Project Voting

July 26, 2006 4:09 PM

Curious: is it just me or has the number of votes cast in Projects dropped significantly over the last month or so? It seems like in the heady formative days you couldn't walk more than two feet without bumping into a project with 25+ votes. What's the bigger culprit: declining quality in posted projects, or declining visits to the Project page altogether?
posted by bjork24 to MetaFilter-Related at 4:09 PM (22 comments total)

Philipp's "Click survey" as the sole exception.
posted by bjork24 at 4:09 PM on July 26, 2006

I noticed this too. My guess is that folks are preoccupied with the shiny new toy known as HiFi (or MuFi, or RockMe, or whatever people are calling it now - it's so hard to keep up).
posted by aberrant at 4:13 PM on July 26, 2006

Cool now I can blame the lack of votes/feedback on my project on something... bring it on.
posted by twiggy at 4:22 PM on July 26, 2006

For me, it's the latter. I look at the blue, green, and black every day; the gray and the teal, a couple times a week.
posted by danb at 4:34 PM on July 26, 2006

Yeah I rarely look at it. There is a lack of quality in the projects posted and maybe only 1 or 2 a month that really merit attention.
posted by fire&wings at 5:24 PM on July 26, 2006

I think it's visits. My first projet got 31 votes and the current one (which is sorta a subset) only got 8 and yet it has prizes.

But yeah, Philip's click survey is kicking major ass. I assume it's the most votes of any project.
posted by dobbs at 5:27 PM on July 26, 2006

I've looked at projects twice, when it first opened and then a couple days ago. I did notice not too much was going down over there.
posted by bob sarabia at 5:46 PM on July 26, 2006

It's really a shame, because it seemed to be a great launching pad for sites like videosift and snacksby.
posted by bjork24 at 6:07 PM on July 26, 2006

Hm, I just went through the archives at it doesn't look like much of a voting drop-off.
posted by bob sarabia at 6:18 PM on July 26, 2006

I pretty much never visit Projects. I tend to stick with MeFi, AskMe and MeTa. Everyonce in a while I'll check out Music... it is growing on me. But Projects hasn't really grabbed me, and I think it's because for the average there is relatively little discourse there. It's the discussions that result from posts that draws me to MeFi etc, but at Projects, unless you're the project poster, you have pretty much nothing to read. Beyond that it's little more than a bunch of sanctioned self links.

Allow everyone to view feedback left for project posters, and I think many more people who currently pay little to no attention to Projects will probably start going there way more often.

/2c
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:50 PM on July 26, 2006

*average reader, that should say...
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:51 PM on July 26, 2006

That's a real good point, E2k.
posted by klangklangston at 6:55 PM on July 26, 2006

I look at it at least once a day, but there hasn't been anything that's gotten me stiff in the nipples lately, and it seems that postings have slowed down some.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:59 PM on July 26, 2006

I only visit it when I've read everything on MeFi, Ask, MeTa and I'm still bored. Maybe once a week.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 7:03 PM on July 26, 2006

bob sarabia says: Hm, I just went through the archives at it doesn't look like much of a voting drop-off.

Projects with 20+ votes:

July = 2
June = 12
May = 10
April = 10

You don't see a drop-off?
posted by bjork24 at 7:29 PM on July 26, 2006

True. There are also bunch of projects with 10 or less votes all throughout. It didn't go from 50+ votes for most projects then 2-3, which is what I would call drastic. I guess there is a drop-off though. Maybe everyone with a good project already posted it.
posted by bob sarabia at 7:56 PM on July 26, 2006

That could be true, Bob.

What Projects needs is a hot injection of quality projects. Who's first?!
posted by bjork24 at 8:14 PM on July 26, 2006

*tumbleweed blows by*
posted by bob sarabia at 8:53 PM on July 26, 2006

It's not a destination site, it wasn't designed to be, so RSS works really well here. You don't hear from the feed for several days, then boom, two or three projects and you can visit the ones that seem interesting and vote if you like.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:08 PM on July 26, 2006

It's not a destination site, maybe because chatting about the project is more difficult.
posted by Kickstart70 at 1:06 AM on July 27, 2006

chatting about the project is more difficult.

Agreed. I'd be more inclined to visit Projects if I was able to read a discussion.
posted by yeti at 6:50 AM on July 27, 2006

Discussion would be nice. Though, I expect them to be about as verbose as MuFi comments: "wow", "i like", "technorgastic!"
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:10 PM on July 27, 2006