Separate useless personal lists from quality ones
There are ~2500 personal lists on ICM now which are interesting only to their creators, e.g. "Watched in 2011", "Watchlist", "My favourite films" and so on. People created them because they don't know how to use specialized ICM features for such tasks (Owned movies. Watchlist)
Several measures that can reduce their number or hide them completely:
1. Appoint moderators from power users who would regulate tags of personal lists and put useless ones in distinct hideable group.
2. Add privacy option to lists to access only by link.
3. Directly discourage creating of such lists on the "Add a list" page.
4. Hide lists from the "All lists" page after hitting certain dislikes limit.
Thanks a million for your feedback. We’ll look into this one.
-
Lauren Donis commented
I agree those workarounds would be a better option, I was just suggesting reasons why people make lists that way with the current system. Although, with regards to #2, sometimes I like just coming across a random personal list. I mean, the 'personal' tag does indicate that it is a personal list.. But I do think a different option should be default, either a default privacy option as suggested or a default 'uncategorized' category option (which could possibly not be listed with other lists by default).
-
Bobby Brown commented
@Stephen @sammy: Your reaction makes me think that the talk here is about establishing a bloody regime on ICM with gibbets along the road. But all I want is to bring some order to the mess of personal lists.
How will any of suggested measures "kill the purpose of making lists"? Quite the opposite, more quality lists will be seen and used, there'll be more feedback on them, and more people will make lists as they'll know their work won't drown in a heap of filmographies and "To watch with my s.o." trash. And if you think there aren't many quality personal lists either on the site or not, take a look at mjf314's film lists spreadsheet.
-
Bobby Brown commented
@Anonymous: I agree, having a source is a good criterion, but it shouldn't require a hyperlink. Some great lists came from mail exchange, analog books, dead websites. Maybe there should be a checkbox on the list creation page, by default it would set 'personal' tag (= unsourced), and if checked it would display drop-down list with categories.
@Life as Fiction: I second this motion! All measures mentioned here together will increase the quality of average list twofold.
-
sammy (munshi_maniac) commented
This kindof kills the purpose of making lists. To regulate what kindof lists to be made and what not to is not right. I know most of the lists are stupid and can be lived without.. but its part of the creativity of this site. :)
-
Life as Fiction commented
The easiest and most obvious solution is to make all new lists "private" by default. This way, people who expressly want to share their lists can do so by changing the setting.
-
Stephen commented
I don't see any reason to not allow people to make whatever lists they like. Be aggressive about favoriting ones you think are "quality" and hopefully the cream will rise to the top. If we're going to "do something about it", having a list-of-the-day on the front page might be a way to publicize good lists if people really don't want to slog through the others.
-
BaalMan commented
5th measure: split the personal lists in two different categories: with a source and without a source. It presumes that only interesting lists have source link while useless personal lists don't.
-
Bobby Brown commented
@Lauren: I think all those purposes you mentioned are foreign to the concept of personal lists on ICM and are workarounds of more suitable but less simple features. And therefore:
5. Find out what bring users to use personal lists as watchlists or film logs and make necessary changes in those parts of the site to facilitate these tasks.
- Favourite Films lists: they are less handy than regular lists -> make them like ones. It's strange ICM is strictly list-based but not all lists are full-fledged. Why can't I check and filter checked films in any list based on user history? Or mark it as favourite?
- Watchlists: see #2. Perfect for sharing small lists relevant only for a small group of people.
-
Anonymous commented
Lists should be private by default.
-
Lauren Donis commented
The 'Watched in 2011' type lists annoy the hell out of me, but the other lists are sometimes made that way on purpose, eg
Favourite Films lists
- if someone wants to work on your favourites list/see how many they've seen etc, they cannot do it by checking your favourites because it doesn't show that information (well, it does but it's not as user friendly). You also can't import a favourites list from IMDb as the 'favourites' on iCM. Of course, this is only helpful if you actually want to work on this person's list, but it's the only way to do it.Watchlists
- some are specific: for example, some of us on the forum made up watchlists for certain challenges, for mostly the same reasons as the fave lists. If you want to make a small list that you can share, for a specific set of films, then making an iCM list is the only way to go about it.It would be nice to have an 'ignore list' option, so you can ignore lists you don't want to see when browsing. Or, have a separate tag for watchlist type films and be able to ignore tags.
-
TheMajor commented
Some very good ideas.
Of course option 4 may not be necessary depending on how the first three options are implemented.
-
Bobby Brown commented
I mean "hundreds of which are interesting only to...".