Why do I now find that all listings are sorted in alphabetical order ? I personally think this is unfair.. If I have a listing that starts with @, I get first page.. if I have a listing that starts with Z, I get last page...

I liked it better when it was sorted by number of hits....
Even sorted by rating would be better than alphabetical !! :mad:

Yeah... i think it should be sorted by rating.. it does make more sense, or even by hits..

I meant to mention this too, but it doesn't seem to be valid for every section. So now the question is why alphabetical in some and whatever order in others.

Rob

I was in touch with the hotscripts team recently about this and this is what they said:

In the coming weeks, we are looking into implementing a new sorting algorithm that incorporates the ratings, reviews, hits among others.

I guess this 'new look' is the beginning of a bigger transformation taking place...

I will look into this right now... the sorting should be no different at this time than what it was before the switchover. I will resolve this!

I registered to be a part of these forums just so I could chime in on this. I agree that alphabetical is not the way to go.

Personally, I think that one option you should consider is to allow us to essentially bid on rankings... thats what a lot of sites like this do now adays. Then, for people tied (say those who don't bid) you should definitely sort by popularity and whatnot.

That's my opinion.

Originally posted by PerlRox
Personally, I think that one option you should consider is to allow us to essentially bid on rankings... thats what a lot of sites like this do now adays.
You mean pay to get a higher ranking? Well that's already done with sponsored links. But since most of the scripts here are free what would be the point in paying so that more people use your free script? At least with ratings a script gets what it deserves.

But if the sorting is always by rating or popularity then you get a positive feedback problem where the high ranking scripts will get more traffic and therefore higher popularity and (probably) a higher ranking and so on without giving new or improved scripts a chance.

Anyway, wicked site and keep up the good work.

Sorting by rating *only* is prone to abuse (even though they are checking IP). Just look on the front page at Top Rated part. Most scripts in that listing have only 10 votes which ranks them as top 10. This is BS in my opinion.

I think a algorithm of rating, hits & reviews would be rather fair. To give new/updated scripts a chance, you could have them stick on page 1 or 2 for a few weeks to give them some extra attention.

Anyways, doing it in alphabetical order is pretty lame (mine starts with a W; down from page 2 to 12...). This will no doubt lead to all (new) scripts starting with an A/@ or underscore! :)

Yes there is; it's ordered by rating!

Look at this category - there is no order at all. :(

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Education/

I like the idea of a weighted method by default, but I would also like to see a user sorting preference, as well as an easy menu to flip between sorting methods.

Hello Everyone:

I want to thank you all for your invaluable feedback. The good news is that we agree entirely! Obviously ranking is very important to providing the most relevant scripts/applications for a particular category. How do you rank the scripts/apps? By voting, by popularity, by homepage clicks or even downloads?

This is something we are adressing at this time. We want you to know that we have no intention of having alphabetical listings for the categories (makes no logical sense).

Any categories that are ranking in such a manner is more of a bug that will be squashed come early next week :)

I think you must make some algoritm that will calculate the voting, clicks, downloads in some way :)

There doesn't have to be just one sorting method. At different times, and for different people, different methods would be useful. A nice little menu up the top would be good.

I can think of a few I would use now and then:

- Sort by clicks (the method of the old site)
- Sort by name
- Sort by member rating (two reviews required, otherwise average is 0)
- Sort by visitor average rating (20 votes required, otherwise average is 0)
- Popularity (by algorithm). not sure what, but something like: a*(clicks) + b*votes + c*member-votes + d*downloads

The default method (whichever it is) should have a way of promoting new scripts up the top so they get seen.

I'm happy with just ranking by number of hits..
Since this whole mess with the new layout, my script has gone from page 3, down to page 7 !!

Can someone please tell me what order (if any) the category "perl/programs + scripts/guestbooks/" is in ? It seems to have things all over the place... one listing may have a rating of 4.8, 102 votes, and 3000 hits, and the one three pages before it has no rating, and 100 hits... this makes no sense to me !

Hello Skeleton Man:

Addressing the "sort by" issue is one of our top 5 priorities. This means it should be addressed in the next 48 hours. We are puzzled that changes to the sort by occured and we believe this was due to the software and not a policy change we made (as our policy was not to modify the sort-by!).

I hear your frustration, give us a couple of days to get this ironed out!

Mind if I ask what the other 4 priorities are ? I'm just glad someone is working on the problem :-)

The order should have to be good for visitors and submitters too!

Order by hits is not bad, but it makes the life very hard for a script
writer if he submits a new script into a category where a lot of scripts can
already be found. Scripts in the first pages will get more hits, so new ones
can not come forward in a list, or at least it is very hard.

I very liked the old system: if a submitter updated his script, it was
listed on the first page for a given period. It gave a chance for new scripts
to get more hits.

Sort by rating is the best solution if admin don't has time for a sophisticated
algorithm, but 20 (or even more) votes has to be required!

I think as a short term solution, the 'old way' of doing it is best:

Sort by hits and keep new (& maybe also updated) scripts on the first 2 pages for a while to give them some extra exposure.

As far as I have noticed, Hotscripts makes a great effort at actually checking updates so I think people submitting bogus updates to get on the first pages will get filtered anyhow.

Anyway, apart from some minor bugs I think the Hotscripts crew has done an excellent job with the new site! Congrats!

There seems to be something else wrong with the voting system:

http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/21084.html

Average Visitor Rating: 7.63 (out of 5)

not bad on a scale of 5! :)

I Think the Sort Listing is ordered by postdate. (by the first time you post the script)
Because my script never leave from the #14th page. :(
Even after I update my list.

Why hotscript team did not sort it by rate?
because if it does...
Your (the beginner one) script will always stay on the last page.
and the topest list is always the most hit list.

But what if I suggest to the hotscript team
to make the sort by the : LASTUPDATE,
So It' will make us (member) to compete each other for updating the list everyday on every chance we have.
:D

FYI

Please see my seperate post about this issue here..

http://forums.hotscripts.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=311

Cheers,
Justin :)

When is something gonna be done about this ? It's been about a week since we were told "give us 48 hours" and still nothing.. why not just put it back to being sorted by downloads and leave it untill u have the new algorithm ready ?