Muse's Success

I like the formula you use for the front page popular listing; I think it works well, and allows a bit of balance so people can’t easily skew the listings.

But not so much for the browse section.

You have the option to sort by highest rated, lowest, most and least reviewed.  If that’s what I choose, that’s what I want to search by, not the popularity ranking.  I want to see what stories have 10 stars, and what stories have one, listed from highest to lowest.  If you want to search by popularity, then why not include most/least popular in the list, and use the formula?

"The problem with ordering based on rating is that if a story has only 1 rating, and that rating is 10, it is going to be at the top of the list."

But that’s what I want to see.  Just rating, not popularity. 

You have over 300 stories in the list.  If a story only gets one rating, no matter how good, at the moment it is unlikely to be found with the search system you have.  But it still might be a good story, and worthy of further attention.  More people might read it and add their rank; giving, in the long run, a better indication of quality.

But if you hide everything away that doesn’t get attention, then you end up with only the stories already getting attention, getting attention. 

The popularity ranking is important, but so is the ability to search by other values.  Otherwise every search comes up with the same stories, which is incredibly frustrating.

Can you see where I’m coming from?

Cheers,
M.