The folks from Trulia are listening

The response from yesterday’s post regarding my decision to go on strike against Trulia Voices has been amazing to say the least.  Within hours, both Jonathan Dalton and Jay Thompson had joined the picket lines.

At that point, I decided Trulia deserved fair notice, so I sent an email to the PR department at Trulia, advising them of our decision, with links to all 3 posts.  Just a few hours later, Pete Flint, Founder and CEO of Trulia himself, was found commenting on all of our blogs.  This is one of the great things about the Web 2.0 world we now live in.  We can have an absolutely fantastic discussion, with all of the right players, right out in the open for everyone to see.  Transparency indeed.

With such a captive audience, I want to discuss how I think Trulia can make Voices better, along with the various methods I’ve already seen discussed. 

OPTION 1

Jay suggests simply doing away completely with any type of ranking system for a Voice.  He contends it isn’t need to encourage participation.  Or more importantly, it isn’t needed to encourage healthy, helpful participation.

OPTION 2

Athol Kay suggests that Trulia look closely at the Player versus Player ranking systems found in today’s most sophisticated massively multi-player online games.  I’m guessing he’s talking about World of Warcraft or possibly Guild Wars when he suggests this.

OPTION 3

Jonathan suggests that for now, agents use their blog, along with questions left via email or on comments, as the safest way to get accurate, local advice for buyers and sellers from real estate professionals

OPTION 4

And finally, Pete has roughly described a complicated algorithm that the engineers at Trulia are working on that they feel will better rank the Voices, to take into account some of the problems we’ve highlighted.

Of all of these suggestions, with an eye on improving Trulia Voices, I like Option 1 the best. 

However, completely getting rid of any ranking is a bit harsh.  There is certainly merit in having a system that rewards Voices that continually provide high quality content.  So here are a couple of suggestions for how the system can be improved:

First, like Jay suggests, there shouldn’t be any ranking system that allows me to manipulate it to achieve a better ranking.  I disagree with Pete and Athol that using some form of extremely complicated algorithm that does the ranking automatically is the solution.  No matter how sophisticated, the underlying mechanism is there, and people will learn to exploit it.

Instead, if Trulia decides to move forward with a system that recognizes the better Voices, I would suggest this system be used only to identify candidates.  Once a candidate Voice is found, a human being or team of people should review the body of work from that Voice, and if appropriate tag that Voice with some moniker. 

Microsoft does this on their TechNet forums with the MVP tag.  I’ve come to rely on the Small Business Server forums and I know that when I get a response from an MVP, I’m likely to be getting good advice.  Aside from this tag or moniker, I’d prefer to see no ranking at all.  The moniker approach still creates a popularity contest problem that may be problematic over time as a gripe between the haves and the have-nots.  If that’s something , then just going to every Voice being equal is far better than any type of ranking system in my book.

I also think Trulia needs to implement a system by which answers and questions can be identified as inappropriate, so that they can potentially be removed, and when necessary, the person involved can be reprimanded in some way.  Many public forums have “report this” type features, but craigslist is an easy example to point to.  I’ve seen reported postings on craigslist get removed.  The same with reported profiles on myspace.  It works.  It needs humans to manage it, as it isn’t automatic, but the community is happy to see the inappropriate content removed.

Finally, I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal today when a reporter found my blog.  I essentially restated my position, but I added the following:  I want to be a part of high quality content on the web.  When Trulia Voices is providing consistently quality content, I’ll be back.  Greg Swann said much the same thing about the Bloodhound blog yesterday, in regards to how he goes about recruiting new authors.  A significant factor in my participation is in the overall quality of the content.

If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to the blog