The discussion is fabulously short, really, and my experience boils down to having too high an expectation for what would happen.  The premise of the site was that the community of real estate authors would visit the site and vote on their favorite content, and those votes would be the basis of the award.

As it unfolded, however, very few people were interested in reading or promoting content that wasn’t their own.  A few folks did, and I’m grateful to those who did.  But the vast majority of users were only interested in promoting their own content.  That’s fine, such as it is.  It’s certainly one of the reasons Digg based sites are so popular.  But as it turned out, there weren’t enough people interested in anyone else’s content to sustain a user-voted award by any reasonable definition.

I’m not saying that such a thing won’t miraculously start to happen, and if it does, we can get the award ball rolling again.  But I don’t expect it to.

Congratulations to all the winners and special thanks to all who participated with your votes and submissions, whether you nabbed a valuable shirt this week or not.

Remember the Houssee award is based on your votes for your favorite posts, so to make the system work, if you see something you like, vote it up!

Think of it as “Broker Co-Op”.

On the issue of vote manipulation, as our spam policy states: 

…if your friend is just you by another name, or if you and your friend have secretly agreed to promote everything for each other regardless of the quality, that crosses the line and becomes spam. Your published posts may sent back to the upcoming queue, or if you persist, your posts or account may be deleted.

A few users spent quite a bit of time testing out this policy this week, and have discovered that it works.  For those of you who didn’t test it out, thank you, and yes I do hate being a cop probably as much as you hate reading about me being one.

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.

• Lots of folks have been stopping by to visit. Even though we’re only eleven days old we have — coincidentally enough — 101 stories submitted or published, and 101 users. Hey, this makes finding the average easy!
• We’ve announced our first group of Award Winners, we have a valuable prize for them to win.
• We have a written Spam Policy. Don’t Do It.
• We now have our very own blog (OK, so I admit it, technically it’s a Wordpress tag on ParticleWave’s very own blog — but that’s fun, too). Hey look, you’re reading it!
• We have our own FeedBurner Feed so you can keep track of the latest Houssee submissions. So far we’re feeding the submissions rather than the publications, but that may change soon when I announce the new algorithm for the top user sidebar. Stay tuned.
• We fixed an obscure technical problem, and got grouchy with a guy who was stubborn about it. It’s probably not interesting to you, but if you like obscure technical problems or seeing me grouchy, read about it.
• We have a MyBlogLog account for Houssee. Don’t look now, but your head is showing.

Houssee.com: Submit Early. Vote Often.

Houssee.com is also the sponsor of the Houssee award, which features the top user-voted stories each week. ParticleWave gets the honor of hosting this first ever Houssee award. So here then are the stories that either got the most votes or were otherwise outstanding in their category.

And The Oscar Houssee Goes To…

In General Real Estate News, first prize for the top voted post this week goes to Gig Harbor’s Matt Thompson for his Reconnect to Your Community link to his Good To Tour Gig Harbour Again, a beautiful and well illustrated post that does an outstanding job of highlighting his community.

The Market News and Updates categories had no published news, and I’ll recuse myself from pointing to my own posts and zero in on Purva Brown’s thought-provoking Will Investors Save the Sacramento Market? Mitch Argon’s monthly update on Reno Home Sales Statistics would have been the top vote getter in that category, but it was filed under general.

The Investing category award goes to user PhoenixMarketTrends for an excellent article on whether owning Is Owning an Apartment Buliding Right for You, which goes into the pros and cons of the larger multi-unit investments.

The Mortgage category didn’t garner any votes yet, so I’ll just have to pick an article, won’t I? OK, I pick the one that I highlighted, Massachusetts Sues H&R Block over Mortgages to Minorities.

Fans of Trulia voted heavily for Tell Us Your Trulia Voices Success Story — Win a Ticket To Inman Connect, giving us a clear winner in the Real Estate Internet Marketing Category.

With a single entry in the Listing Announcements category, Matt Thompson scores a second Houssee this week for a Rare Gig Harbor Waterfront Property, with an honorable mention to Susan Hilton’s cool post about custom Treehouses — ok, ok, they’re not listings, it’s just a fun post.

Finally, in the About Houssee.com / Winners Category, where we feature the post that did the most to spread the word about Houssee.com, our clear winner was a post by Jay Thompson, the Phoenix Real Estate Guy, entitled Houssee.com, a Digg-like Site for Real Estate Info.

Submit Your Posts and Win Fame, Links, and Pictures of Valuable Shirts

So what you should do is go over and sign up so you can start submitting your posts and voting for your favorite news stories right away. Please make sure to check out the categories and submit your post to the most appropriate one — there’s more competition in the “General News” category.

OK, so you’re thinking, “Wow, this one post is the start of an awesome tradition. If I act now, I can be practically in on the ground floor of the Houssee phenomenon!” I don’t blame you a bit for thinking that. It’s very perceptive.

Just by submitting a story, every Houssee submitter is guaranteed a real honest-in-goodness link. We’re not talking about a creepy nofollow link, either, or something that goes through Javascript and then links to you after phoning our European allies to ask for permission. We’re talking genuine link love, baby, the way God and Tim Berners Lee intended.

Plus, if you win a Houssee during one of our (weekly? occasional?) Houssee award posts, you get yet another link from the award, which will be posted on one of the many fine Houssee hosts we have in mind. (OK, sure, they’re all different blogs that I write — but when I run out of those I’ll think of something.)

What Else Do You Get?

But wait, there’s more!

If you win a Houssee, you’re entitled to proudly display this picture of a 100% cotton tee shirt. This is not a picture of some cheesy cotton polyester tee shirt. This is a nice shirt, with double-secret half stitches and reinforced upseams. This picture is only available through this exclusive Internet offer.

Congratulations to all our intrepid posters and hard working winners this week. Come check us out.

Submit early. Vote often!