got a new xanga and the theme thingy is confusing me. i want it to look similar to my other xanga and i cant get my music or my c-box to come up.
HI I MAKE IT OK I LIKE SEX U CALLLE ME HERRE
How, exactly, does this differ from the eProps in the first place? Just as the number of eProps did not a quality post guarantee, the number of stars, boosts or other votes will not guarantee a quality post. Usually, they will just guarantee nudity. Back in the day we used the term “Propwhore” but these days it’s just exactly the same behaviour for stars or whatever. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.
this is an awesome feature