Hey Tim, Hm, yeah it sounds like he's misunderstanding the purpose here -- we're not building a system specifically to facilitate discussion on blogs via comments -- though he might know we have definitely played with and have by no means abandoned the idea of a filter that promotes articles based on how many comments they have (the tricky thing being normalizing based on average traffic for the particular blog). In the meantime, it sounds like he may not realize that most blogging software provides a separate feed for comments vs blogposts? See for instance http://importantshock.wordpress.com/feed/ vs http://importantshock.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/jquery-is-a-monad/feed/.
Anyway, thanks for the shout out to Melkjug and thanks for passing along the feedback. Josh On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Tim Coulter <[email protected]> wrote: > Josh, > > One of the commenters on that blog I told you about responded to my post > about Melkjug. His tone is a little harsh, but may be good feedback. > > And in due fairness I presented Melkjug as the wrong product. > > In any case, here's the feedback, and a link to the thread (scroll down, > or find "David Says"): > > http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/224 > -------------------------------------------------------- > > @Tim Coulter: Oy, what a name! “Melkjug”? > > I score Melkjug as a clean miss. It’s still going with the blog-and-feed > system, which disregards comment as unimportant. That being so, Melkjug > fails at the most important part of this problem, which is to bubble up > a blog topic solely because there are new comments to it. > > Melkjug (I did try it) doesn’t even show me the comments, and RSS > doesn’t flag new comments, even optionally, much less keep track of > which ones I’ve already read. Melkjug’s tuners do not offer the option, > “new comments” or “comment by a particular person”. “Starred by”, yes, > “Dugg by”, yes, but not “commented by”. > > Y’all couldn’t add that if you wanted to because RSS (I include Atom > here) doesn’t present any information about the contents of comments at > all. > > I have to remember to manually dial up this topic, because my reader > doesn’t pop up anything new until James writes another post. Then I have > to bring up the particular post in a view that includes comments (which > my reader’s view does not), and then scroll down the comments while > trying to recollect where I left off so I can see which, if any, are new > since my last visit. > > I am going through that process this for this blog and this particular > subject, but I will not do it as a matter of course or for most blogs or > subjects. Neither will most people, and so the discussion dies, not from > lack of interest, but because the mechanics of keeping up with it are > just too cumbersome. > > > On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 15:44 -0500, Joshua Bronson wrote: > > Hey Tim, > > > > > > Melkjug for iPhone is one of our Medium Term Goals, > > see > http://trac.openplans.org/melkjug/wiki/ProjectRoadmap#SimpleiPhoneApplication. > Glad to hear you'd find it useful. > > > > > > Josh > > > > On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 4:09 AM, Tim Coulter <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > I know I'm technically an OpenGeo guy, but I would love to > > write a > > melkjug iPhone app. And if that's too far, then I would just > > love to > > have one. > > > > If it's swingable, count me in. > > > > Tim > > > > PS: I'm telling all my friends, regardless. > > > > > > On Mon, 2009-03-02 at 20:20 -0500, Joshua Bronson wrote: > > > Hey TOPP, > > > > > > > > > It's time! Team Melkjug is ramping up efforts to get more > > people > > > actively using melkjug.org, and we'd love your help. Please > > take a > > > minute to post to your blog, facebook, twitter, delicious, > > etc and > > > email any news fiends you know who might be interested in > > giving it a > > > try. I know it will mean our facebook walls and twitter > > inboxes will > > > all be flooded with one another's melkjug announcements, but > > it could > > > make a huge difference in signups (consider it a direct > > > order strongly-encouraged request from cholmes and nickyg!). > > The more > > > users we get signed up, reading, and starring articles on a > > regular > > > basis, the better Melkjug will be at recommending articles > > once we > > > launch the collaborative filtering service. Feel free to > > copy and > > > paste the email below, or better yet, personalize it if you > > have a > > > chance. > > > > > > > > > > > > Thanks! > > > Josh > > > > > > > > > ---- > > > > > > > > > Hey! The non-profit I work for is building a web site I > > thought you > > > might like. It's called melkjug.org, and the idea is to make > > it easier > > > to read only the news that's interesting, rather than having > > to weed > > > through the news that's not. If you have given up on reading > > RSS due > > > to feed overload, then this is for you! > > > > > > > > > The way it works is you put in the news sources you check > > regularly > > > (nytimes, the onion, perezhilton, etc), and it gathers the > > news from > > > all the different sources into a single place. Then you can > > add > > > customized tuners to turn the volume up or down on a > > particular type > > > of article. For example, if all the articles about the > > economic crisis > > > are giving you the recession blues, just create a tuner for > > "Articles > > > tagged recession", turn down the volume, and the articles > > that match > > > will disappear. Of course, you could crank it up to get the > > opposite > > > effect. You can also see what your friends are reading, and > > if you > > > like their taste, create a tuner to crank up articles > > they've > > > starred. Tuners can filter based on a variety of criteria — > > what source > > > an article came from, who wrote it, what it was tagged, and > > when it > > > was published, to name a few—and more will be added as > > people find > > > them useful. And since the project is open source, anyone > > can use it > > > to build new tools we haven't thought of yet, and if we like > > the ideas > > > we can incorporate them too. > > > > > > > > > Once enough people are using melkjug, it will be able to > > provide you > > > with really accurate personalized recommendations, the same > > way that > > > sites like Amazon and Netflix do, so it does the hard work > > for you. > > > Check it out at melkjug.org, and pass it along to anyone > > else you know > > > who might be interested. > > > > > > > > > Thanks! > > > > > > > > > >
