Moving Forward
Posted on February 8, 2008
Filed Under Site News |
There has been quite a bit of wide-ranging discussion here about various things going on with Tobacco Reviews, and I thought I would quickly outline where we are with each of those items:
- New Site Development:
- Please see my comment here for a brief outline of where I am in the development process
- Going Full Time:
- After pondering all of the advice you have given me on how to accomplish this, I have to agree that some sort of advertising is the way to go. I am working on a plan now to accomplish that in a way that not only supports Tobacco Reviews, but adds value to the site and makes it more useful to all of us. Obviously it is too early to talk about details of the plan, but I am very excited about it and hope to be able to outline how it works very soon.
- Ratings & Reviews:
- I think that the ratings should be kept at 4 stars for two reasons:
- It would be almost impossible to move all of the existing ratings over to a 5-star system.
- As karlub pointed out, “It is a well-known marketing principle of which this sites designers may have been aware initially that when doing surveys having an even number of classifications forces people to make a choice. You get more meaningful data. With an odd number the middle becomes over-represented”
- I think that the ratings should be kept at 4 stars for two reasons:
- Industry News:
- I am still up for doing this, and would like to see some news items submitted for posting here. Please use the Contact Form to submit anything you think is news-worthy and I will post it up here. I would particularly like to see news of upcoming trunk shows, pipe shows, new blends coming out soon, new store openings, etc.
- Duplicates & Missing Pics:
- I have received a lot of responses to this, and have been dutifully creating a list of changes needed to fix the issues. However, getting the new site up and running has been higher priority in my head, so I have yet to actually do much with the info I have received. I have not, however, forgotten about it.
- Resource List:
- I have been busily compiling the resource list, but have yet to post anything publicly. It will be easier to incorporate the links list into the new site than to bolt it onto the existing one.
Anything I missed?
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Burning Questions
What beverage, if any, do you drink while smoking?
- Coffee (29%, 14 Votes)
- Other (21%, 10 Votes)
- Water (17%, 8 Votes)
- Cocktail (13%, 6 Votes)
- None (10%, 5 Votes)
- Beer (6%, 3 Votes)
- Soda (4%, 2 Votes)
- Juice (0%, 0 Votes)
- Wine (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 48
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I don’t think you missed this because I don’t think anyone said it, yet. And so far, I think you’ve covered all the bases.
I thought of one thing though. Regarding the ‘List by reviewer option’: Is it possible to set the system up so that when a person wants to look at a given reviewer’s reviews, he or she would get a list of Just those reviews. I mean as it is, if we want to look at someone’s review we have to scroll through the database of all the reviews of a tobacco blend. It would be nice, given the ever increasing number of reviews, to be able to get a list of only the reviews of the reviewer in question. Is that practical? Or possible, without breaking your neck, or mine for asking the question? Am I even making sense?
just curious,
-loose
Ah, I’ll give you an example. What if say, Pipestud wanted to copy 10 or 15 of his reviews for use somewhere else…..He’d have to do an awful lot of scrolling around to find them. Isn’t there a way to make his life easier……?
Pipestud is a purely random example here. I’m really looking out for the good of all man kind. Seriously.
-loose
Personally, I think it would be great if the review database was made more accessible for searches and downloading. Boardgamegeek.com is a pretty good example, in terms of being able to pull ratings:
http://boardgamegeek.com/gamestats.php3
I tested my own custom scripts on tobaccoreviews, and came up with a Bayesian rankings for all 2176 tobaccos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_average):
1) Original Mixture 3.6655
Penzance 3.5043
2) Westminster 3.6141
3) Long Golden Flake 3.6138
4) Stonehaven 3.5387
5) Larry’s Blend 3.5226
6) Blue Grass Melody 3.5130
7) Anniversary Kake 3.5100
9) Odyssey 3.4983
10) Renaissance 3.4756
…
Stuff like that is easier to do with more accessible data. It allows you to do things like clustering as well as recommendations.
I think a great way for you to be able to help fund your site would be to have something like “If you liked this tobacco, you might want to try `X`, and have that be a link to a site that sells tobacco where you would get some kind of referral.
You could also say things like “your tastes align best with these reviewers”, which would give people an idea of which reviewers to read.
Christopher: That is a great idea,and one I will definitely make happen.
Sean: While I certainly see no problem in exposing the underlying data, I don’t know how quickly I’ll get to it, but I certainly will try it out.
I would say it looks like your plate is full with what you have delegated to yourself in the bullets above. I wish you the best of luck in getting all of that accomplished - great ideas from top to bottom. Personally, I cannot thank you enough for developing, maintaining, and improving this wonderful site. Your hard work is greatly appreciated and the pipe-world is in your debt. I’ve no doubt this site has recruited many new pipesters and expanded the horizons of many more (me especially). As others have said, let us know what we can do to help or lean on us for advice, polls, input etc. - whatever we can do to make this site better and your job easier.
Sincerely,
Ethan “Glorfindel” Dickey