HEY EVERYONE!!!
pokemon-paradijs.comThis is probably going to be the last Writer of the Month poll. (wut?) We already made a change in how we’re doing the Underground “best of the best” system, and we’ll be porting it over here as well.
Basically from now on, Writer of the Month will be determined by the total “Likes” your articles received during the month. I’ll tally the totals on the 7th of each new month so that there is time for articles released at the end of the month to have time to be read and rated.
Why are we doing this?
1. The number of voters in the WOTM polls has steadily dropped over the months.
I think you guys might be losing interest a little bit.
2. Writers who release articles at the end of the month have an inherit advantage over people who write articles at the beginning of the month.
Their articles are going to be naturally more forefront in people’s minds, and have a clear edge in garnering votes.
I feel that going by Likes is a little more fair in that it doesn’t matter what time of month your article is released, plus it will help get people engaged with the site on a more daily basis.
That being said, since nobody was aware of this coming change, we have one last WOTM poll to tend to:
[amprotect=1][poll id=45][amelse][poll-logged-out][/amprotect]
Voting ends Sunday, February 5th at 11:59 PM EST. You can choose up to 4 of your favorite writers from last month.
Make sure you click “Submit” after you check off your selections!
In other news…
1. Upgraded Scan Linker!
pokemon-paradijs.comClick this link to see how beautiful it is: Cobalion NVI
As per a suggestion I received (thanks Frank!), I decided to spend a few frustrating challenging days coding to see if I could figure out how to make it work… and hallelujah, the new scan linker was born.
Besides the obvious functionality upgrade, I’ve also turned the scan linker into a legit WordPress plugin and submitted it for review to become a part of their official plugin database. Hopefully I hear back within a few days and am able to get it uploaded to the repository.
[EDIT: It got accepted! Yay! Check it out here.]
What this means is if you run a WordPress-powered Pokémon TCG blog, you can also have the scan linker on your site! OneHitKO is currently using a rudimentary version of the plugin and ProPokemon has expressed interest in using it once the plugin gets approved. I’ll be sure to make an announcement when it gets accepted and contact anyone else who’d like to use it.
I am also planning on making a vBulletin version of the plugin too. I should have that fork finished sometime this weekend, time permitting. I’ll distribute it as well to anyone interested. (Who would I contact on Pokégym about it, by the way?)
And if it seems like I’ve taken forever to respond to e-mails and messages lately, this is why. I’ve been living under a rock trying to get the scan linker coded up. I get so distracted when I answer messages, so I decided to just ignore them for a few days almost a week now so I could focus on this project and get it done. Once I’m totally finished, I’ll start responding to e-mails more promptly again.
2. PkmnCards needs Next Destinies scans!
I uploaded what images I could find on Bulbapedia, but a lot of them are Japanese and I want to replace them with English scans as soon as possible. Immewnity from Pidgi.net sent me some raw scans, but I’ve been too busy with coding the scan linker to crop them, plus I have like zero image editing skills anyway and it would take me forever.
If you have some free time, are adept with graphic design, and would like to lend a helping hand, you can download the raw files here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6018932/nde%202.zip
[EDIT: Spike P. edited the scans! Thanks so much dude!! I’ll upload the new pics tonight… time permitting.]
As far as image sizes and stuff… I don’t really know. I guess copy the dimensions of the typical scan on PkmnCards. Make sure the finished file sizes aren’t TOO big… under 250 kb should be good.
Anyway, I guess that’s about it! Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you later.
-Adam
You have it as “January 2011.” That’s so last year.
I think you wrote this quick, Adam.
“Make sure the finished file sizes are TOO big”
Fixed! I need someone to edit my articles… haha.
Fixed, thanks for the catch!
Any time.
Is it going to be overall “likes” for the month? I think it should be “likes” per article. Just Saying :)
Yeah that’s what I meant – the accumulated likes for the articles you write that month (not your old articles).
So this will mean that it will be advantageous to write more than 1 article so that the likes can then be added together?
I’d argue it should be a “best finish” so that your BEST article’s score is your overall score that month.
I’m not sure if I agree with that. If you write three articles in a month that get +18, +17 and +15 respectively, you should get credit for all of them. I think the best way is to rank articles, not people. That way, you can write 100 articles in a month, but you don’t get an advantage for giving out quantity over quality and at the same time, all of your articles and not just your best one, are considered.
But, articles tend to cap out at 18-21 ish likes. Only a couple articles ever get above that. On the other hand, practically all articles get 2-5 likes (no matter how bad they are). So, you really could pump out like 10 bad articles a month and accumulate more likes than someone who busts their rear to deliver a 5000-6000 word master article once a month.
No, I didn’t mean to combine the Likes, I was saying that each article should be counted, but individually.. Someone had suggested only having your highest rated article be represented, so I was saying that all your articles should be counted. But no, the likes for all your articles shouldn’t be combined, so if you had two articles that got +3 and +15, you’d have two separate “entries”.
I’ll make sure people aren’t pumping out bad articles. We’ll see how this month goes; the system might not be perfect at the moment, but we can make adjustments. It’ll be better than what we’ve been doing for sure though.
That’s why I was wondering about a dislike counter. I know there’s a dislike button, and based on the angry comments in some of the articles that have a rating under five, I’m guessing they might get enough dislikes that it’d counteract it.
But I would like to see somebody get five or six articles in one month AND still be good.
Question about CotD posts though. If they stay up for more than a day, they usually get lots of likes just because lots of people see them. They’re short, so it doesn’t take long to read, meaning less TL;DR no-votes, and they’re really quick and easy to write. So there’s a definite advantage there, since you can easily write four or five or more CotDs in a month.
Yeah it can be adjusted. I think it will work for the ug, but that’s because they typically only have one article per month each.
I’m with Dakota on this. I sometimes give a vote because somebody pushed out three or four good articles, not just one good one. If you post too many that you have one daily, we’ll either be rejecting them for being really bad/too short, or they’re just uninteresting and won’t get many votes to begin with.
Yes! That’s precisely what it means.
“Writers who release articles at the end of the month have an inherit advantage over people who write articles at the beginning of the month.”
I think I figured out that random rush of like seven articles at once. Not all of them made it into the queue before the month ended though, kinda sucks for them if that was their intention. (On the other hand, don’t intentionally hold off articles in hopes of being near the end, makes it hard to get you all in, in a timely manner. Also it’s cheating.)
New method sounds fine, might also prevent that whole “same couple people usually get top three”, but is there a way to count downvotes in it, too? They don’t show anymore on FP, but is there a counter somewhere?
“Click this link to see how beautiful it is: Cobalion NVI”
I spent way too long looking for an X button and trying to get off of that.
Now you know. :P Maybe I’ll add an X or something if it’s an issue for other people too.