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Old 07-05-2007, 07:57 PM   #1
keno
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Default suggestion and idea

i just got done posting the same thing in a google web page plug-in forum:
to me, this seems that it cannot be stressed enough. please scan the list for incorrect links or dead sites periodically. too many of these can cause much doubt in your site's reliability. when i wanted to check out those cycle of life people, i got a link to some christian craziness that kinda freaked me out.

also, instead of just "vote for your fav site", have multiple awards for different things (i.e. best sims hacked object site, best sims fantasy site, etc.). this will help give your viewers a direction to start from in a directory of what seems like a gazillion sims sites. then, you can make an end date for the voting and declare winners for each year, month or whatever. give longevity to your site and the sims community by franchising it. make a page showing past winners and maybe even some "then-now" comparative stats.

i hope at least some of this could be helpful
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Old 07-05-2007, 09:17 PM   #2
Greg
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Right! That's a good one!

For several years now, I've been meaning to write some code that will check for dead links. I still haven't done that so I probably never will. It wouldn't discover links that have been taken over by cybersquatters anyhow, darn it.

If I can ever get the new system going where everyone can submit change requests, then I can rely on everyone who uses the system to report dead links.

I've been puzzling over the voting system, too. The way it is, it's too easily abused. Mike Smith (the fellow who created the Ultimate Sims List) said that he tried a rating system, but people abused that, too. That might change if ratings and voting are linked to your user ID, though. At least it would make it easier to identify which user ID's are involved, though it wouldn't prevent people from creating multiple ID's.

Yeah, a site-of-the-month feature would be really neat. It would have to be set set up so that a site can't win twice; or maybe more often than once year. Otherwise we'd just end up seeing TSR and MTS2 duking it out every month.

We need some way to identify the gems--those sites that don't have lots of stuff, but what they do in their specialty is really, really special. I'm thinking of sites like the late, great Artistic Habitats. Grandma only focused on only a few themes, but everything she did was a total jaw-dropper.

Categories: I totally agree. I'd like to be able to query the list to answer lots of "Where Can I Find?" kinds of questions. Adding fan ratings would be really neat if we can attenuate mischief and mayhem. Then you'd know not only who has Victorian furnishings, but also what other fans think of them.
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Old 07-05-2007, 09:19 PM   #3
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Just had another thought: If we can do fan ratings of sites, then we ought have features where (a) old ratings aren't weighed as heavily and eventually expire, and (b) you can change you rating.

I'm thinking that a new fan artist might not do really well on the first few things, but after some practice, feedback, and learning, turn out to be a virtuoso of simosity. It would be very encouraging to watch your rating climb from 4.0 to 9.9!
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Old 07-06-2007, 12:20 AM   #4
keno
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i wish i was more acclimated to this forum environment, where i could just whistle in and out of quotings more adeptly.

hmmm, there either is or is not a tool for people with this problem:

"When sites want to link with me, i want to make sure that their site is linked to mine first"

If there is a tool that does this, as a coder, i'm sure you see how easily it could be modified to check for dead links/wrong sites, etc.

If there is not a tool out there that will do this, then i am sure you could turn some financial profit for being the first one to make something like that.

As far as preventing vote abuse, Javascript is user-side and most analytical devices for your webpages incorporate it to make filters for the analyses. If you could come across any source for the way it filters IP addresses...then that should be that right? (of course unless someone actually goes through enough trouble to hack the site to change the vote)

I think you stated to me in another post that your site had a crawler similar to most other search engines, which i'm going to make the foolish assumption that means Google, MSN, and AOL's.
If this statement = False, Then NM
If this statement = True, Then

Does Maxis link to your site?
If this statement = False, Then
Maybe they should. If you look at Will Wright's interview with Gamespy
about his new game, Spore, he attributes a large portion of the Sim's
success to the user's ability to customize (aka the modding community).
If this statement = True, Then


Make an AdWords deal. You look like you've got enough listings to be the definitive source for Sims. Let MTS2 and TSR pay a little to stay on top. With the popularity of the Sims 1&2, there are so many subscription sims sites now (some inadvertantly). Integrate your site into their marketing plan. You are providing a good service to a number of people.

If you make more of an "awards" deal, handing out awards for different aspects. you are already giving the user the option to maintain his/her site. include an option for what category he/she wants their site in. Voters can only vote for a site in it's category. This kind of makes it to where sites that want to participate will focus their attention towards certain things to accomplish certain goals, just like the sims. plus the awards deal will give your "adwords" thing a cool little flare to reason. Make different pages for voting each category. different voting "booths" if you will. Create different links (Vote My Site #1 in Hacked Ojects at The Ultimate Sims List!) for each category. Include the coresponding link with each site's membership. If you are tracking the IPs and what they voted for, then if they vote for the same category twice, give them an alert message and ask if they want to take their vote away from the last site and give it to the new one.

and, you can always have an award for "Best Underground Sims Site"

your new ratings system is good, too. i recently have had to teach myself some business and marketing and ran across a stock market site that was rating it's user's stock purchases in much the same way.

Last edited by keno : 07-06-2007 at 12:37 AM.
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Old 07-06-2007, 04:16 PM   #5
Greg
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Hmm... Mike Smith coded a script for the Ultimate Sims List that will look up the front page of a site and read its header. That might be the crawler you're thinking of.

I'd never thought of the Ultimate Sims List as a revenue producing site; other than begging for donations to help pay the costs. (Donations to date have been near zero so I'm just paying for all this mischief out of my own wallet. It's not too expensive; I think it would be a little more than $100 a month if I added it all up.) I don't know if the big sites would be willing to pay for top ranking or not, but I suspect just asking them to would generate a lot of negative publicity and feedback that I don't want to deal with.

Those are some great ideas for how to make the Ultimate Sims List more useful and fun in any case. I'm not even working on it at the moment because I'm sort of distracted by Real Life; that is, looking for a job.
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