Melanie Baker's dashboard

A comment on the problem "frozen relevancy ranking" in AideRSS:

Hello! I've forwarded this issue to our developer who handles most of the Google Reader issues. Fortunately, he's a Linux guy, too. :) Will let you know once we get it sorted out, or if we have any questions. – Melanie Baker, on October 10, 2008 17:55

Melanie Baker replied on September 19, 2008 16:31 to the problem "AideRSS Removing Mashable Blog Entry Bylines?" in AideRSS:

Hi Michael -- Fortunately, that's something we've fixed in the new release, which is going into beta shortly, so will be out soon.

In the mean time, you can just view the original Mashable feed, for example, in Google Reader, and use the AideRSS extension to do the filtering. You'll see the same stories, and the byline info will be visible,

Melanie Baker replied on September 17, 2008 15:56 to the question "Netvibes Extension" in AideRSS:

Need a bit more information! :)

Are we going to create one? You've created one or would like to? I'm all ears...

A comment on the question "how do they rank posts?" in AideRSS:

Compared to a set of previous posts, but yeah, that's the essential idea.

No worries re. assumptions about our nationality. Canadians get used to it. :)

Re. digg and similar sites, a lot of bloggers do add icons for those services to their sites to make it easier for their audience to share the posts using them. I haven't set one up, but this site has the code to add the icons for various sites, which looks handy: http://www.exploding-boy.com/2006/01/... – Melanie Baker, on September 17, 2008 15:11

marmitelover replied on September 17, 2008 14:27 to the question "how do they rank posts?" in AideRSS:

Ah so it's compared to the previous post...
Sorry for assuming that you were Americans rather than North Americans (Canadians) lol.
I've just signed up for Diggit but not totally sure how it all works...do I have to put their little logo on my page?

Melanie Baker replied on September 17, 2008 13:53 to the question "how do they rank posts?" in AideRSS:

Rankings are based on the site's performance over time, however, only a subset of time because rankings would lose context if everything was compared to everything else.

The content of a post itself is ranked according to how other people have reacted to it. Using comments as one metric for the example of your site, the Joker post got 2 more comments than the post preceding it, for example, hence the 8 ranking for the Joker post as opposed to the 6 ranking for the one preceding it.

Because rankings are based on engagement over a period of time, but, as noted, a new post isn't compared to every other post you've ever done, the British education post isn't getting compared head to head, exactly, with the Joker post, for example. However, the British education post ranked higher than the post preceding it because it got 1 more comment.

The Toby Young post scored relatively low at 4.2 because the post preceding it got a lot more comments -- 13 more -- and so scored a 9.7.

Really, how you or others feel about your content won't be reflected unless they act on it -- leaving comments, tweeting, delicious bookmarks, diggs, etc. We are quite aware, however, that many of our analysis sources are somewhat North American-centric, and so we're always looking for more international and regional sources, and recommendations thereof as well.

And, of course, if there are engagement sources you know have been used -- tweets, bookmarks, etc., but which aren't being displayed in your rankings, please let me know and we'll look into it.

marmitelover replied on September 17, 2008 10:39 to the question "how do they rank posts?" in AideRSS:

So is there a UK version of Aide RSS?
Aide RSS post ranking makes absolutely no sense to me. For instance I wrote a little post about Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, using two amusing YouTube clips which I didn't make myself. The post was ok but no big deal. Instantly it gets an 8. However a far more interesting post on British education gets a 6. Likewise, a personal anecdote about Toby Young the British author of 'How to lose friends and alienate people' gets 4.2.
This is nonsensical. It's not helpful to me. Judging from feedback from friends, it does not reflect what people feel either.
Nor do these ratings appear to be based on comments.
The ratings seem only to be based on whether Americans have heard of the subject. Which, forgive me, eliminates a hell of alot of subjects, what with Americans being fairly insular and uninterested in foreign news, issues and personalities, with the odd exception.
Hey if you need a UK person to rate posts, I'm up for the job.

Melanie Baker replied on September 16, 2008 15:09 to the problem "Blog missing info in aiderss" in AideRSS:

Hi Sam -- looks like nothing's actually broken here, just a backlog of analysis for the spiders to get through. Unfortunately, still sucks to have to wait for the update. We are aware of it and looking into the reason for the backlog. Unfortunately I don't have an estimate just yet as to when it might clear. We'll keep an eye on the feeds in the mean time.

A comment on the problem "Haloscan comments not counted in PostRank?" in AideRSS:

Actually, not blocked. There appears to just be a backlog of analysis that the spiders are working through. It is taking longer than it should, certainly, so the guys are looking into what's up. – Melanie Baker, on September 16, 2008 13:45

gluca replied on September 16, 2008 08:55 to the problem "Haloscan comments not counted in PostRank?" in AideRSS:

uhm, in last posts PostRank (not just haloscan comments) appears as blocked again.
http://www.aiderss.com/all/www.minima...
I think that an automated 'reset/restart button' would be a good solution ;)

Melanie Baker set one of Melanie Baker's replies as an official response to "feedproxy from google will occur some issue" in AideRSS

Melanie Baker replied on September 12, 2008 20:13 to the question "feedproxy from google will occur some issue" in AideRSS:

The duplicates should be gone now: http://www.aiderss.com/all/crazyrushs...

The feed looks better to me, but I can't read the character set, so you'll have to confirm. :)

Melanie Baker replied on September 12, 2008 20:08 to the problem "AideRSS firefox extension: Post ratings missing and constantly loading" in AideRSS:

Hi Justin -- We had someone report a similar problem yesterday. Installing our latest Google Reader extension (http://gr.aiderss.com/) took care of it for him, so you may want to try that. (You'll need to restart Firefox after the install.) If you're NOT using Greasemonkey, you can just install the new extension over the old one without needing to uninstall first.

If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll get some more info from you and we'll see if we can figure out the problem.

Melanie Baker replied on September 10, 2008 16:38 to the question "how do they rank posts?" in AideRSS:

The data sources we analyze (metrics) at this point tend to be produced by North American companies and so be sites/services that are popular here, but not necessarily elsewhere in the world.

Other regions and countries have their own version of bookmarking sites, instant messaging sites, social networking, etc., so for interactions from those sites to be included in PostRank analysis, we need to add them.

At this point, though, we're still working on finding out what other popular sites around the world are, and once we know, we can work on adding them.

I *think* that addresses what you were asking, but if not, please let me know.

wsinnema replied on September 10, 2008 07:31 to the problem "Drop down AideRSS Firefox extension changes in entry field" in AideRSS:

Hello Melanie,
Indeed the Ctrl + Z 'solves' this issue. I did probably somehow pressed Ctrl + Z but didn't notice the effect. Thanks for the clue.
Regards,
Wilco

Melanie Baker replied on September 08, 2008 14:26 to the problem "errors in code for AideAPI PHP class" in AideRSS:

Thanks for the heads up. This has been taken care of.

A comment on the problem "Wordpress Weblog: No comments showing." in AideRSS:

Are you looking at just the most recent posts, or are you seeing incorrect comment counts elsewhere as well? The most recent stuff is queued and should be picked up today. Let me know if you don't see an update. – Melanie Baker, on September 08, 2008 14:19

Melanie Baker set one of Melanie Baker's replies as an official response to "Drop down AideRSS Firefox extension changes in entry field" in AideRSS

Melanie Baker replied on September 08, 2008 13:18 to the problem "Drop down AideRSS Firefox extension changes in entry field" in AideRSS:

That's a bit of an Easter Egg. The default setting, as you know, is to filter by selecting a drop-down option. However, if you press Ctrl and Z it changes to a text box, which allows you to filter by PostRank score, e.g. "7". Pressing Ctrl and Z again will change it back to a drop-down. (If it doesn't, please let me know.)

A comment on the problem "Haloscan Comments come and go" in AideRSS:

It depends on how many subscribers there are to the feed. The more subscribers there are, the more frequently the feed updates. At the very least once a day, but most are more frequent. – Melanie Baker, on September 08, 2008 13:10