WatchI've had a bunch of people say the newslinks are all over the place now, not specificially about housing, and not necessarily very good...
Edited on 22 Aug 2012:
In response to reader demand, Patrick will again manually pick the newslinks each day
if he can get 100 paying subscribers in the next week. Those paying
subscribers will then be able to view the links here, or by email.
To bring back the hand-picked newslinks, please subscribe with the button on the home page: http://patrick.net
The subscription costs $7 per week, but there is a one-week free trial period,
so you won't be charged anything until a week goes by. If there are 100
subscribers by Monday August 27th at noon, his manually picked newslinks will
get published that evening, and your subscription will start charging you.
If there are not at least 100 subscribers, Patrick will cancel your
subscription and you'll pay nothing.
Follow
Befriend (16)
760 threads
7,667 comments
Boca Raton, FL
Premium
@Patrick
Suggestion: Include the votes for a discussion on the user's discussion page.
That way, we link submitters can easily see which of our discussions/links were useful and interesting to the community and which were not. This will help us better focus our link submissions.
I do think it's a good thing that this site has branched out from just real estate as the bubble is becoming less relevant as time passes. Many places are in post-bubble, particularly the areas least affected by the bubble. It's still relevant to the sun belt though as prices have a ways to fall still. But even those of us who live in the sun belt come to patrick.net for non-housing related news and discussions. At least that's my opinion.
Follow
Befriend (8)
28 threads
1,339 comments
Redwood City, CA
The problem is your forum users are all over the place, while your link readers are here primarily for reading housing links. They come to you for the best hand picked links on housing, to save them time. They aren't interested in contributing, they are here to get information only. In essence you're letting the minority rule the majority, but they seem to have differing views and they're going to run off your largest user base over time.
Follow
Befriend
1 comments
I tend to agree. I very much enjoy getting the housing links, but as a political agnostic - I am tired of seeing all the left-wing propaganda that is now being sprinkled throughout the links. I was originally drawn to this blog because I felt that the author was more on the independent side.
Follow
Befriend
8 comments
Tustin, CA
Patrick,
I don't want user generated links. I come here because I want someone with intelligence to be parsing the random crap that's out there. I can find random crap by searching the internet myself. If you're getting too busy to support being the engine that weans down the information, I might suggest you look for (and interview) volunteers to help with the process whom you believe to have good taste.
Having random users point out their findings is helpful but I don't want to see it all. If you do assemble a proper team of volunteers, it shouldn't take too long to do a quick search over the 20 or so major news outlets. Any article linked on here from "the economist" I'm going to read. Any article or snarky political cartoon from some loon I've never heard of gets ignored.
If this can't serve as a jump station that offers value, I have no reason to be here. The new formal offers a lot less value than the old. I know it takes time and you may have other priorities, but unfortunately the time you spent was why it was valuable in the first place.
Regards,
Joel Payne
PS Thank you for all you've done over the years.
Follow
Befriend (2)
5 threads
8 comments
My suggestion would be to look at an editors / curators circle who can help select links. There are plenty of sites (reddit, hacker news) which allow user-submitted content. However they have to solicit active participation.
My main problem is that I tend to hit PN for a quick perusal of headlines, I generally don't log in, and the recent link quality has been ... decidedly mixed.
Worse is the graphics which frequently link to a forum or discussion with apparently little or no bearing or context on the graphics. I think this may be because the front-page link tends to land on the *current* page of comments, which has almost always drifted significantly from the orginal topic.
It's making things generally less useful.
Follow
Befriend
18 comments
Why would someone donate to a site that is becoming less and less useful? Patrick, I suggest you take control of the main column news links, like you used to do. I come here for your links. I don't come here for political cartoons or anything user-voted. If you think that kind of user voting is a benefit to your site in some way (I'm pretty sure it's not) - move those links to a separate, adjacent column.
Follow
Befriend (54)
5,181 threads
6,153 comments
46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Premium
If you'll check the subset of links that are just about real estate you'll see that it's pretty close to what I myself would have chosen, which is not a bad result since this scheme has been running only a few weeks.
http://patrick.net/forum/real-estate/
As far as I can tell, you don't donate or submit links, and you won't even vote on links? You suggest I find volunteers to help, but will you be one of them?
The site could be better than ever if everyone would just vote a little bit.
Hey, actually it's working! Total number of votes on links today are about double what they have been lately, probably because of this thread. Each vote improves the quality of the results!
Follow
Befriend (54)
5,181 threads
6,153 comments
46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Premium
Maybe what's really missing is the ability to subscribe by email to the top ten links by separate forum, so that people could just subscribe to the real estate links under http://patrick.net/forum/real-estate/ for example.
Right now the email subscription has all links together, which I admit is a mish-mash of different topics.
Follow
Befriend (54)
5,181 threads
6,153 comments
46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Premium
OK, a text-only option is not hard to implement. I will do that.
Follow
Befriend
1 threads
6 comments
Sad to say the experiment to let users vote on the news links is adding alot of noise, and also the topics are no longer focused on housing-related news. For example, I don't need any Obama or Romney news / political cartoons on this site, unless it is housing/economy related. There's plenty of other politics focused sites I can goto to read that drivel.
The news was much better when it was a curated list. If Patrick doesn't have time, maybe he should ask for volunteers who would agree to stick to housing related news and let them curate the news by committee.
Maybe Patrick is trying to turn patrick.net into a reddit.com or something. Right now, I'm finding if I want housing related news, I'm better off going to http://www.reddit.com/r/housing than http://patrick.net, which didn't used to be the case.
Follow
Befriend (54)
5,181 threads
6,153 comments
46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Premium
errc says
Eleven. So there's still 89 to go in 24 hours. Chances of getting there are approximately 0%. That's fine. It was a fun experiment.
My book will be ready soon, so I'll start advertising it tomorrow.
And I'm thinking of yet more businesses that liberate buyers from agents, like ways to search multiple sites' listings legally, and lists of FSBO forms by states, and lists of lawyers that do flat-fee transactions. Watch the home page for those!
Follow
Befriend (4)
328 threads
913 comments
Patrick,
pkennedy might be correct. If I start a new discussion I'll try to connect any link to the effect it might have on housing but I reserve the right to make stupid comments on other discussions
Follow
Befriend
6 threads
55 comments
Fontana, CA
May I suggest a blend of user-submitted links and a few you add yourself? Your editorial judgement made this site much better, but I realize you need to get your life back.
(Can you imagine what would happen to Drudge Report if Matt Drudge turned it over to the site's viewers? Yikes!)
Follow
Befriend (54)
5,181 threads
6,153 comments
46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Premium
I do submit links every day, and I vote on them.
I think the problem is just that relatively few people use the new system, which is understandable since it takes a bit of time to figure out the changes.
The Druge Report would probably be exactly the same, with viewers all finding new ways to hate Obama instead of Matt Drudge doing it. What I don't get is why his site gets so many viewers.
Follow
Befriend (16)
760 threads
7,667 comments
Boca Raton, FL
Premium
Patrick says
No, never using mailing lists. Use RSS feeds instead. They empower the user and can be read, filtered, and routed many more ways than email.
RSS feeds make mailing lists obsolete.
Patrick says
One third of Americans are idiots. Why else would there be a tru TV channel?
Follow
Befriend (1)
11 threads
224 comments
San Francisco, CA
joelnpayne says
I agree. But I also know that updating a blog every day with quality content is a big job, esp. if you are not getting paid for your time.
Follow
Befriend
8 comments
Tustin, CA
Patrick says
I think I gave you a spot ten spot but it was a 4-5 years back at least. FWIW I remember that I paid you according to the value I felt I received and was comparing to that of a magazine subscription. I also have commented but only occasionally and only when I felt like I really had something to say.
In terms of your request I put actions to suggestions, unfortunately that doesn't align with MY current priorities. I'm a mechanical engineer, I run an LLC on the side of normal employment, and I'm a father of two. That means life is very very full and I don't have time or desire to put priority on being a volunteer (even though I think it's a good idea). To vote properly requires time and attention paid to what good and what's bad when of course I prefer it all to be good. I find the new system to be inefficient and that's a bummer but it is what it is.
1sfrenter says
That's the rub. Patrick has been being paid for his time. Sure it's a hobby and he's not going to make a living on it, but since this has been up an running since what 2005 or so? I know I referred a friend here who bought a house in 2006 after I recommended she not do so. With a low day of donations at $15 and a good day at $50, Patrick's certainly made several thousand dollars doing this, and it wouldn't surprise me if he'd broken 10k. That's better than the vast majority of bloggers who simply want to have a voice.
Patrick, if you've decided it's not your priority, I can understand and relate to that. Time is precious and life goes so crazy fast (particularly with little girls) :-). You do what you need to do, but naturally I'll be doing the same. You wanted feedback on the system and I've given you that.
I do respect the fact that you've tried several things over the years and you listen to others while still thinking for yourself. If I didn't think you cared I wouldn't have spent 15 minutes of my day jotting you a couple notes.
Regards to you and yours,
Joel
Follow
Befriend
7 threads
187 comments
Pacifica, CA
The only problem I have found with the new system is that the comments seem, sometimes, to be feeding from earlier posts, or somewhere else.
So you click a link for a story, and comments seem to be in the middle of a conversation you didn't see the start of.
Follow
Befriend
6 threads
115 comments
My perspective: I don't have the time to surf, submit, vote. I get the email and read 2-6 stories from it, often not visiting patrick.net itself. I appreciate the pnet forum for the RE/economics talk, but less so the political banter. However, I do enjoy the political links (those containing numbers) and the cartoons (probably because they're quick).
I've contributed some to the forums some and have also submitted a couple links, but I'm generally not going to come here before I get the email. For people using email like me, voting makes no sense because it's the voting result that brings us here. If we're here and voting, email is pointless.
Otherwise, fewer but more high-quality links in the email are better. Timeliness is of moderate value - I like the daily option, but I may go through 10 emails at one time when I get around to reviewing them.
Follow
Befriend
3 comments
Dublin, CA
karsten says
Perhaps add an option to filter out the images from the links/articles or only show them as a link? Or split the images into a separate section from the links? There seem to be lots of joke images which frequently get voted up.