Ditto Blog

Archive for May, 2008

  1. Voting Etiquette

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    This is something that has caused a few disagreements here in the Ditto office. What is the etiquette that should be considered when voting on lists or should we just all just do as we feel?

    Take the Best John Woo films list for example, I feel perfectly happy voting for

    1. Hard Boiled
    2. The Killer
    3. M:I-2
    4. Face Off

    In that order and voting Hard Target down.

    My intent is to say that the first four are good examples of John Woo and the latter is not. Hopefully this might help someone new to John Woo to find the best of his films.

    The debate comes with a list like The Greatest Ever Flight Sim. I know jack all about flight sims, but I do know some that I enjoyed, so I added them and voted them up. These could well look like a recommendation to someone looking for a flight sim to  buy. Trouble is they would be foolish because like I said I know nothing about flight sims. So what does one do? Only vote on lists where you know a fair bit about the topic?

    OK, so here is another question, take the list Best albums of the 80s, I love Guns n’ Roses and am a big Appetite fan so consider it a disgrace (ok bit melodramatic, but I have been called a drama queen before) that Michael Jackson is currently knocking Appetite off first place. So what do I do? I could just go in vote everything in the top 20 down to help Appetite? Is that wrong, WDYT?

    We are not suggesting a voting rule book here I am just wondering what you guys think.

    As Deeloren would say Rock on!

    Pat

    Posted at 9:38 pm on 29/05/08

    Comments: 1

  2. New features!

    We’ve added some new features to Ditto. Here’s a quick run-down…

    • Customised lists
      A lot of you have been asking to be able to personalise your selections on your profile pages - now you can. As before, all your (up) votes are stored as selections on your profile. Now you can add notes next to any of your picks, and reorder your whole list into a proper, numbered chart. You can even re-write the intro, thereby turning your votes on ‘greatest movies of all time’ into a proper, personal list of ‘my favourite movies’. We’re working on further improvements to this feature - if you’ve got any suggestions, let us know below.
    • Find a list
      There’s a new link in the top nav bar that should make finding the right list much easier. You can now search by product - so that searching for ‘Star Wars’ will show you all the lists that include the movie Star Wars - and by tag - so that searching for ’80s’ will show you all the lists that have been tagged with, or whose titles include ’80s’. Again, if you think we could do it better, let us know how below.
    • Create a list
      We’ve made some improvements to our ‘create a list’ feature that should make it easier to create the list you want to, and avoid the problems of duplicate lists. List creators will also be able to edit certain elements of their list once it’s been created. As ever, all suggestions welcome below!

    We hope you like what you’ve done. If you don’t, we’d really like to know (and know why!) please tell us in the comments below, or if you don’t want anyone else reading them, just email your thoughts to feedback@ditto.net

     Thanks

     John

    Posted at 3:22 pm on 13/05/08

    Tags: , ,

    Comments: 1

  3. Create-a-list competition!

    You’ve already been busy creating a ton of lists on Ditto, for which we’re very grateful.

    Now it’s time to reward you. So,  at the end of June, we’re going to look at all our user created lists and the creator of the most popular one will get £100 in Amazon vouchers!

     How do we tell which is the most popular list? Good question. The most important thing is the number of people who’ve voted on it (not the number of votes - though this will be a factor), and we’ll also take into account how many times the list has been viewed. We’ll announce the winner in an email at the beginning of July.

    Here’s a few tips on how to create a popular list:

    • Give it an appealing title. “This is a list of my favourite albums” isn’t going to encourage thousands of strangers to look at your list.*
    • Tell your friends. If you know your friends are into action games, or 70s prog-rock albums, create a list about these subjects and get your friends to vote on your list. Chances are, if a load of your friends are into something, there’ll be more people out there into the same thing.
    • Advertise! If you’ve got your own website or blog, feel free to link straight to your list. If you’re a regular on a band’s website and you’ve started a list about their best album, stick a link in their forums.
    • Be original. If your list is one of ten about the same thing, you’ll be up against stiff competition to make yours the most popular. A list that’s different, fun, or useful will attract more people.

    That’s it - get creating, and good luck!

     John

    *If you’re desperate to showcase your impeccable taste in movies, albums, etc., and want to create a list of, say, ‘my favourite movies’, just vote on ‘greatest movies of all time’. With our brand new list customisation tools (see the next blog post!), you can turn your votes into a crafted, ordered, personal selection for anyone to see on your profile.

    Posted at 3:21 pm on 13/05/08

    Tags: ,

    Comments: None

  4. Downtime, Thursday, May 15

    Apologies in advance - we’re upgrading some of our hardware, which should improve the site’s performance, but does mean Ditto will be down for most of this Thursday (May 15).

    Sorry for any inconvenience.

    John

    Posted at 2:29 pm on 13/05/08

    Comments: None