New: Rankings for most forwarded articles, diaries, polls, etc.

I like to do things better-- better than I've seen them done. This first step is a very tiny one, compared to what we have spelled out on the drawing board, which will be appearing on the site in weeks to come. But already, it does things you won't see on the NY Times, or anywhere else, allowing you to see popularity for different categories of content. One of the first things we'll be adding shortly will be the ability to see popularity over different time periods. No, we will not be able to go back before yesterday. We don't have the data.

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So, go to any article and check out the right hand column, below the fold.

You'll see a popularity box. It's based on the number of forwarded articles (using tell a friend) for different content areas.

We just started collecting the data yesterday, so you won't see many items for some of them. We'll be fine tuning this tool, adding a lot of other ways to assess performance, and soon, will have popularity measures for every tag, every locale, every directory level, for each category of content (and yes, we will, later this year, begin offering products-- probably books and DVDs for starters.)

The popularity algorithms we're using now will be drastically enhanced, made more sophisticated. We are thinking about asking people to rate articles and comments for the following:

Importance: how important is this content for members to read NOW?
Value: Does this content item provide new info, ideas, facts, perspectives you find useful, helpful?
Well Written: is the writing above average, exceptional, worth noting?
Humor: Does it make you smile or laugh?
Kind Does it touch your heart, show kindness, nurturing, positivity?
Negative- Mean, nasty, un-civil, unpleasant

I'm not married to these. categories or the words used to describe them. Your observatioins, comments and suggestions are encouraged.

Here's what newstrust.org uses:

The goal is to rate articles, diaries, comments, and show the scores people have as part of their thread, along with the number of comments, diaries, etc. I hope that showing negative and positive will encourage kinder, more civil behavior.

We're a bottom up site. Your voice counts in th is community. Use it here to shape the future of the internet, because we're cutting new edges right here.

Do you know writers who would like to post on a site that is THE leading media site, in terms of cutting edge technology? We'd like to see articles from all over the world, on all kinds of subjects.

Oh, BTW, we've also just done an analysis of the 8000+ responders to our demographic questions, out of over 15,000 registered members.

Some interesting data: 7% of our member are conservative. Some of them signed up to post a comment and never return. Some are regulars.

Here's a chart for education. 93% of our readers have some college. Not too shabby.

We're sorting out what to do with this info. And soon, we'll be doing dem by dem (demographic against demographic) cross tabulation. With the large numbers we have we'll get some very interesting information. But with about 30 demographic items, that will add up to almost 1800 charts. As though I don't have enough to do. But I'm a poll data junkie. What can I do. So, go to your log in page, click on profile and fill in your demographic information. YOu can see that it is not shown . We use it for these charts and to analyze the polls our members create-- another unique feature no other site on the web has.

These features are developed for OpEdNEws by populum.com.