Passive Detection of Critical Masses of Interest?
July 1, 2015 9:39 PM - Subscribe

This is a potential feature request, depending on what folks think, and perhaps should be escalated to MetaTalk. Would folks like some way of passively detecting that a "critical mass" of mefites are interested in a show or program?

This could be as simple as listing the number of people who have added a show to My FanFare (I like this idea, though it might entail adding show pages for programs with no posted episodes), and as convoluted as having some kind of "in potentia" show discussion list on which people could indicate interest

Before talking about technical fixes, though, I think it's important to establish whether people want such a passive system or if they prefer the interactive, communal process entailed by Fanfare talk. Discussion certainly seems to be &lquo;more MetaFilter” than alerts and watcher counts, but sometimes that sort of data can prompt folks to action.
posted by Going To Maine (4 comments total)
 
I think discussion is better because not all shows make interesting discussion. Joke deployment vehicles, and heavily episodic shows really don't make for much discussion: it would be mostly whether the jokes were good, who or what was horribly misrepresented in a police procedural, griping about character devolution and... well, that's it. Usually when there's something bigger happening and the show has some mass behind it (such as Louie making skeevy turns) someone else writes about it and it ends up in the Blue.

But there's no way of knowing until someone gets the ball rolling. Maybe a monthly "Shows we've been watching" FanFare Talk thread to see which currently uncovered shows get some traction?
posted by lmfsilva at 6:45 AM on July 2, 2015


Maybe a monthly "Shows we've been watching" FanFare Talk thread to see which currently uncovered shows get some traction?

You can do it seasonally, as people will trickle into the FF Talk threads throughout the season, and there generally aren't new shows starting every month. And I'd suggest people list "Shows I watch, and those I want to talk about." For example, I'm getting back into Major Crimes, but there wasn't much discussion and no one posted the remaining 9 episodes in the 3rd season. I'm slowly completing Samurai Champloo because I feel like I should finish what I started, even though it's been a silent series (discussion-wise) for a while.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:11 AM on July 2, 2015


Yes, that would work. February, May, July and November, to match sweeps?
posted by lmfsilva at 12:40 PM on July 2, 2015


I wanted to pop in here to say this is at least related to what we're aiming for with the Watercooler feature we just rolled out; that's looking primarily at commenting activity over time at the moment rather than e.g. My FanFare numbers, but it's something where we're going to keep looking at the metrics and thresholds we're using to try and get a decent first pass sense of what's zeitgeisting on any given week.
posted by cortex at 6:10 AM on July 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


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