Three bits of site news for both readers and bloggers:
- For readers: Our new “filter mashup” feature
- For bloggers: Our policy on voting for your own link and vote padding
- For bloggers: Quantocracy badges
For readers: Our new “filter mashup” feature
Each site on our blogroll in the sidebar to the right now includes the following three icons (if you don’t see a sidebar to the right, it’s because you’re on a mobile or other small screen device):
The house and Twitter icons are (I hope) self-explanatory, taking you to the site itself and the site’s Twitter account.
The magnifying glass in the middle is the new bit of niftiness. It allows readers to filter mashup results to only show links from that particular source. Try the magnifying glass above which has been set to just show links from the site GestaltU. When filtering results, readers can still do all of the same sorting (by ratings, etc.) as on the normal mashup.
We hope that this feature will make it easier for readers to really drill down on bloggers that they find especially interesting.
For bloggers: Our policy on voting for your own link and vote padding
We’ve added the text below to our FAQs, but I wanted to bring it to bloggers’ attention as this has become an issue a few times in recent weeks:
I fully expect each site to vote once for their own link. In other words, every site is allowed one “gamed” account. Creating multiple accounts for the same site for the purpose of inflating votes though is prohibited, and will be punished by our vote management software.
Note that when I say that each “site” is allowed to vote once for their own link, I’m including everyone within an organization. So an office with 100 employees is still only allowed one “gamed” account. This is to ensure that all links have an equal opportunity to be recognized, regardless of whether they come from a large office or a lone blogger.
Our software keys off of a number of factors to flag padded votes, including IP address, geographic region, and voting patterns.
Minor infractions will simply be cancelled out by the system. In more serious cases, I’ll speak directly with the blogger, and if the site continues to pad votes they’ll be dropped from Quantocracy altogether.
Sorry to be such a fascist on this, but it’s important that we protect the sanctity of the voting here.
For bloggers: Quantocracy badges
A number of sites have taken it upon themselves to add their own Quantocracy badge, similar to those provided by Seeking Alpha.
Some sites where I’ve seen the badge off the top of my head: GestaltU, Flirting with Models, CSS Analytics, Turing Finance, and Quant Insti. I am incredibly touched by the gesture folks. This is mostly a thankless job, but moments like these are the fuel that keep the engine burning.
For other sites that wish to do the same, feel free to use the badges included here. The first is 130 x 130 pixels, more or less the same size as the Seeking Alpha badge, and the second is 180 x 180 pixels, the size most of the aforementioned sites used. Both are on a transparent background, and super streamlined (thanks to the awesome tiny png site), so they should play well with most themes.
Read on readers!
Mike @ Quantocracy