patrick.net

I can't see them.

@patrick must be doing something.

Yes, reworking things.

I now see Patrick's book information where the news links used to be. Is the site still being reworked or is it finished?

Biff

The site is never finished!

The news links were being extracted entirely from forum posts, and people were not voting on them much, so they seemed kind of random and uninteresting. Or did you think they were worth reading?

I would like to see news links in the news links section. I wasn’t interested in voting. I definitely don't want to see any URL that shows up in a forum cluttering up the news links primarily because they are very often not news links.

I think you could have a feature where users post links to the different news sections (e.g. real estate) and that is all that should go in there. You would also need a flag so users could flag spam or non real estate news links. Someone would need to monitor the flags.

News links are good when they are relevant news links. They are bad when they are anything else.

I understand you don’t want to spend your time posting links. Let the users do it. Just make sure there is a way to eliminate the crap.

Biff

I agree with you, but I have not been able to find an effective way to eliminate the crap, since most people did not vote on newslinks.

Given that most people don't vote, how do I get them to mark spam?

People do use the Like/Dislike thing for forum comments all the time, so I could simply trust that well-liked users would post well-liked newslinks.

Should I try that, or can you think of a better idea?

I hadn't thought about voting as a spam flag. A spam flag is not about liking or disliking. A spam flag indicates that the link should not be there.

Craigslist has a few spam flags. Maybe you could have the following:

1. Does not belong in this section

2. SPAM (not a news link or posted too many times)

The first option indicates that the post is a news link but is not appropriate for the section in which it was posted.

The second option indicates that a post is not a news link.

The key thing is that only news links get in the news link section, no commentary, nobody selling anything, etc.

I never voted on a news link. I flag spam on craigslist pretty frequently. Voting is sharing your opinion with others. Flagging spam says “get this crap out of here”.

Biff

People do use the Like/Dislike thing for forum comments all the time, so I could simply trust that well-liked users would post well-liked newslinks.

Or make posts with links multi-likable.

OK, working on it, though I think I tried this a couple of years ago and no one posted any links, kind of like no one votes on links.

But it's not terribly hard, so I should be able to do it again within a day or so.

The two unescapable thoughts I have about the news links section is that 1) it should only contain news links and 2) the more relevant they are the better.

If you only acheive #1 you will have made progress.

For #2, can you automatically grab news links from known places? Can you get newly [published news links from Diana Olick at CNBC? What about Zillow, the Wall Street Journal, San Jose Mercury, San Francisco Chronicle? Just the relevant sections or reporters?

Biff

I can automatically look in those news places, but even well-designed programs make stupid mistakes that humans do not, because programs lack a sense of finesse and judgement.

The real trick is finding links that are "good", meaning original, interesting, and non-spammy, from sources all over the Internet. It's very hard programatically.

People can do it easily though. The trick then is getting people to do it.

What makes people enter data voluntarily?

Gasbuddy.com works because people seem to enjoy helping each other out with gas prices. Maybe people will enjoy entering good newslinks the same way, especially if their username gets credited.

I have to point out that Google's secret is that it has a billion people all entering what kind of ads they want to see. Users don't think of it that way when they enter search terms, but that's what Google's business really is: selling user-entered data to advertisers.

Patrick.net could actually be profitable, maybe even very profitable, if people were happy to enter some kind of real estate data that someone else was willing to pay for in aggregate, or to advertise on the spot based on user-entered data. My housing calculator could possibly work that way: when people enter a rent and a price, that's valuable info and advertisers might be happy to advertise based on that data -- except that the calculator is probably way too honest for real estate sales people to want anything to do with it.

But I digress. I'll get back to working on letting users enter daily newslinks.

I think people might enter news links because it is simple. I can add a link in probably one minute or less and with no thinking involved. You could do a little campaign advertising the changes and asking for participation.

Can you scrape the top three or top ten stories after searching Google news for "real estate"? I think they must have humans filtering this stuff.

I think crediting the link is a great idea. People get a feel good and it prevents them from posting garbage.

I don't think the housing calculator is going to be a big money maker, advertising or otherwise. But we digress.

Biff

P.S. - Google is fucking evil. Really fucking evil.

Biff Baxter says

Can you scrape the top three or top ten stories after searching Google news for "real estate"?

No, instant lawsuit. Violates their "terms of use". In fact, pretty much every use violates pretty much every big website's terms of use once you start to look into it. Nothing is allowed. I talked to some lawyers years ago about possibly scraping MLS data and the assured me it would end up in court. That's where I learned all this.

But users who like links they happen to find on Google can enter them on Patrick.net. That's different. Not automated, and not me.

I was thinking of creating a Patrick.net terms of use at last, which would have the single line:

"The Patrick.net terms of use forbids reading the Patrick.net terms of use."

Biff Baxter says

I think they must have humans filtering this stuff.

They proudly claim they do not. Completely automated. I believe them, because their links are strangely bland and mainstream. They rarely have newslinks I really want to read.

Biff Baxter says

Google is fucking evil. Really fucking evil.

I thought they were arrogant but not necessarily evil until they started censoring search results in China to please the Chinese government. That's when I lost respect for them.

Biff Baxter says

I can add a link in probably one minute or less and with no thinking involved.

How about 3 seconds?

If you're logged in, and you have my link-posting widget dragged into your browser's toolbar, then all you need to do is click it to submit the page you're on.

"The Patrick.net terms of use forbids reading the Patrick.net terms of use."

Instead you could have terms of use that allow scraping but not for Google or any of the other pricks who don't allow scraping.

I thought they were arrogant but not necessarily evil until they started censoring search results in China to please the Chinese government. That's when I lost respect for them.

I have a few stories which might make you like them a lot less. I don't care to share them because it would take a lot of time and only piss me off. Complete assholes doing evil while sometimes saying "Don't Be Evil" is their slogan and other times saying it is absolutely not their slogan. It depends on what is convenient at the moment.

Biff

How about 3 seconds?

I can do it that quickly with or without the link. When I said less than one minute, I was being conservative. Under promise, over deliver. And fuck Google.

Biff

Biff Baxter says

I have a few stories which might make you like them a lot less. I don't care to share them because it would take a lot of time and only piss me off.

Forked to this thread in case you decide you do want to comment on Google's evilness:

http://patrick.net/?p=1217614

Need those spam filters already. One good news link posted and one crappy house listing posted by robertoaribas.

House listings are advertisements, not news.

Biff

The link submission piece looks great, nice functionality.

One thing, I had troubles editing the title when it gave me this error:

Please put a title here

I would fix it if I knew how. Maybe you should let the poster edit the title.

Biff

To clarify, I was unable to repair the title after I submitted it. I know you can modify it before you submit it.

Biff

More spam:

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/?source=Patrick.net (coasttocoastam.com

Biff

Working on it all right now!

Biff Baxter says

One thing, I had troubles editing the title when it gave me this error:

Please put a title here

I would fix it if I knew how. Maybe you should let the poster edit the title.

OK, now there is a 1:1 correspondence between news links and forum threads, so if you posted a news link, you can change its title by changing the associated forum thread title.

In short, just click the "edit" link under the link you posted.

Still working on a spam link.

Also, I stopped links in comments from appearing in the links list. Too confusing.

The title fix is great. Just fixed the one I screwed up.

Biff

Spam link will have to wait till tomorrow.

Also, I need to decide on some mechanism for choosing links when there are more than 20. Mabye just sort by how much the forum likes the user likes the guy who submitted the link? Most liked users on top, then any link that is not in the top 20 doesn't show up.

Damn, I broke link submission for a few hours.

Should be working again now.