U.S. Senate
See Full Big Line
(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
See Full Big Line
(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
See Full Big Line
(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
See Full Big Line
(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
November 21, 2010 05:57 PM UTC
48 Comments
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Pretty much every analytics system can tell you what browser is what percentage of page views and the mobile devices are identified in that break out.
But it’s also useful to get people’s own estimation of usage and general feedback–for one thing, you can see where there’s a difference between people’s self-estimate and one’s stats.
Like the polls where 80% of the respondents say they’re a better than average driver.
We don’t get to see your stats, so this poll is as close as we’ll get!
I was pushing at my company to create the web server software for the newspaper/magazine of the future. (The board shot it down.) So we were thinking of this some. Looking forward…
The biggest thing that hit us is that the future will be primarily mobile devices. That will span the gamut from iPhone to iPad. That requires a very different interface from what we have today – a standard web page works poorly on the smaller form factors.
The second thing that hit us is a need to control the size of the interaction. The comment section in the Post is a small number of people yelling past each other – that’s not a community. We got the same thing here on Pols in October primarily with BJs mindless torrent of drivel and others responding to it where the sheer quantity overwhelmed people with limited time.
Find a good solution to those two key problems and you’ll have a strong platform for the next 5 years.
Yep, when you get more than a few dozen comments, it really is impossible to keep up with the discussions.
A few suggestions:
1. Both personal and community-based ratings/ranking of contributors. That way you can filter out the Beej comments automatically, either explicitly or with help from others on the site.
2. Navigation via expanding/collapsing of subthreads. Allows faster scanning down through the top level posts, with selective drill-down (especially if it flags new content within). I think a lot of reader software have had this for some time.
I would tend to agree, with a caveat.
This sort of thing can go both ways. It is like a benign king vs. a despot.
In Grand Junction, the Daily Sentinel created a discussion page (or something, ya’ll have to help me with nomenclature, I’m just a pothole) that quickly became, as David puts’ it,
To my knowledge, they did not have a rating system like you mention. The local rednecks got in trouble with the editors for being offensive dickheads, so they went out (?…in?) and created their own website, GJr****t (wouldn’t want to give them a plug, y’know).
That site DID create a rating system that was run by a cabal of the brightest of the nincompoops there assembled. It was quite entertaining. The only thing they seemed to enjoy as much as bashing Obama, was flogging the liberals on the DS site.
I logged on with a different username, but they quickly recognized my e-mail address and wouldn’t let me on anymore. They only allowed you to log on if you would endlessly argue their inarguable, faith based, hoo-hah. Many of my friends in GJ can regale you with stories of antics such as we get here from the Beej, at al. You will howl with laughter.
Dec 4th., perhaps.
Not terribly long after the tea partiers and such fled the site, the Sentinel shut it down. It got too liberal for them, I guess.
As MADCO notes below, the rating system employed by the DP is useless because it has nothing to do with quality, clarity or anything other than like/dislike of the views expressed.
I would want ratings to be based on relevance, usefulness, knowlegibility, etc. But the ratings would be available for us as voluntary filters, not something the site operators would use to prevent postings. Would it be a bit of a popularity contest or purity test? Yeah, to some degree, but so what else is new?
While ratings would be helpful, the navigational assists would be much more useful.
One other suggestion would be for better search capabilities. Ya know, when you want to tell somebody “I told you so!”, or “Yes you really did say that!” by quickly dredging up an old comment or two 😉
Sorry I won’t be crossing the Divide for the Dec. 4th gathering. It would be fun to meet all you characters one day.
Slashdot is still the granddaddy of comment / user moderation. Moderation is semi-randomly assigned to community members, who rate comments according to pre-established criteria. And, moderation itself is moderated (“Meta-moderation”) so that people who do an aggressively bad job at moderation get fewer chances to moderate.
With moderation in place, you can then decide which comments to look at – basically, set a threshold below which comments are invisible. You can also decide to ignore certain kinds of moderation (i.e. don’t allow “funny” +1s to influence your filter)
Users whose comments tend to get moderated up get increased “karma” which in itself can cause filter scores to go up. And vice-versa.
Is I rank comments & stories myself, and it looks for others who agree with my ranking, and their votes then decide what is buried for me. So BJ and Libertad will see each others threads while I would see none of BJs and only some of Libertads.
And it should then do context scanning of the words used and it can then figure out that some comments by a given contributor I want to see while others I don’t want to see.
Very close to the ideal I’d like too. But probably expensive to implement. Since the scope is each individual’s rules and preferences, it would require a lot of processing time and some place to store the results of the analysis.
Would it be done when you login? When you touch a diary? Constantly running in background? I think the degradation of the user experience would be a heavy price to pay.
My way would only require a simple code associated with each user, or at most a hash lookup. A one time comparison would allow the browser to either display (or not) the comments.
One of the main reasons I come here is to see how others think who don’t share my politics. Your system would turn this site into an echo chamber.(Pattering pinheads of positivism.) That’s boring, and also the problem with too many political sites on the Web.
The ability to see all comments if you so choose?
Time is precious. I don’t have enough of it to suffer fools.
I would never filter LB’s comments for example. Again, this is all about personal choice, not imposing my views on others.
Change is bad. Keep everything exactly the same.
Screw the small screen form factor. Mostly I use the smallest MacBook, sometimes an iMac, sometimes a MacBook Pro, and once, in a deserted electronics store, a 50″ HD flat screen. Occasionally I use IE, mostly I use Safari or Firefox. I won’t go smaller than the MacBook.
I have occasionally used the RSS feed. I avoid 3rd party agg’s for this – save them for MSM.
So you gotta make the comparison to the MSM.
The Den Post is great:
– actual, paid, professional staff seeking and covering stories
– some of them can actually write (you know who you are)
– photographers
The Posts sux:
– John Andrews, and other fake writers
– non-news coverage
– the “commmunity” posts are crappy and mean spirited
I was not surprised in recent years that when politicos from out of state show up for any time, they find their way here to CoPols. Even when they don’t post.
What’s good about CoPols
– common interest in politics. While I’d rather the Broncos win (it’s really fun living in a city with a Superbowl winner, even more fun when they repeat over and over – I just happened to move to the SF Bay area in 87, and moved away in 95) I don’t care about football coverage that much
– self policing posters
– relatively uncluttered site
– resident expertise (you know who you are)
– anonymity
What’s bad
– cheating losers like H-Man
– anonymity
What could be better
– The “new” tag on posts is helpful. It would be nice to have sometihng similar on my user name so I would know right away if anyone has commented to me.
– adding photos
– like bold italic
there should be a button to hyperlink a properly formatted url
– some way to score posters, but not like the Post’s or other sites. The DP’s in particular becomes a surrogate for ideological purity tests and is useless.
– a live chat function, archived or not (or perhaps a weekly audio broadcast with callers)
You can go to “MADCO’s page”, then click on “comments” and then go to “recent replies”. It will tell you everyone who replied to you.
I really like the idea of a podcast. I would love to do something like that.
Another way would be to get to the main page, and on the right see
or
Here’s a link you might find useful if you want something like that.
It doesn’t add anything to the site.
It’s worth HUNDREDS of complaints!
Those Big Line threads are some of the best. There’s nothing quite like watching people whine about fake odds.
does the big line skew people’s perceptions of relevancy or inevitability? Is it life imitating art or the opposite? That seems to be why people get so riled- they feel like it harms their candidate not necessarily fairly.
If people put weight on the Big Line odds, then they deserve to lose.
would like to think otherwise. Otherwise why bother? Just for entertainment’s sake?
I find them, and the discussion surrounding them, highly entertaining.
for a small pay-off. Eh, I guess some people find it amusing. It’s lost on me though.
And when I’m trying to read Pols on my Blackberry, I get a thumbache from scrolling past the unreadable big line.
Took me a long time to realize there was anything after that load of blurred image…
But it’s so blurry I can’t tell for sure.
1. New macros that make it easier to post pictures and youtube videos
2. Add some way to send a private message or e-mail to a poster. It would be nice to be able to contact a poster without posting it on the whole board. Individual posters could opt out of being contacted by private message or e-mail.
3. Fix the posting software so that a reply stays with the original message. Sometimes replies end up way down the line and make no sense because they’re so far from the original post being responded to.
4. I vote no on rating individual posters. I think that would discourage newcomers from posting, which would be bad. If anything, maybe you could list a total post count to signatures. That could help newbies figure out if the poster is around much, or, at the very least, that there’s a history behind all the posts being so hostile to that one obnoxious person.
5. Avatars, anyone? I think a thumbnail pic next to a poster name would help readers figure out who is saying what.
I can scroll past people who’s comments I’m not interested in, and personally I’m not in favor of anything that makes it easier to post hundreds of comments to a diary. I never got into Daily Kos because of the sheer volume of comments they got with every single diary.
Something I’d like to see, but doubt soapblox can do, is the ability to hide individual polster’s comments. My other favorite blog, SLOG, allows both registered and unregistered folks to post, but gives you the option to hide the unregistered (who often are attention-seeking trolls); someone took advantage of that and wrote a greasemonkey script extending that to individual registered users. It’s really a godsend, and it gives full control to the user instead of making it subject to the whims of others.
Diaries wouldn’t get more than 100 comments. I’ve been there for a while. I like having the ability to rate comments
0- troll ie beej
1 stupid barely above troll spamming with same comments Hman for example
2 intelligent but don’t agree
3 good
4 excellent
half the stuff you all are discussing, but I would add my 2 cents about ratings.
1) I agree, it would discourage newbies from juping in to the conversations.
2) Could just devolve into a popularity contest
3) Agree with Ari, if you don’t like the poster, ignore them and scroll through their rants
Only other suggestion would be to add a ‘back to the top’ link at the bottom of the threads. This would make it easier to click on the banner after a long thread. I click on the banner instead of hitting the back button since it refreshes the new comments.
It’s a small thing.
Other than that – make an iphone app and my life will be complete.
I leave you all now to continue discussing tech stuff that makes no sense.
Thanks. Glad I have a little company in my pathetic grasp of most of this discussion.
I’m just a pothole, hopelessly lost in cyberspace. I don’t really understand much of what they are saying, but I’m sure they know what they are talking about.
As long as whatever they do doesn’t make it harder for the tech impaired to participate I’m all for whatever it is they’re talking about.
On the sites I visit that use ratings, the ratings system tends to devolve in “who you agree with” at best, cliquishness at worst.
Regarding point 3 above, the comment DOES stay with the parent as long as you don’t click on a different comment. If you do, just go back and click on the one you want your own comment to stay with. I don’t know why it works that way, but as long as you are aware of how it works, it works just fine.
My point about ratings, which seems to have touched a nerve, is not an endorsement of any of the current mechanisms, least of all moderators. I see it as a filter I would use based on my own judgement about the posters, and with any input others are willing to give.
The default would be open, and over time, if you collect a lot of “useless noise” points, others would tend not to see your comments as much. Newbies get a free ride for quite a while, because as I said a few years ago, if one person calls you an ass (as in mule), consider the source. But if (fill in your threshold of tolerance) call you that too, get a saddle.
The filter would not be imposed on us by the site operators. You wouldn’t be prevented from posting, and by default, you and everyone else would see those comments immediately.
Nor would the “rating” be a scarlet letter following a user around. It would just be another user attribute under the covers that would be available to the filter mechanism.
At it’s simplest (and perhaps most extreme), I could simply enable an ignore flag on “BJWilson83” and not have to scroll past dozens of worthless exchanges.
I do like the idea of sending private exchanges without having to broadcast your information on the entire board, or expose your email address to spammers.
But I still believe the most useful enhancement would be having the hierarchical view of subthreads (collapse/expand) to enhance readibility and to follow the train of thought.
Some sites have levels that posters obtain.
For instance, MADCO, Voyager. etc etc who are temp front page editors would have the title Admin or Moderator. CoPols would obviously say Site owner or Admin. Then the rest depending on how often they would post could have fun policial-related ranking.
Fro example someone who posts all the time (like maybe an Aristotle or Ralphie) would get the higher ranking titles. Some sites base it on post count and diary/thread authoring.
0-50 posts: Shill?
51-100 posts: Padwon
101-200 posts: Triguardian
201-300 posts: McGinnis’ Missing Mustache
301-400 posts: Fetus Whisperer
401-500 posts: Wes McKinley’s Bolo
501-600 posts: Purple Nurple
601-800 posts: Marxist
801-1000 posts: Stoned Capitol Staffer
1001-1500 posts: TABOR Hater
1500+ posts: Darth Sith Lord/Lobbyist
I read all my daily news off my iPhone
I would hope that technological improvements would not make us obsolete.
I find ColPols really easy to use. DP is a mess and the rating has everything to do with voting for American Idol or Dancing with the Stars and nothing to do with the quality of thought.
My only complaint is that ColPols did not post the 2010 Big Line after the mid-term.
My first response to your question was “with my eyes” but apparently that is not the answer you were looking for…
I read the posts on RSS and then click through if I want to read the comments. Whatever you do, don’t truncate your RSS feed! FiveThirtyEight did when it switched over to the NYTimes and now I don’t read that any more.
It looks like a high school kid wrote this software.