Finally, today ends my one week experiment. For the past week, I did not comment on posts for authors that don’t comment on my posts. That is over and I have learned a couple of things. First, there is an impression in the community that many authors only respond to people who post that they know and like. That is an interesting problem. Overall I don’t know if that is true. I know that many authors spend a lot of time reading posts that interest them.
I have intentionally edited a post and noticed the information I’ve gathered is correct. Edited posts that are on the most-commented list right away, actually only gain 20 virils or so. New posts that make that list the first time get 40. The question I would ask the community first does you find value in the most commented and trending lists (because a lot of authors are commenting on those posts more than other posts). If you find value, is that honor or designation that should be earned the first time, not over a year or two years? I have several poll questions to understand what people think. I am going to continue not reading edited posts until the fix from Virily occurs.
I did get a lot of suggestions that in fact, views were down overall because of the holidays. We did go down last year for the holidays. But we are down from last year’s holiday numbers.
I am still tracking the number of active spotters on Virily. I have counted 100 give or take so far. But, I have only been watching since I was asked the question.
The comment limit so far appears to have an impact on many authors.
Finally, I am ending with a couple of asks for team Virily. The first is to reinstate the guest’s view (one time) when you share a post to social. That would be one viril for sharing to facebook, one for twitter and one for Pinterest. That would return the Virils we did get back in April. The second ask is to reset edited posts to zero. In other words, you don’t get to carry the views and comments already on the post forward. You are just like a new post. That makes the most commented list more valuable for all authors that achieve it!
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Question of
We should get 1 viril for upvotes?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
We shoudl get one viril for sharing posts to Social Media? (one for the share only)
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Yes
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No
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Question of
I never look at the most commented list.
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Yes
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No
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Question of
I truly believe that the list should only (most commented) be for new posts
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Yes
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No
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Question of
I believe an authors responses should not count in most commented
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Yes
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No
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Question of
I think edited posts should be reset to zero, no virils taken from the author but no credit for views and comments for the trending and most commented lists
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Yes
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Question of
It would be nice if Virily Editor would post a what’s happening newsletter once a month
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Yes
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No
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I’ve been reading your posts about your experiments. I learned that I should:
1. Post more blogs everyday because I enjoy writing and discussing.
2. I deliberately search out writers– far and wide–east and west– at Virily. There are a lot here on Virily who are far more interesting, informative and ‘real’.
3. I deliberately read posts of authors who read and comment on my posts.
4. I wish that Virily adds a Politics category.
Thank you for dropping by my posts, Doc.
first thanks for the kind words!
there is much we can learn and do here on Virily! as a community, we are a fun group!!!
You’re most welcome. I don’t understand much about technical stuff. But anything, at all, to boost my viril points (looks like .001 to every activity, is it?) is disappointing. But I’ll keep writing interesting blogs ( because Virily is a blogging site, yea?). Anyway, thank you for visiting. I appreciate it!
it is a blogging site, yes. we are also a community!
For a long time, I struggled with how do I gain Virils. I don’t worry about it anymore. I write what I want to write!
Thank you, Doc! That looks very promising. You have inspired me.
glad to help! the community thing is something that a number of us have been trying to build!
The only lists I view are Most Recent, Quizzes, and of course Notifications, so my input to some of your poll questions is of limited value. But I firmly believe two things:
1) We should be able to freely edit posts without them in any sense being treated as ‘republished’, and
2) We should be credited proportionally for the number of external views we bring in from sharing Virily posts on other sites, just as we did when I joined. Only in this way will views substantially increase. Personally I will continue to share regardless, but I don’t believe to reward of just a single viril will make the slightest difference to anyone’s behaviour.
I think i agree with your first one. You are basically saying edited posts should keep the Virils already earned for the author but should be reset as far as the status on Virily?
For 2, remember this was part of the last big admin communication. The tracking of all guest views caused a massive performance issue.
But I do agree with your points, just not sure it is the best possible use of the IT teams time to rebuilt that functionality.
Fair enough, I’m saying what I think should be, rather than what may be practically possible. What I’m saying about edited posts, is that editing should not affect them in any way at all. They should not appear in ‘newly published’ list and therefore atop any other list. Compare what happens in a Facebook group. There, a new comment will send a post to a top of the page, but an edit to the post or comment will have no such effect.
I don’t fully grasp what needs to be involved in ‘tracking’ external views; as I see it, the task involves only counting the volume for each code on the end of the referring urls. I don’t see how that could have any significant impact on performance.
I would be happy to explain the agony of external views if you would be interested. This of this,
you have a coin in your pocket.
You, as the owner of that coin, give it to someone else in payment.
but as the owner, you have to track that coin.
shop, bank, bank, teller, teller person, person shop, shop bank, bank shop and so on forever.
One share to twitter can generate as many as 300 views. I’ve been had posts that had more than 1000 views from twitter.
each time that comes in that has to be tracked back.
Now multiply that by 3 (total media shares)
then by 100 or so active users.
then multiply that by posts you share.
each day we could have between 200 and 2000 plus new shares. That means in a week you are tracking between 1400 and 14000 shares. Or 5600 and 70000 in a month and of course 12 times that in a year.
now do you see the performance? You have to track that coin back to the first person *you) that help it even though as many as between 160,000 or up to millions of people touched that one coin.
Oh yeah and there are more than 100 of those coins every day.
I didn’t explain well. What I don’t understand is your use of the term ‘tracking’. As far as I can make out, all that is needed is that such views be counted. What is the advantage of doing anything more complex than counting them?
i can count them right now. I can tell you without a doubt how many external views my sharing on twitter generated.
How does that link back to me? Virily has to track my share, by creating a GUID. (global universal ID) each time that Guid is returned (someone clicks the link) you get credit for that original share (it was 1 viril)/
But twitter is forever, so a month from now someone finds that share, clicks it and do you still get credit? yes.
it becomes a massive tracking system.
How else could you link Norman’s share, to my being on facebook reading your share and clicking?
Personally based on my twitter feed I generate 1000 to 12000 unique non-Virily views every single day of the week. Just me, just the posts I share.
just me is a lot of views a week.
I don’t open edited posts and I also don’t comment, dear friend … that’s my principle … I don’t know why if I did it once
we are on the same page my dear friend. I agree with you!!!!
How do we know an edited post? Only through recognising the title?
actually it is really easy in most cases.
1. posts that appear on the new list but have viewed already. (you normally start off with 1)
2. Recognize the title
3. posts start with more than 1 comment (by default they always start with zero)
4. in the right-click code of a post, you can see the original date (right-click view code)
Thanks, Scott. I’ll watch out for that.
you bet pal! happy to help anyway I can
Q: WE SHOULD GET 1 VIRIL FOR UPVOTES?
Yes (15 votes) – 68%
No (7 votes) – 32%
Q: WE SHOUDL GET ONE VIRIL FOR SHARING POSTS TO SOCIAL MEDIA? (ONE FOR THE SHARE ONLY)
Yes (19 votes) – 86%
No (3 votes) – 14%
Q: I NEVER LOOK AT THE MOST COMMENTED LIST.
Yes (12 votes) – 57%
No (9 votes) – 43%
Q: I TRULY BELIEVE THAT THE LIST SHOULD ONLY (MOST COMMENTED) BE FOR NEW POSTS
Yes (14 votes) – 74%
No (5 votes) – 26%
Q: I BELIEVE AN AUTHORS RESPONSES SHOULD NOT COUNT IN MOST COMMENTED
Yes (14 votes) – 74%
No (5 votes) – 26%
Q: I THINK EDITED POSTS SHOULD BE RESET TO ZERO, NO VIRILS TAKEN FROM THE AUTHOR BUT NO CREDIT FOR VIEWS AND COMMENTS FOR THE TRENDING AND MOST COMMENTED LISTS
Yes (10 votes) – 100%
Q: IT WOULD BE NICE IF VIRILY EDITOR WOULD POST A WHAT’S HAPPENING NEWSLETTER ONCE A MONTH
Yes (16 votes) – 80%
No (4 votes) – 20%
A newsletter is a good idea for sure
it really is I agree. Carol started talking about this ages ago!
Like others have said, the newsletter would be a great idea. I know we as a community would love that.
well it was originally Carol’s idea I won’t take credit for her great idea!
I am truly astonished that 4 people think it’s not a good idea 😮
or is it more they are resigned to the current reality?
True Norman, but I think Doc is on to something. It is probably that they are resigned to the fact that it probably won’t happen.
my hope is that is not true. My sad reality right now is that in fact it is true.
Okay, well she has been saying this since the start that the communication is the most irritating part, and I would have to agree.
i didn’t include it in July because nobody voted for it. Now, suddenly people are choosing it as an option!!!!
I too am surprised four people (maybe more) think communication should not improve. What?
I like the idea of a newsletter. I’ve been on other writing platforms where we get weekly, fortnightly or monthly newsletters.
Carol is the originator of the newsletter idea. Thanks though I do agree!
I love your newsletter idea. I do have one more thing I would like to see happen them taken the cap off of the commenting thing. I understand why they did. But, I do think things would go better.
The newsletter was brilliant Carol’s idea!
The comment cap is because of the systemic comment abuse they won’t go back on that one.
That is understandable, but I do wish they would reconsider. Maybe, if people would not have abused it, they would not have done that.
i agree, sadly the two abusers I know of, have no remorse. if it were opened again they would exploit that limit again.
Doc, I am just the only one who has spoken out many times about communication, sometimes being told to sit down and be quiet!
I don’t look at any list outside of notifications
i can understand that position. but you also don’t edit posts.
only because I can’t. I would like to edit my old posts and get the images back…
i am nearly convinced that it is hurting Virily to have edited posts.
views are not post-holiday coming back, they are continuing down.
I have a bunch of old posts that could be earning revenue if they weren’t broken. that’s gotta be hurting them
if you edit them can you reinsert the original images or are the images gone?
I could conceivably rework the entire post, but other users report their entire posts being resurrected simply by opening for edit. sadly, I cannot reproduce their results…
i am worried about the edit issue. It is contributing right now to the decline in views. and creating a huge problem in the community.
wow. who’d have thought that was the thing that brought virily down?
it is part, the stick in front of the stumbling person contributes to the fall.
good call. consider the entire bundle, not the last straw
i learned long ago that my perception of problems is part of the actual problem. to do RCA you have to step back.
the last straw is bad.
But the bad before probable is what weakened the camels back!
it is debatable if an entirely objective view is possible for even an AI…
Some of the stuffy from U of M (Michigan) points to the reality of bias even in AI.
the programmers have biases which they unknowingly pass on to their code
i built a cloud picker and a process and walked a couple of dev teams through the calculator.
It measured everything an organization needed from a cloud provider and then allow the organization to pre-weight the pieces.
A developer ran the calculator and then told me my model was wrong.
I said how is it wrong.
It picked AWS, not GCP. he responded.
bias walks on little feet but oh makes such a thunderous noise.
sounds like the developer had a bias to begin with
most of them do, it is the reality of the expert culture.
my bias is for objective decisions based on empirical data
that can get you in trouble for sure!
especially if theists are involved
i find that often as well with those who suffer from Dunning-Kruger.
imagine resting on your laurels when you don’t even have any…
I find it funny that the question on the controversial topic has only a yes answer.
it is, the nos are here in the comments! polls are better but still not fixed.
If a post is edited I do not think that the stats for it should be reset.
what if it costs you Virils as an author?
Oh, I forgot to say about the guests’ views. I do not think one viril for sharing will improve the situation. Who would want to overdo his/her FB or another social site with numerous posts just to get one viril? I do not.
You might be surprised what people would do for a viril. But at least some fresh people may discover the site unless it’s done in a spammy way.
i do find your answer to be a great overall view Ellie. Thanks!!!!
if you read 30 posts (or 20 or so) it is 20 Virils.
but the reality is your not looking at this from both sides. The value of guest views is that Virily gets paid more.
more pay more money for authors.
Views = money.
I would have doubts about edited posts reset to zero, but I couldn’t press NO as there is no such option. Many users are enough old and they already read almost all old posts, commented them and discussed if wanted, so why again to do the same? These posts are not new ones. New users and those who want can comment them, but I do not see point resetting to zero them, so everyone would start just editing old posts without any need instead of writing a new post (note that not everyone here is honest as you think). It will be absurd.
It looks like I did not read to the end, I thought you want all views and comments would be reset to zero and it would start as a new post. That would have no sense.
actually, why wouldn’t it? If you edit a post you would want it to appear as a new post. the value of making the most commented and trending lists is really high.
If all posts start with a value of 1 when they are submitted, edited posts start with a value of 1.5. that isn’t a good solution to the problem of edited posts.
why would you not see the value of an old post, being new? You don’t lose anything you just start on the same level ground as everyone else.
if you think about any other site on the internet, people are always looking for an advantage. being able to edit a post and have it be an impact right away, is a significant advantage.
I think a monthly comment on what’s happening would be a good idea. However, sometimes they are going through managing Virily with all the posts and no one should be worried about being honest being admiring this is a challenge but we are currently working through and in time we aim to have it resolved.
i do think a monthly newsletter would be a game-changer!
I think the last one is the most important! But they all would be nice if they happened!
that one came out of our last discussion on this a couple of months ago. It really was your idea, regular communication!
I have been preaching that one for awhile, I know many are tired of it.
not me, I think it is a great idea.!!!!
Right now I can’t remember what the last one was, but Carol DM always has good answers, lol.
Carol always cares about the broader community.
You two are making me *blush*, I just want this to be a better community.
well that will happen because you helped!
Very interesting research. I agree that edited posts should be at zero. As I said before, I have come to realize that my posts are very rarely among the most commented. ? However, to some members this is very important.
i am always happy when i see posts from you, or Lado or others (Carol) on that list!
Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging words
it is very true- now when you throw in pictures of one of your walks I am in heaven!!!!
Oh, I’m very glad you like my walks. Thanks
I don’t really care about the most commented posts, Doc, mine don’t land on there anyhow but once again thanks for the work you are putting into the site.
literally, if you have a post-it adds 30 views being on that list.
That means you get to 100 faster.
it is more Virils for you.
I love your optimism for 2020, especially on question #7.
🙂 We are trying to keep the ship moving forward!
I would think if you want people to share then there should be some incentives.
Perhaps a checker for outside views no matter unique or not but you get extra Virils for outside views only for a week after the share or only if you did make 50 outside views …
IDK, not sure if it can work tho…
i would love that!!!! That is the way it was when the site first opened. But it bogged the site down something awful!
I love the idea though. Should I poll the community about it?
I didn’t even know that we may edit a post and make it counts as a new one.
it does, but it keeps the old comments and views. so you you move up the lists quickly
Never forget those that do comment when I’am bogged down. I always try to make it out when I have open time
hey we do what we can do pal!!!
The one thing I can say is that it is a tight knit site where the users support each other, even if everyone doesn’t have time to read or comment. From a view Virily seems so small when you think about the main users that contribute daily.
i think we are down to 50 or fewer daily authors. BUt we continue!
I wonder if that has any affect on people curious about viewing the site entirely.
i really don’t have a good answer for that. sorry. i really have no way to get that data.
I have my phases when I can make it out to others pages and times that I can’t, but I always try to support by upvoting or sharing, depending on what type of writing it is. Most of t
it is hard to find an audience sometimes.
Yes, indeed. How cool would it be if Google users were able to comment on our writings. Might broaden the audience.
or bring in many more trolls than we have already.
That would be a nightmare
yeah it would be a nightmare! it is a balancing act.
That is the one thing I’m glad I do not have is trolls. I’ve had a few and there on my Yelp, but I block them quickly.
we have had a couple here but they quickly get moved to other sites.