Mekk's dashboard

Mekk replied on June 15, 2009 16:18 to the problem "Comments never counted for my blog posts" in PostRank:

Well, I bet "The company has no plans to do this" would be more appropriate response in such a case.

The thing is particularly ugly considering I don't ask you to implement dedicated parser, but just to stop it and use information which is directly present in the RSS feed... Well, you make your choices.

A comment on the question "Is it possible to reopen the issue?" in Get Satisfaction:

Isn't it a kind of omission? I used many bug/issuetrackers and can't recall any without "reopen"... – Mekk, on June 15, 2009 00:17

Mekk asked a question in Get Satisfaction on June 14, 2009 19:38:

Is it possible to reopen the issue?

Is it possible to reopen the issue? I reported a problem, company marked it as solved, but it is not solved...

Mekk replied on June 03, 2009 21:22 to the problem "Comments never counted for my blog posts" in PostRank:

Let me just remind, that <slash:comments> in my feed contains precise, correct information about the comment count.... It was uneasy to understand why you don't want to use it when you claimed you want to do better, it is even more difficult now, considering the parsing scheme does not work...

Please, just use <slash:comments>, it will do...</slash:comments></slash:comments>

Mekk replied on June 02, 2009 23:39 to the problem "Comments never counted for my blog posts" in PostRank:

Not quite. Some comments are counted, but it seems to me that the numbers are incorrect. For example there are 11 comments below my newest article http://notatnik.mekk.waw.pl/archives/... but postrank reports (on http://www.postrank.com/feed/76e7f5d8... ) some views, one click and no comments. Maybe those are not yet counted. But the article http://notatnik.mekk.waw.pl/archives/... is almost month old, has 10 comments, and again - postrank misses them. Newest article for which postrank spotted some comments is http://notatnik.mekk.waw.pl/archives/... for which it counted 4 while there are 5 - but I am not sure whether those are comments on my blog (this article was mentioned on blip or flaker IIRC and maybe those notes are counted as comments, not the actual comments).

So, in short, I don't feel comments are properly counted for my blog.

Mekk shared an idea in PostRank on February 25, 2009 08:00:

wykop.pl

In one of the comments on http://blog.postrank.com/2009/02/18/e... Ilya asked about wykop.pl. For some reason my comment there is rejected, so here is my note how it could be used. While wykop does not have API per se, there is some not-very-difficult-hack available

First, they have RSS feeds:
- http://www.wykop.pl/rss/index.xml for most popular articles,
- http://www.wykop.pl/rss/wykopalisko.xml for everything somebody submitted

Then, they have widget, which returns diggs count for given url, see it for example right to the article title on
http://webhosting.pl/Firefox.3.1.zdob...
(the documentation is here: http://www.wykop.pl/narzedzia/wykopyw... )
The widget returns small snippet of HTML containing the wykop's (diggs) count for given URL.

So you could probably subscribe to the latter feed (to grab URLs which were submitted), then use widget-like call to check the article popularity (most wykop's happen within a few hours, if you waited for 24 hours before checking you should be OK).

That's of course hack, but could work

Mekk shared an idea in PostRank on February 19, 2009 21:47:

Help catching up in Reader (top 100 posts...)

AideRSS Reader extension could help me to catch up.

I mean the situation where I see 1350 unread posts and would like to reduce this number. It would be great if I could ask AideRSS to mark everything except top 100-200 posts as read. Or show me just top 100-200. Or so.

The key here is the number. I don't want Best. I don't want Great. I want top 100, whatever their score is.

Mekk shared an idea in PostRank on February 19, 2009 21:43:

Fixed pace filter

Fixed pace for a single feed

Apart from filters per score (Best, Great, Good), it would be nice to have filters ensuring a fixed pace of resulting posts.

I mean for example a filter which would give me 2 posts a week for a given feed (2 best posts of course). This way I could subscribe to such filtered feed as a measure of managing my readload...

Why so? I just noticed that I have hard time deciding whether to subscribe Good, or maybe Great - and my main purpose is just to get a few best posts. Note also, that some high-volume services get 10 for almost every article, so are close to impossible to be filtered out.

Important note: I mean some best posts within given time range (week seems to be most useful period), not just a few best posts in the history.

Possible syntax: ....?best=3&days=7
(3 best posts of last 7 days)

Fixed pace for a tag feed

The same idea could be applied to aggregated feeds.

A comment on the problem "Ugly numbers reported for views count" in PostRank:

OK, let's leave it. I think it would make sense to document it a bit better on the website, but it's up to you. – Mekk, on February 18, 2009 00:27

Mekk marked one of Ilya Grigorik's replies in PostRank as useful. Ilya Grigorik replied to the problem "Ugly numbers reported for views count".

Mekk replied on February 17, 2009 23:59 to the problem "Ugly numbers reported for views count" in PostRank:

> Mekk, when did you install our widget?

Jan 15. Hmm, OK, this may explain why some numbers are too low.

> I'm guessing GA is not counting page refreshes by the same user

Maybe. That's a long article, people could revisit it.

Am I right understanding, that you just count requests for your widget ?

A comment on the question "How does PostRank detect comments?" in PostRank:

Note that I still don't really ask for it. My only true suggestion is use those stupid slash:comments - at least when available and when you don't feel you are doing a better job ;-) – Mekk, on February 17, 2009 23:52

Mekk reported a problem in PostRank on February 17, 2009 17:38:

Ugly numbers reported for views count

I took a look at my feed reports (http://www.postrank.com/feed/76e7f5d8...) and I find the values reported for "views count" to be ugly.

I am not sure what exactly is this number meaning, and how is it calculated, but I feel that it should be somehow correlated to the number of visits reported by usual reporting tools. At least ratios should show some resemblance

So here are results for a few articles. Left columns - page views by PostRank. Right column - visits by Google Analytics (Dec 1st - today).

2092    1272


 790     3717


 522       772


 103       358


   32       338


 530       605


...

I don't claim Analytics is 100% correct (plenty of my readers have it adblocked) but it properly shows the general shape.

Mekk shared an idea in PostRank on February 17, 2009 17:19:

Top Posts widgets grabs clicks to make the posts shown on it even more sticky... Maybe it could promote new content and vary a bit?

Some time ago I put Top Posts widget on my blog. Looks like it makes some people click links on it, so posts on this widget get extra boost. Remaining posts - don't (as far as I understand you can't count clicks via my normal navigational panes or internal links). The net result: the posts which were on the widget when I started, remain there until today

The widget content is sticky.

Of course the problem can be to a degree caused by the fact that a) postrank still fails to spot comments on the blog (discussed elsewhere) and b) postrank does not yet know about Polish social sites (understandable although I hope it is to change some day), so clicks mean more than they usually should.

Still, maybe it would make sense to consider this phenomenon while providing content for Top Posts? For example, give temporary boost to new entry, and randomize tail positions (from time to time replace 1-2 weakest articles with those slightly worse from them, maybe just pick those 2 positions randomly weighting probability with current score)

What do you think?

Mekk replied on February 17, 2009 17:01 to the question "How does PostRank detect comments?" in PostRank:

One more comment: I just spotted here that you stop checking for comments after a week.

Therefore, the argument that we can't use slash:comments because (...) once the story drops off the feed, we can't get the comment counts anymore is not true. On most blogs (the only exception are those very high traffic) posts are available in the feed far longer than for a week.

Regarding feedburner and caching - in my case it politely refreshes the feed every 30 minutes or so. I wouldn't consider it to be a problem. Note also that one of feedburner feedflares shows the comment count, so they are interested in keeping this information up to date.

So I'd suggest revisiting the idea of using slash:comments. Manual parsing can be still considered for blogs which do not provide this information. Note how much time you spend trying to parse out and calculate the information which is readily available (and how many errors are reported about this very problem)...

A comment on the question "submitting older content?" in PostRank:

OK, thank you for the information – Mekk, on February 03, 2009 21:32

Mekk replied on February 03, 2009 15:42 to the question "submitting older content?" in PostRank:

I reconfigured my feed to show 100 recent posts (under it's default address - http://feeds.mekk.waw.pl/NotatnikZapi... ), and waited for a few hours - still PostRank shows only 50 newest posts.

Mekk asked a question in PostRank on February 02, 2009 10:26:

submitting older content?

Is it possible to submit the older articles from my blog to PostRank (I mean articles, which were not caught as parts of the feed as they were below it's start when I subscribed to PostRank)?

Mekk reported a problem in PostRank on January 29, 2009 23:46:

OPML upload - duplicates!

As it seemed to me some feeds were forgotten, I reuploaded my OPML file.

Bammmm. Now I have two copies of all my feeds.

Shouldn't it be handled more inteligently?

PS I am curious what would happen if I uploaded postrank export. But I am afraid to try.

PS2 Even if not automatical, it would be nice if I could issue some "scan for duplicates"

Mekk replied on January 29, 2009 09:35 to the question "PostRank usage pattern - is my idea right?" in PostRank:

There was a question what do I mean by 2) Simply: a possibility to take a look at my channels and see which are subcribed as feeds, and which are not. So for example I can quickly locate tags I forgot to subscribe (or added recently and not subscribed yet)