Oh Software Category, Where Art Thou?
Jan 19 '06
The Bottom Line It all started in July of 2005...
Okay, I admit it. I got the cart before the horse. I started the Software Category Write-On before writing a proper essay explaining the issues at hand with the Software category. This essay will attempt to serve as a brief explanation of what has transpired in the past six to seven months in relation to the trials and tribulations of the software category.
What is wrong with the Software category, anyway?
The first thing to determine when trying to solve a problem is the scope of the problem in question. As such, I will first detail all that I know to be a problem in relation to the computer software category.
1. The ranking system for ratings of Software products is non-functional.
If you go to most any product review on Epinions, you will see that the ratings are weighted. What you will see is that the Category Leads and Advisor ratings always show at the top with the button indicating their hat next to their name. The folks without the button will be ranked below this by their apparent 'power' within the section. The way Epinions uses this information is to blend the weights and ratings of the raters to arrive at an overall rating for the review. I have an Advisor hat in Computer Hardware, Business and Technology and Software, so in those sections my rate should display near the top relative to the non-Advisors and non-CL's who have also rated the review. My rating carries more weight in the overall rating, contributing more pull towards my rating in the areas I advise. If I rate in a category outside of my Advisory areas, my rating is ranked in relative terms to the section. In other words, I might be the very bottom of the list in Books as far as power ranking, but closer to the top in Electronics. In each section my rate carries more or less weight relative to the overall ranking based on this rating power. I am not sure how this works quantitatively, but qualitatively it seems to follow from my observations on the site over the past few years.
Software product reviews do not appear to contain a ranking of any type since about July of 2005. First, there are no buttons indicating who is a CL or an Advisor. This is just a visual indication though, right? Surely the ranking power is still utilized? This does not appear to be the case. The weighting of a CL or Advisor rating doesn't appear to be taken into account at all in terms of ranking of the ratings, and there doesn't appear to be a section-related power ranking for non-CL's/non-Advisors. I say this based on the fact that rates on a software product review are shown per the timestamp of the rating, not the ranking of the rating. In other words, if NC10 is the fifth person to rate a Software product review with a Very Helpful, his rating should move to the top of the list as his rating carries more weight than any person other than another CL for Software. Even without the shiny button proclaiming him a lead, the rate should move to the front of the line if the power ranking were working. Likewise, if I were to be the 16th person to rate this review as VH, my rate should show up just under the CL ratings, as my rating supposedly has more 'rating power' in my Advisory categories. This doesn't happen. In the case of the new Software category, NC10's rating would show up fifth in line while mine would be 16th. For those folks who are non-Advisor/non-CL's, their ratings do not blend by section-specific rating power either. The rates on a Software product review display in chronological order only. This is similar to the way the writer's corner rates display, where no one person has increased rating power or extra weight(or so I believe). To exhibit this phenomena you could click over to the Software Just-In list and check out the ratings on any of the reviews.
A side effect of this problem is that the overall rankings of Software product reviews are not in line with those found around the rest of the site. An Advisor or CL has been empowered with a higher weighting in terms of rating within their specific categories, and this weight can generally outweigh the ratings of several folks who rate differently. For instance, on a typical review three Advisor rates of VH will generally outweigh six non-Advisor rates of H, giving the overall rating of a VH. I cannot lay a blanket statement down for all cases, as the relative rating power of each person comes into play. What I can say, though, is that this doesn't appear to have any bearing on the overall weights of Software Product reviews since July of 2005. As a case in point, take this review:
http://www.epinions.com/content_216571350660
I am sure this will change at some point in time as others rate the review, but as of today there are four ratings of Helpful by three current Advisors in Software and one former Advisor who carries a heavy rating in the Software category. There are an additional 7 folks who have rated this as Very Helpful. Just prior to the changes in Software this review would more than likely have ended up with an overall rating of Helpful, yet today it carries a rating of VH. Is this definitive proof? No, but it is anecdotal evidence based on my recollections in the category.
2. MPA/MPR and Top Earning Review lists for Software do not include hits garnered from Software Product reviews.
The Overall MPR lists for Software exhibits the problem rather well. Only essays written in the advice columns for computer software show up in this area. No Product reviews show up on this list at all! This could be explained away if the advice category essays just plain had more hits than those of a review, but that is not the case.
I currently have the #30 rated Software review of all time, an advice essay detailing an email client named Thunderbird. I can tell you that as of today (01/18/2005) that review has a grand total of 4065 total hits. I have four other reviews of Software products with many more hits than this, yet they don't show up on the list. Similarly, the Top Earning software review for the past few months according to the lists has brought in less than one dollar. I have eight software product reviews that earned over $1, some earning as many as $10 in the last month. It seems that the MPA/MPR lists and top earning lists are broken, as well.
3. Epinion's search engine no longer can find most titles that were previously easily found
There was a time when I could type in a software title into the Epinions search engine and it would retrieve the listing for said product. There isn't much more to say here; it just worked!
Now for almost all titles I have searched for, the search engine comes up empty. Some of the titles that I KNOW were indexed and now go unnoticed based on my own experience are:
Acronis Privacy Expert
Acronis True Image
PowerDVD
Norton Ghost (Interestingly, the bad feeds that are in B & T show up but the correct listings in Software do not)
Beyond TV3 (Beyond TV4, added post-July 2005 shows up. Beyond TV3, which used to pop up is missing)
I am sure there are more than just this random sampling of products I know were available before, but the point is that the search engine has actually devolved during the YOT(F)C, at least for one section of the site.
The good news in all of this, or so I thought, was that several of the new, hot titles had been added so that at least the site can get coverage of these 'hot' products. Quicken 2006 and TurboTax 2005 are two such products, and entering these terms into the database does yield results. Success! Or is it?
Do an experiment with me; assume you are a first time reviewer or shopper and you are ecstatic about your new software product, Quicken 2006. You plug in Quicken 2006 into the search engine, and lo and behold this is your result.
Resulting page here.
Great! The product you own is the second one down from the top, Intuit Quicken Deluxe 2006 Full Version for PC. You click on it to get the product page so you can hit the link to write a review or read reviews, and guess what? There is nothing there. Click on the photo, click on the link, click on the compare prices; all take you to a page that tells the user the page was not found. Try all the other links on that page, I dare you. Not only does the search engine not find previously 'found' titles, some of the newer titles that it does 'find' have broken links that go nowhere. No reviews can be written, no comparison shopping can be performed, and essentially the site is indexing pages that don't exist. This is true of TurboTax 2005 as well( See results here). To be fair, some new products are linked but to have these two titles which are 'hot' right now lead to broken links isn't something that will instill confidence in the first-time surfer.
4. The CL tools for Software don't appear to work.
There are tools available for the CL to use for each category that will allow them to view the rating and comment history of each Advisor/TR and any prospective Advisors/TR's in the category. Also available is a tool from which they can generate a hot-list, or a list which shows what items with little coverage in the area (few reviews) are getting big hits. At least hypothetically this tells them which products should be pursued for coverage in order to bring more hits and successful shopping to the site, thus generating more revenue. These lists have been periodically posted for any interested party, and if you had a software title on the hot list it may have prompted you to write about it. After all, you knew folks were searching for information on that product.
I should say that I don't have personal knowledge or even peripheral knowledge of these tools. What I have read, however, in this thread is that the CL tools for Software are non-functional. At the least it is confirmed that the coverage tools are not working, and I would guess that since the site is not recognizing the Advisors and TR's in the category, there is no information supplied along the lines of performance of hats, either. The very bad downside of this is that if someone is a newer reviewer who is flying under the radar of the CL's, the hatbot will not pick them up in this section.
5. The Featured Member portion of the Software page doesn't exist
Most long-time users may not look at this at all, but when you are drilling down on the site to find a specific type of product, each section's page has an area for Featured Members. The folks who are featured in these sections are the CL's, Advisors and Top Reviewers. For a few examples to clarify, click here for the Computer Hardware page and here for the Electronics page.
Notice the box down a bit on the right-hand side of the screen labeled Featured Member? Now take a cruise over to the Software page and notice the absence of the Featured Member. This has been gone since the changes in the section in July or so. This in and of itself is not a major problem. However, it is a symptom that helps lead to the conclusions below.
6. Most all Software reviews were marooned to a 'new' category called Preview Categories
Prior to the changes of July 2005, most all of the software category reviews would show up under a category called Software. What I mean by this is that when you went to a listing of all of your reviews and sorted by category, the category name would show up as Software.
Around July of 2005, as far as I can recall all Software reviews except those classified as Advice essays were reclassified to the Preview Category. While in this category, the reviews didn't register hits towards either the Software or Overall MPA/MPR listings. The Epinions rating ranking system didn't recognize Advisors and CL's in the category, and the relative rankings and weighted average overall ratings of reviews didn't work, either. Finally, the products in the software category went missing on the Epinions search engine. Sound familiar?
After a bit of community outcry (this happened in a few categories, as far as I remember) the software reviews were reclassified to the Computer Software category where they now reside (Note this is different from the previous Software category). This change appears to be only cosmetic, however, as the same issues exist today as noted above. The hits acquired on these product reviews do not count towards Software MPA/MPR or overall MPA/MPR lists rankings and the Advisor/CL rating and relative ranking of rates by category-specific power is still missing. Again, the products in the Software category fly generally under the radar of the search engine, so the effect is much the same.
Phew! Now that we know what the problem is, what can we do?
So what happened in July of 2005 that 'broke' the Computer Software section? I have a theory, which I will now explain.
Pure and simple, I think the programmers at Epinions tried to perform a migration of the category and somehow muffed it up. Based on what anecdotal evidence I have collected, I don't think it will be that hard to fix, but then I should say that I am not a programmer. I will detail what I know and explain what I think, and then you can decide for yourself if it 'fits'.
First, prior to July of 2005 the software page for Epinions was:
http://www.epinions.com/cmsw
I know this as I am one that still likes to type in the URL's rather than use a bookmark to get places for some odd reason. Another verification comes from the Wayback Machine (www.archive.org). Copy and Paste the following into your browsers' address bar:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.epinions.com/cmsw
Notice how the archives exist for this page only prior to July of 2005? Nothing since. Anyway, I would type this into the address bar of my browser and it would take me to the Software page, and from there I could click on the Just-in link at the bottom and rate and comment. In the ensuing months, the Software category was migrated to the following URL:
http://www.epinions.com/Software
with a stop off in the preview category. This is where it now resides. During this transition the above problems transpired. Why?
It seems to make sense that an incomplete migration is the answer, and this seems to be true based on other observations. For instance, the advice categories of the software categories still count up hits and the hits are used to create the MPA/MPR listings and Top earning review lists each month. Why?
To answer this, check out a few of the links that take you to the Software Advice categories:
http://www.epinions.com/cmsw-Topics-All-CD_Utilities
http://www.epinions.com/cmsw-Topics-All-Music-MP3
http://www.epinions.com/cmsw-Topics-All-Kids-Community
Note that in all cases the advice categories are targeted back to the pre-existing Software site, /cmsw. I was made aware of one software advice category where hits don't count towards the MPA/MPR lists. Let's look at the URL for it:
http://www.epinions.com/Freeware_Worth_Writing_About_Software
Note the lack of a target to /cmsw. Interesting? Let's look further.
If Advisor status is linked to the section (as it must be, else we would be Advisors in all sections) then the HTML code for this would have to reference the appropriate section somehow. To find out, you can use Firefox web browser (among other things) to view source code on a page with an Advisor button and see what is referenced. For this purpose I am using my member page, http://www.epinions.com/user-ivplay. Any Advisor, CL or Top Reviewer page would work, however.
On my member page at the top is the list of sections I hold an Advisor and TR in. Hover your pointer over the hyperlink after the Advisor or TR button which has the text Software and right click/copy. Pasting this link here yields:
http://www.epinions.com/cmsw-Software-All
See the /cmsw again? That is referencing the 'old' software section on Eps, /cmsw. Now take this text and plug it into your browser and hit enter. You will arrive at the following page:
http://www.epinions.com/Software/_redir_att__~1
This is the same page and address as the new software section:
http://www.epinions.com/Software
except that it has that little end piece, /_redir_att_~1. Does this mean that you tried to access a page on Epinions that has been filtered out now, and a redirect brought you to the new Software section of Eps? I think it does.
The 'old' software category product reviews from before the migration no longer have the Advisor and CL tags showing in the ratings. This makes sense as the product reviews were moved from the /cmsw category to the preview category, thus breaking the links that they had to the /cmsw Advisor, Top Reviewer and CL tags. Changing the name from Preview Category to /Software did nothing to reestablish these links, and therefore they still are missing. Any new listings that arrive into the /Software category (either via feed or SAP addition) are not going to have these links either, as the Advisor, Top Reviewer and CL tags exist only for the /cmsw section.
This also seems to be true basis the fact that the advice categories which were not migrated in July still exhibit the ratings, rating power rankings and buttons for TR's, Advisors and CL's. Again, these are still in the /cmsw category which the buttons reference.
The MPA/MPR and Top Earning reviews must still be referencing the /cmsw category as well. This would make sense as the only essays or reviews which register in these lists are the advice categories, and even then only the ones that have /cmsw in their name. The freeware example above doesn't show up. I would hazard a guess that the only advice topic to be created after the migration of software doesn't count towards the MPA/MPR either, although nothing has been written in this category as of yet. The URL for this is:
http://www.epinions.com/pr-Software_Utilities-What_you_should_know_about_Symantec
Note the lack of the /cmsw in the title, and actually a /pr. Does the /pr stand for preview categories? I don't rightly know. If someone wants to test out the theory, write an advice piece on Symantec with some saucy words/catch phrases to ensure lots of hits. (DrLollipop method, anyone?) Sit back and watch the hits roll in, and then check to see if you rank in the MPA/MPR for Software. I am betting against it.
Is there a solution to this question?
If the supplied theory is the problem, it seems as though it may be easy to fix at least a few of the issues at hand. First, link the CL's, Advisors and TR's from /cmsw to /Software. This may require more in-depth analysis, as the rate-ranking rules from the /cmsw section would have to be applied to /Software as well. This would take care of Problems #1 and #5 above. Change the CL coverage and rate/comment watch tools to target /Software as opposed to /cmsw and this may alleviate problem #4. Change the Overall MPA/MPR and Top Earning Review lists to target /Software as opposed to /cmsw and Problem #2 disappears. Problem #3? I cannot find a good reason for it and therefore have no idea how to fix it, to tell you the truth.
One situation that will arise if the above solutions were implemented (if they are feasible) is that the hits that members have from advice categories currently residing in /cmsw will no longer count towards the MPA/MPR lists. This would be easily solved by finishing the migration started way back in July of 2005 and moving them over to the /Software category as well.
So...
What do you think? Does this sound feasible? Could it be that the problems we have with the Software category all stem from the migration of software from /cmsw to /Software on the site? I am not a web programmer, but based on what I have seen I think it is feasible. Does this mean the solutions above would work, and are they workable? Again, I can't answer this but it seems like seven months would be ample time to give it a whirl.
The Software Category Write-On
I am currently hosting the Software Category Write-On to raise awareness for the software category and hopefully get everyone a slot on the Most Popular Review/Most Popular Author list for software while I am at it. Think of this as the benefit write-on for the section that was brought to its knees this summer, Good Ol' Software. For more information and to take part, please see my profile page where I have posted all the pertinent information...
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