Pick Your Favorite Captions. Woo!
You might have noticed thumbs sticking up over the captions. They’re not part of my Fonzie obsession, they are instead proof that I’ve officially admitted to being a follower in the caption this like caption site community instead of pretending to be a leader like I once did. By clicking the thumb over a caption, you select it as your “current favorite” caption. That puts it on a page full of the popular favorites that you and the other cappers have voted for. If that seems a lot like a feature from some other capsite, that’s because it is, kind of. I like to think I’ve put my own spin on it. Captions stay on the favorites page for up to 24 hours after they were written, and you can only vote for one caption at a time. That is, as soon as you click the thumb, your previous vote is wiped out. My thinking is that makes getting on the favorites page more of an honor and keeps the voting from becoming too much of an obsession. To provide at least some enforcement of the one capper/one vote thing, you do need to be registered to vote. The honor system takes care of the rest. Note, there’s no rule against voting for your own cap - heck the first test vote was of, by and for me. If that’s how you want to spend your vote, be my guest. Thoughts? Complaints? Job offers? Share them.
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:56 am
Seriously? Only one vote for a single caption in a 24-hour period? Am I reading that right? I understand why you would want to prevent multiple voting on the same caption by a single person, but wouldn’t a one-vote-per-caption system be just as effective? Why one-vote/one-caption?
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:42 am
You can change your vote as often as you like, it’s just that at any given time you can only vote for a single caption to be on the page. My thinking is that giving an unlimited number or votes ends up with like every fifth cap on the page, which makes it, well, less special. I might tweak the system a bit, but I’m just trying to move the pendulum of people capping to please themselves versus people capping to please others pendulum a little, not a lot.
The 24 hour limit is on how long a caption can stay on the page.
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:48 am
I like a caption. So I vote for it. It goes on the page. I like another caption. I vote for it. It goes on the page, but the first caption goes away. If I spend an hour, two hours, heck even 24 hours capping I have to constantly reassess which I think is the best caption. “Oh no, this caption’s good, and I’d vote for it. But it’s not as good as that caption I saw three hours ago.”
I think keeping the votes anonymous keeps the pendulum swung squarely on the side of capping for themselves. Making it so you can only vote for one caption within a 24-hour period just seems sort of annoying.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
(If you think that’s annoying, you should see the stupid quote bugs unquote I keep asking Gerson about.)
I vote for two votes per person instead of one. BUT, the second vote only counts for 1/2 what the other one does (?) no that’s stupid too. I dunno, I guess my impression is that adding a new feature like this is calculated to please by and large, except for making Fred a little green* maybe.
*signifying envy - I think.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
New features here are of course calculated to please Gerson by and large, and create a minmum of anger amongst everyone else.
The problem for me is that giving people any number of votes other than 1 or unlimited probably adds more confusion than benefit. I still think one’s the way to keep the best of the best on the favorites page.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Gerson, I appreciate your wanting to keep the special caps page special, and not too crowded, but how about a compromise? How about limiting our choices to three or five in 24-hour period? One seems like the loneliest number that you’ll ever do. (Thank you, Three Dog Night.)
June 6th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Gerson, I think you do a terrific job here, and I commend you for trying to take some of the features that people like about certain other caption sites and adapt them to what you’re trying to do with IS.
Still… If it’s about keeping the favorites page less crowded, then sure, limiting the number of times you can vote in a given period sounds like a good idea. Except, you already limit it by making only the past 24-hours’ worth of votes viewable on the page. And I think most people can exercise common sense and not vote for every caption they see. Especially since you do have to be registered to vote.
I think Generik’s idea is a good compromise (provided it’s do-able, of course). I understand and appreciate your argument against unlimited voting, but one vote severely limits the fun of the new feature. I think, rather than think long and hard over which caption we think is the best before we vote, a lot of us just won’t bother.
June 6th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Um. . . we love you, Gerson?
June 6th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Wow, you guys are persistent. I’ve gone back to the drawing board, though officially it’s not on account of the whining, but the fact that the favorites is so elite it’s practically empty.
Until I find something that’s not considerably more complicated than the current system but still choosier than the Crackhead system, try to have some fun with it as it stands. I’m sort of leaning towards a star system.
(ps. thanks tina.)
June 6th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
NEWS FLASH: Alpha Centauri A ambassador* registers formal complaint with US Embassy, that GersonK is crowding their system’s borders, and that further leaning will scarcely be tolerated by the brave Centaurians!
Slightly more seriously, persons etc, I think that some reform such as more votes e.g. two as I proposed (but of equal weight + older vote of two already posted bumped off - slightly more data to track that way, yes), but with a tradeoff such as not being able to vote for one’s own captions (thus enforcing modesty on we crackheads and gentlemen/ladies) … would be interesting to try.
The two times I’ve seen the favorite caps page, it wasn’t empty. But the single-vote captions weren’t much to cheer… how about two votes of equal weight, but the single-vote captions go on a sub-page (the ‘lesser faves’ ?).
OK, too elaborate. I don’t seriously suggest anything. GersonK’s doing fine!
…except for that provocation of the Centaurians.
* probably played by Peter Jurasik
June 6th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
What Fred said.
What UpSky said.
What tinaw said.
What Generik sa- wait a minute!! Okay, forget that, I’m not voting for my own comment (or captions). But I think all three of those fine folk made good points. Don’t make me quote Three Dog Night again.
June 9th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I fear this will only lead to jealousy, envy and sword fighting on pirate ships.
June 9th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Oh come on, Larry. That’s what you said when the captain started handing out jewel handled cutlasses to his favorites.
June 9th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
I didn’t get a cutlass
June 15th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Cutlass? they were handing out cutlasses?! And I got a stupid VEGA!?
June 16th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
You got a Vega? And someone else got a Cutlass? *I* got a fucking Barracuda!
*cue Heart* o/` “Ooooooohhh… Barracuda!” o/`
June 26th, 2007 at 1:01 am
How terrible! We have to log-in to vote for our own caps as “favorites of the day”. That’s a dead-give-away that we’re voting for ourselves.