DesiPundit

For regulars that would be too redundant….anyways still worth trying for some specific time.

I would like that…

Yes, I suppose it could be interesting. And what is one extra post among so many.

In fact, you should also post the list of contributers according to the popularity of links they posted. The logical next step: performance evaluation! Then you can fire the two least popular contributers every 6 months

How about something in the sidebar, instead of a post? Similar to the Previous thingy you guys have now.

Only if they have a separate RSS feed. Otherwise it makes no sense.

Vivek, if we put in place a ‘rank & yank’ policy, I just might get yanked first

Manaswini, that would add too much clutter to the one already present which would lead it to getting ignored like our previous thingy

Saurabh, although a separate feed can be provided I don’t think people would want to subscribe to yet another feed.

Redundant

(yeah am into minimalism these days)

Yes, there are some links I don’t click through for various reasons - summary didn’t grab me, no time etc.

So if I see something pop up as most popular I might be tempted to click thru.

Redundant

i think its a good idea, will point me to stuff people are reading but i might have missed out.

Could be useful for people who visit DP once a week or so. How many are such people that will help evaluate better.

Regulars will find it redundant.

For contributors it would be good to know where they stood.

Redundant I suppose.

I think it’s a great idea, Pat. There are any number of links in a given day and one can easily miss a good link or two. A filter of filters sounds good.

I think its worth a try.

Aye .. good idea

Could be redundant for regular visitors, but for us who visit once/twice a week it would help a lot to know the popular topics we missed out. I feel you guys won’t lose out on anything if you add this new section : The regulars won’t stop being regulars because of this new section, and the not so regulars like us will have more cake to eat at the same time

I think you have got an economist’s dilemma On one hand, 50% want it and on the other hand, 50% don’t want it

I go with ‘Best of Desipundit’ hyperlink on the top right hand corner of the page (better visibility) than a seperate post.

I’d say let’s add it as a weekly post. The regulars can just skip reading it and the ones who read weekly can get a quick digest. Where’s the downside? One extra post a week just can’t hurt.

From a contributor’s perspective, I must admit I am curious to see which categories of blog posts are popular with readers

Thanks y’all for your feedback. Although the reaction is mixed, I guess we’ll give it a try to see how it turns out. It will be just like a regular post albeit a bit longer and be published on Sunday.

I’d like to dispel one perception that I find particularly troubling.

Let me be very clear - DesiPundit contributors are not paid employees. We are volunteers who are spending our free time and effort to trawl the net to find blogs for your reading pleasure.

So comments, in jest or not, about performance evaluation or ranking are not in good taste. We don’t really expect praise or kind words in return, but as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

urrmmm… honestly, I wasn’t picturing the contributors to think that way when I wrote in favor of the ranking system… but now that you mentioned it, it does make a lot of sense.

Remember desipundit used to have a list of popular posts at the footer of the main page which never change for a week or two? That is also like a “ranking system”, according to me. Was that section removed because of the same reason that Lekhni mentioned above?

Although I still feel it is a great idea [just saw the first of your "Popular weekly Links" post], if the quality of contributions is going to be affected because of “competition” as Lekhni mentioned, then may be it might not be such a good idea after all

The previous section of Popular Links was removed because no one scrolled down to it and it was causing unnecessary drain on the bandwidth.

And I don’t think such a list has any effect on the contributors or at least I hope so. The reasons people click on a particular link can be varied and quality is just one of them.

Kima,

Thanks for understanding and appreciating my viewpoint.

I never talked about “competition”, I’m not sure how you got that impression. I certainly don’t feel there is any competition among contributors. I am not even sure what we would be competing for anyway - fan mail?

As far as I am concerned, the benefit (to me) of getting details on popular links is to get a sense of - (i) Are there any categories (like food/ travel) that are especially popular?

(ii) Which blog posts were especially popular? What made those posts stand apart?

Another way we could achieve this is if you guys left more comments on the links - let us know what you thought of each link. We’d love the discussion.

And of course, please send more hat tips! We love to read new blogs, but we can’t discover all of them by ourselves

Lekhni,

I scrolled up to see if someone had taken the bit about ranking contributers too seriously. At a glance, it looks like I was the only one with the troubling suggestion (before your comment about it).

Since I am not one to take a joke back, especially after Patrix had replied with a good comeback to it, my comment stays - in bad taste or otherwise.

I would add that if you “don’t really expect praise or kind words in return” then may be you shouldn’t be reminding readers that you are a volunteer spending your free time and effort for their reading pleasure.

Vivek,

It’s not aimed specifically at you, I have found this attitude elsewhere in the blogosphere, as I trawl through blogs. You may have meant it in jest, but there are many others who mean it seriously.

I am not “reminding” people, I am setting the record straight, since I think most people do not realize that we are volunteers. At least, that is the most charitable way to interpret their remarks.

Well, you commented on this thread, and mentioned that “comments, in jest or not, about performance evaluation or ranking are not in good taste”, so I assumed that it applied to me specifically in this instance, while not rejecting the idea that it could apply to others too.

But I find it incredible that there are people out there who think that DP contributers are not volunteers. Any links to these exalted souls?

Vivek,

Yes, it is incredible I would have thought it’s quite obvious we are volunteers. Apparently not.

And no, I am not going to name names or post links. I am going to assume they were speaking from ignorance. Hopefully they are reading this and now they know better.

The only reason I even decided to respond (after much thought) was - I worried that even if you were in jest, your comment (and others’) was perpetuating that myth. Anyway given the amount of bile that DP contributors seem to get, I could also not be sure which comments were half-serious

Let’s move on. I really like the fact that you take the time to comment on DP links and start a discussion. Can I also request you to send us more hat tips? Maybe we should start an “each one send one” campaign

I read a rather fixed set of blogs.. most of them have a pretty wide readership already. So can’t help much with hat-tips unfortunately.

A welcome move.