Best of... bug?

August 7, 2006 6:40 AM

On the Best Of page I'm seeing two winners & four runners up for August 5th, with one winner & one runner up for August 6th. Is the page borked, or do the number of winners & near winners change depending on the value of the day's posts?
posted by jonson to MetaFilter-related at 6:40 AM (35 comments total)

it looks like the page collates mathowie's choices and my choices instead of putting them someplace where we can choose from the ones we both chose. We'll have to see if we can rectify that somehow.
posted by jessamyn at 6:50 AM on August 7, 2006

Also, it looks like I tried to fix it for yesterday and have managed to make it worse. Sorry about that.
posted by jessamyn at 6:51 AM on August 7, 2006

wow... now I'm excited to find out whether nthdegx or litlnemo was the actual winner on Aug 5th. Someone's gonna be bummed.
posted by jonson at 7:16 AM on August 7, 2006

Actually, the page has duplicates (and triplicates!) on some of those pages. I'm assuming that this'll be ironed out, as time passes?
posted by ChrisR at 7:20 AM on August 7, 2006

When I went to select some winners/runner ups, I didn't check first to see if jessamyn selected any, so I went and marked mine and realized while there was a little bit of overlap, we needed to clean them up. I'll fix it up in a few minutes.
posted by mathowie at 8:18 AM on August 7, 2006

*sounds of struggle are heard behind the Administrative Curtain*
posted by languagehat at 11:13 AM on August 7, 2006

*jessamyn emerges, shirt torn, lip bleeding, the severed head of haughey hanging absently from her hand*
posted by cortex at 11:17 AM on August 7, 2006

"the severed head of haughey" would make a great sockpuppet account. Not mine, though. I don't roll that way no more.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:25 AM on August 7, 2006

Bring Me the Head of Matt Haughey!
posted by languagehat at 11:30 AM on August 7, 2006

Kinda quiet today.
posted by cortex at 11:37 AM on August 7, 2006

I'm just sayin'.
posted by cortex at 11:37 AM on August 7, 2006

Sorry. Want me to flame out?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:39 AM on August 7, 2006

Christ yes. I thought you'd never ask!
posted by cortex at 11:46 AM on August 7, 2006

Ummm... I got nuthin.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:51 AM on August 7, 2006

We could demand that both people marked as winners get $30. Might liven things up.
posted by reklaw at 11:57 AM on August 7, 2006

If I win, I'm going to make the severed head of haughey donate my $30 to NAMBLA.

/how's that?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:59 AM on August 7, 2006

Eh.
posted by cortex at 12:16 PM on August 7, 2006

posted by boo_radley at 12:17 PM on August 7, 2006

Ha! I love the mouse-over text, boo!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:20 PM on August 7, 2006

jonson: runners up

mathowie: runner ups

Googlefight:
runner ups: 4,580,000 results
runners up: 26,500,000 results

And they're both wrong! It's runner's up's. Geez.
posted by hangashore at 12:32 PM on August 7, 2006

"wow... now I'm excited to find out whether nthdegx or litlnemo was the actual winner on Aug 5th. Someone's gonna be bummed."

Mine was marked runner-up all along wasn't it? (Darn it.)
posted by litlnemo at 1:43 PM on August 7, 2006

I wish I'd taken a screen shot litinemo; at least you know you were one of the close runner's up's.
posted by onalark at 5:51 PM on August 7, 2006

I don't mind it changing if there was a mistake on the 5th.
posted by nthdegx at 7:24 AM on August 8, 2006

It's sad that there are so many Google-roundup/encyclopedia posts on that page. Look for many more of them (and most people don't ever click on that many links)
posted by amberglow at 4:29 PM on August 8, 2006

So, do we have a winner for yesterday yet? Today is going great. There are so many great posts. This contest is giving us lots of nice shiny things to look at. I bet we will see a a big spill over for months afterwards, just like we did when anastasiav (bless her) did this last year. I think people just start thinking about how to craft a great post and continue on even after the contest is over.
posted by caddis at 6:23 PM on August 8, 2006

Well... possibly. I mean, no one's more of a fan of the "here's a cool thing I found" style single link post, as long as it's not a Farkish news of the weird article. But if the guy who runs the site keeps picking multi-link super researched posts as the winners, you sorta have to respect his wishes. Maybe this isn't as much the place for interesting flash games & awesome photo galleries of monkeys riding other non-monkey animals that I thought it was. I've been runner up twice ("Dice Wars" flash game & Crop Circle photo gallery) and I've been winner once (thoroughly researched multi-link post about a cool building in Downtown L.A.). Obviously, Matt's not 100% against the single links, he just has a mild bias towards the bigger, more researched posts.
posted by jonson at 6:33 PM on August 8, 2006

Sorry, I was responding to Amberglow. Apparently still no winner from yesterday - I think Matt & Jess have been absent from the site today (lack of comments by either of them).
posted by jonson at 6:34 PM on August 8, 2006

I too love the single link cool posts. Anastasiav is the queen of these and by far my favorite poster here. There are many others who excel at this game, such as madamjujujive, Miguel and quonsar among others. A good multi-link post can be fun but it is hard to do well within the expectations of MeFi.

If you have multiple paragraphs to lay out a history or art post you can give a great course on a subject. Here you have to do it in a paragraph. Done well within a paragraph those posts are things of beauty. They really need to be more like a single link with a main story and some support in most cases to work well within the small confines allowed here. If you want to go larger you should probably get your own blog.

If you want some fun, go searching through the blogs of some of the folks here and you will find some awesome stuff. Languagehat's blog comes to mind for us word and language guys. Wow. For links, growabrain comes to mind. I wish he would bring more of his links here himself. He finds great stuff. I am content to take some of his best stuff and repost it here. His collections area is one of the most interesting places on the web.

Bottom line, we are blessed with some of the great posters on the web and with the contest we will hopefully grow quite a few more. I am so amazed at the outpourings from some folks who seemed kind of quiet and passive before. That is so great.
posted by caddis at 7:02 PM on August 8, 2006

I definitely think there's an upper limit to how many links tip a post over--it's been shown time and time again that most people don't read all the links, even in a 3-link post, let alone a 7- or more-link post. (i think 3 is kinda the limit of what people will click on within one single post itself)

I definitely prefer 1-3 link posts--We don't need to know everything there is to know about something online--we all know how to google, and can add more links in the comments. That's really what makes things more interesting--the other links (from personal knowledge and other sources, etc) that commenters bring to a post inside it.
posted by amberglow at 8:44 AM on August 9, 2006

Page is updated now, fwiw, sorry about the lag.
posted by jessamyn at 12:52 PM on August 9, 2006

nthdegx's guide to multi-link posts.

1. Take a good look at all the links you intend to post? Kill all the links not essential to your post. If you have more than five, there is almost definitely something you can take out. If you haven't read any of the pages you intend to post in their entirety, take this is a hint that the site is *not* post-worthy. A blogger's first-hand account of something is generally more interesting than a related newspaper article. Think outside the box when looking for sources. Check your links with the crunchland method. Less is more.

2. Put your best link first. The comments, more often than not, will spin off from the first link you post. Make sure it's the right one.

3. Try to write your post well. Proof read and redraft. Is it descriptive? Is it interesting? Is it as brief as it can be? My multi-link posts that have had the best response have attempted a narrative in the space of one paragraph. Narratives are a great way to introduce people to new subject matter in an interesting way.

4. Using the title attribute in your links (so that readers see a description of the link when they hover their mouse over) is good and helpful, but it is no substitute for a well written post, with the links written in context so people can tell where a link is going to take them. It can be a laborious process to re-write a post to do this, but it is well worth it. Word your post to emphasise the two or three big links and express your back-up links as such. If you're posting news links, say they're news links. People pushed for time will then know to skip over these if they want to go straight to the good stuff. Include a phrase or even sentence for the descriptions of your best links so that they appear bigger on the screen and draw more clicks.

5. Always keep your post to one paragraph. Always.
posted by nthdegx at 4:51 AM on August 10, 2006 [2 favorites]

great rules, nth, and i'd add---if one link is enough, stop there. A lot of people think they have to put in more than one or else it's not a good post, and i fear this contest will only encourage that.
posted by amberglow at 6:56 PM on August 10, 2006

yoink!
posted by crunchland at 2:39 AM on August 12, 2006

Crunchland, your user page should be linked off the new post page.
posted by jonson at 5:23 PM on August 12, 2006

it is in the FAQ!
posted by jessamyn at 5:40 PM on August 12, 2006