Web Site Design and Development

Most of you have probably noticed the Top Users widget that appears on every page of Houssee.com. If you have a competitive streak (I know I do), the first thing you want to know is: “How can I bump those undeserving people who aren’t me off the top spot and get my very deserving self up there in the limelight?”

If you poke around in the Top Users page, you may have noticed that the Top Users on the widget are the users who have the highest Karma score. OK, so far so good, now you know what number you’re shooting for, but what is Karma?

Time Flies Like An Arrow. (Fruit Flies Like a Banana)

Fortunately, this is not Karma in the Buddhist sense that you have to make up for the rotten stuff you may have done in a past life. In fact, what you did in this life won’t help you much, either — unless you did it recently. You see, unlike many point systems (ActiveRain’s, for example), Houssee doesn’t much care what you did last month. We take the history from a shorter period of time — currently 10 days — and look at that.

In the future we may change that number, or tweak the way the system works to be more of a weighted combination of “lifetime achievement” plus “what have you done for Houssee lately”? But at present, the Top Users widget only goes 10 days back. Naturally, you still get a benefit from your links being in the system and from the Houssee Awards you may have won, but as far the Top Users widget is concerned, 11 days ago is the Middle Ages.

How To Be a Top User

To be a top user, basically you have to do more of the following over a ten day period than all but five of your fellow users:

1. Submit Links
   The most heavily rewarded activity is submitting new content for other people to read. Naturally most of us are pretty interested in using the system to highlight our own content, but remember the system doesn’t care if you submit a link to your own blog posts or to some news article or blog post you found interesting. Please keep in mind our spam policy, however — real estate (broadly considered) only!
2. Comment on Other People’s Submissions
   One of the changes I made to the default (Pligg) Karma system was to add in a factor for commenting on other people’s submissions. This is in keeping with the basic spam-o-phobic philosophy of Houssee, that even though we’re busy promoting our content and singing the Realtor® musical scale (mi mi mi), we’re also part of a community of other people. Reading their stuff and commenting on it is a good thing. (Well, I guess you can debate whether its good or not, but I can guarantee you that it’s part of the Karma algorithm). You currently get a few less points for doing this than for submitting a link , but much more than you do for the next item.
3. Vote for Submissions
   Least heavily rewarded by the Karma algorithm — but nevertheless very quick and easy to do — is voting for other people. Is that a cheap way to make the number of votes higher? Well, yes, I guess it has that effect. Does it foster a sort of Special Olympics everyone-gets-a-prize mentality? Yes, I suppose uncharitably one could say that, too. More to the point, it’s in keeping again with the goal of fostering a real community, one where you get rewarded not only for your individual contributions, but also for recognizing the contributions of others. Granted that recognition is pretty mechanical in this case, which is why #1 and #2 count so much more heavily.

Yes, I know most such systems reward “Published” content, and we may get there as more and more users come on board, but for now what you see above is pretty much it.

In case your curious, no, the Algorithm doesn’t have a cheat in it that guarantees John Lockwood will be on top. The fact that I own the domain means I can always throw a link somewhere if I want one, but as far as the Top Users widget code is concerned, I’m competing along with everyone else.

Now you have the tools — come knock me off that top spot if you can!

And stay tuned for “Houssee Awards, Part Deux: The Re-Houssee-ing.” Coming soon.

Tags: Houssee.com

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