Working on MakeFive can be a little strange, as it’s something so different. We’re not really modeling it on anything that already exists, which means that we’re really trying a lot of different things to see what works. A few weeks ago we realized that although the community component is working well, we have to spend a little more time thinking about you… the individual.

As such, I’m happy to unveil some of the features we’ve added to MakeFive today.

Share your thoughts on your blog

By just copying a few lines of code from MakeFive, you can now feature your MakeFive lists on your own blogs and websites. It’s a great way to share your opinion, allow readers to contribute to your lists, and add link-strength to your website. BTW - It’s ready for you to use today and looks like this:

See more: Best movies of all time

Use MakeFive content on your site

See a great topic on MakeFive that you’d like to share? Well, we’re going to make this a lot easier for you. You can now use the aforementioned blog widget and embed any top five on MakeFive on your blog. (You don’t even have to vote on it.) The great part about this is that it automatically updates as the voting changes on MakeFive. So, you have up-to-date lists on your website, without much work. See:

See more: Top 5 Funniest TV Commercials

Show off what you think

The Community Response on topics is great, but sometimes you just want to share your faves. We understand and as such, we’ve tweaked the pages for your lists. Just click on “Me” and “Lists”, and you’ll find that the boring “lists” section is now on steroids. Each page showcases nine of the items that you’ve voted on or created. So, share this page with your friends who want to know more about you. (It’s a bit of a window into your personality.) This is what mine looks like.

But why?

I look at a lot of lists and wonder why people chose the things they did. If you really want to share your opinions, there’s a great place to do this. For every topic you vote on, a permalink page is created just for you (like this). In it you can share your thoughts for specific items and then send this link to your friends. For example, you could compile a list of your favorite movies, explain your choices, and then email the list to your friends and family. (To access the permalink page, just go to the “My Top Five” tab on the topic you’re interested in, and look for the text “Go to your extended list”.)

I think this will give you a lot of new ways to use MakeFive. Have fun and happy holidays!

Eric

Another month and more winners on MakeFive! It’s always great for us to see you guys getting excited about the site and spending your spare time on it!

Here’s how November played-out on MakeFive:

1. mdudlik (14,318 points)
2. webdesign (14,026 points)
3. geediu (12,589 points)
4. ninky (7,820 points)
5. michelle_3_16 (6,362 points)

Two issues arose this month around the contest, and as such, I wanted to address them.

First is the time that the contest ends. To be fair, we’ve always kept the “closing time” the last day of the month, at exactly 23:59:59 GMT. Now, this clearly has thrown a couple of people, and as such, we’ve added a counter that will show-up on MakeFive’s homepage for the last week of each month. That way everyone will be on the same page for the closing time.

Additionally, this points chasing thing keeps haunting us. Lots of people want to win the contest and a lot of you are frustrated by point chasing. We don’t know exactly how to deal with it. Our current take is to accept it, so long as point chasers are adding decent content. So, if you want to add 100 new descriptions in order to gain points, that’s just fine. Just make sure they are good descriptions. If it’s crap, or you’re just voting on five topics a minute and not contributing anything, we’re just going to remove your points. Simple as that.

And now, an apology. For all of you waiting for prizes for October, we’re sorry for the delay. Everything was ready to go when we realized that we only had one size of t-shirt left. As such, we’ll have all of the prizes (for this month and last) out today.

Want to know what’s going on at MakeFive? Want to know all the time? Well no problem–all you had to do was ask! Just follow our Twitter feed where we share the newest topics as they happen!

Just click here: www.twitter.com/makefive and get ready to share in some sweet and sticky Twitter/MakeFive love. (On the bed, on the floor, on a towel by the door, in the tub, in the car, up against the mini-bar…)

We’re big fans of Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld’s website TechCrunch. It’s a blog that showcases news on tech startups, and I start most days by reading it. They still haven’t talked about MakeFive, which we think is just plain crazy, but we figure that they’ll get on board one of these days. ;-)

Their new project “Elevator Pitches“, allows startups to tell their story in 60 seconds, and get feedback from the TechCrunch community. Needless to say, when we wanted to get in on it.

So once again Devin brought in his trusty camera, and we put together a little something with my big, fat head in it. If you’re so inclined, please feel free to check it out and maybe even vote for us, or add a comment there about why you like the site.

Cheers!

Eric

BTW - We’re also listed in the CrunchBase.

As many of you know, the contest at MakeFive has been a point of contention for some time around here. I’ll be honest with you; it gives me a complete and utter headache. Most of the time it works well; but, every once in a while we get one user who chases points, creating crap just to try to win.

We’ve spent countless hours trying to figure out how to address this thing, but are at a bit of a loss. As such, we’ve decided to go the easy route and just give away more stuff. So, for November we’ll be giving away t-shirts for the month’s trendsetters, as well as a “big prize” for the person with the most points.

We’ll also give away something “unique” to the person who comes up with the most interesting topic of the month. This will be determined completely “undemocratically” by us.

So, points are in full-swing again. I recognize that some of you will be pissed about this, and I apologize for not having a better solution. That being said, this rewards those who are most active on the site, as well as those who come up with really unique and interesting stuff. AND if we’re ever acquired for a gazillion dollars or something, we’ll give away more stuff. Anyone want to invest?  ;-)

We’ve also taken some time to retool the points distribution to try to keep things fair. Plus, we think the dialogue component is really important here. As a result, we’ve cranked up the points received for commenting. So, get out there and talk to the other users of the site. That’s sort of the point anyway, isn’t it?

We’ve also increased the number of points for someone voting on your topic. Frankly, we’re not as interested in you creating a topic a minute, as we are in seeing you start topics that get people talking. Oh right, and if you complete your profile, you get 500 points. So, complete it! That’s a lot of points (and I want to know what you look like).

It’s hard for us to know what works with these sorts of things. As such, all of this, will be worked on and refined over the months to come. Needless to say, we’re going to mix things up a bit from time-to-time, in order to keep things fun.

Oh yes, we have something particularly interesting brewing-up for December.

Cheerio!

Eric the Karj-inator

BTW - If you see someone who’s posting junk just to collect points, let us know. All you have to do is go to their profile and flag them. We’ll then look at the user’s actions. If it looks like they’re gaming the system, we’ll go totally “Jean Claude Van Damme” on their asses!

Doesn’t it suck to find out that someone’s been talking to you, and you didn’t even get the message? Well, that happens a lot on MakeFive, but I’m happy to say that a fix is on its way!

In the next couple of days, Topic Notification will come online. This means that when a topic you have created or commented on receives additional comments, the system will let you know. Not only is it a great way for you to track the success of your contribution, it also encourages dialog pertaining to topics you’re interested in!

Of course, the issue here is that we don’t want these notifications to become a burden. As such, if you ever want to stop receiving them, just click the link in the email you receive to modify the frequency of your notifications.

Do you like the idea of notifications? Please comment below.

October was a solid month on MakeFive. Lots of interesting topics and a few new members have become really active on the site. I think we can safely say that the site is starting to “connect”, and a few of you seem outright addicted! (It’s okay though… we like to see you online for hours at a time!)

So as for points, here’s how the “What do you know?” contest wrapped up…

1. webdesign (16,081 points)
2. aaronmalys (13,023 points)
3. mdudlik (10,570 points)
4. BnafetS (7,205 points)
5. DoeFromTO (6,371 points)

A few regulars made the top five, and a couple of newcomers certainly made themselves known. Congratulations to all of you! The coveted “my opinions are better” t-shirts are being sent to you tomorrow. We suggest wearing them wisely, and not while arguing with a spouse. (BTW: If you’re interested, you can also check out the past winners, trendsetters, and this month’s standings.)

And one other thing… We want to see a photo of you wearing your shirt! So, put it on, do something creative, snap a photo, and upload it here: Most inspired use of the MakeFive t-shirt.

The big winner

Now, to the contentious “big winner” of the month… As many of you know, we’ve had to mix things up a little with the main prize on MakeFive. It seemed like we needed to supplement the “quantity” aspect of points with a “quality” perspective. As such, we decided to arbitrarily award this months prize to the topic considered “most interesting.” (You can read more about this here.)

Needless to say, this proved to be a really tough call. A lot of you posted good stuff, so ultimately it was rather difficult to select a winner. That being said, osmond’s topic: “Signs Your Work Environment Is Actually Van Halen Circa 1984” was simply too unusual and curious to pass-up. As such, he has a “MakeFive pink” iPod nano and a “my opinions are better” t-shirt headed in his direction. (BTW - Some topics were great, but didn’t have a single vote or comment. If you start a good topic, ask some others in the community to vote on it!)

Next time

We still haven’t decided how to award this month’s “big prize”, but we’ll figure it out once the new site goes live, and let all of you know!

Happy November!

We get a little “evil” at MakeFive for this… an edition of MakeFive TV darker than Vincent Price’s skiffies. Sit back, relax, and pour yourself some fresh gruel. We’ll serve-up the top five costumes, pumpkin carvings, and horror films, all in the spirit of the season. And all of it comes with the cheese sandwich that the MakeFive crew is famous for. Boua-ha ha ha ha! Boua-ha ha ha ha!

Just a general “FYI” to the MakeFive Community: we do know that points are problematic. To be frank with you, it’s just a harder thing to remedy than it may appear from the outside. Additionally, we’re really concentrating on notifications/video, and as such points won’t be addressed for a little while yet.

As noted in the blog post earlier this month, we’ve known that there are problems with the point system, and I suppose that today’s dialogue confirms this. As a result, we’re doing a bit of a “system over-ride”. This month the top-five winners in the contest will all receive the coveted MakeFive t-shirts; however, we’re mixing things up this time, by giving the iPod to the person who creates the most interesting topic this month.

Now, until the system is built, this will be awarded in an entirely undemocratic and biased fashion. We’ll just look for the topic that we think is the best, and award this new prize based on our own judgment. That being said, in future months we plan to make this part of the monthly contest, with all of you voting on the best topic.

So, that’s our “band-aid” solution for the points dilemma. I’d love to have a better solution for you, but that’s the best we can do at this time. Plus, video on this site just seems a lot more important/fun anyway. We’re of the mind that you’d rather we concentrate on that for the time being. :-)

As some of you already know, we’ve become rather vigilant in monitoring MakeFive and ensuring that the community keeps growing in a positive way. Yesterday we were alerted of a topic that had been flagged as questionable. After a brief review we deleted the topic and sent a warning to the member. I may have been a little abrupt in my warning, and as a result, took a little time out at the end of the day to explain why we had acted as we had.

Below I’ve copied my message. For those of you who are concerned about MakeFive continuing to grow as a healthy and meaningful space, I think you’ll find it interesting. As I’ve always said, we want to make something great here. I hope we’re managing to do so, and I thank all of you for contributing to the community.

—–

Hi XXXX,

Thanks for the email and comments. I apologize if I came off as overly blunt. We’ve had to take a bit of a stance on some issues. Let me take a moment to explain.

This is a very small community. We don’t make much (any) money from it; however, we put every second we have into it. The thing we’re concentrating on is in building a really solid community. In our minds, this means the kind of site where people can take part in active and meaningful discussions, and leave the site feeling as though they gained something. We’re seeing a core group of users get really excited about the site, and becoming highly active members. In our minds, this is a sign that we’re starting to really build something that works.

That being said, everything here is a work-in-progress. The complexity of the site is really quite staggering as you look under the hood, and as such, not everything is as we want it to be. Nevertheless, there are a lot of great things coming–most notably next week when we launch the new version.

Points were introduced as a way to add some fun for users. Most people respected this for what it was, but as with anything, some people quickly found a way to abuse the system. At first we allowed this to continue, hoping that common-sense would prevail. It didn’t. As a result, people were creating topics like “Top numbers” or “Top letters in the alphabet”. They would then proceed adding countless items one at a time just to collect points. As a result, the content on the site suffered, and regular users became very frustrated.

Things have changed a lot since then. Ultimately, we still try to remain open to any kind of content but we have become much more swift in reacting to topics that are clearly created just to “chase points”. The points aren’t the reason for the community, and in our experience those who chase them have little interest in contributing to the dialogue. They simply want to get some swag and after getting a prize leave never to be heard from again. I wish we had a method of filtering out such behavior more readily, instead, we have to rely on community members to notify us when they spot something in need of attention.

The topic you started this afternoon about “XXXXX XXXX XXXX” was immediately flagged by three regulars on the site. Now, you may feel differently, but I tend to agree with their choice to red-flag the topic. It’s very hard to imagine that this topic had any purpose behind it other than to collect points.

We try to be fair, and that’s why we sent a warning to begin with. It wasn’t a big deal, but we do want to maintain the community, even at the risk of offending a couple of people. Again, the purpose here is to build a good community.

So, there you have it. I suppose the rest is up to you. Perhaps take a moment to determine what you want out of the site. If you feel that we’re being overly Draconian in our approach, you’re free to “flip us the bird” and abandon the site. ;-)

On the other hand, I’d certainly hope that you’d instead chalk it up to an error in judgment, and become one of the regulars here. There are some great conversations taking place and many feel that the site is a really worthwhile and enjoyable part of their day.

I hope this helps you understand why we react so strongly when we feel that something isn’t in the best interests of the community. Additionally, should you choose to remain a part of the community, I believe that you’ll in time come to appreciate why we put so much time and effort into keeping it a positive and interesting space.

Cheers,

Eric

BTW - If you’re curious about some of the things leading up to our policies, you can find posts on the blog that address some of the challenges and subsequent actions from the past year. It’s at http://blog.makefive.com

—–

Postscript: Shortly after my email, the member sent a note acknowledging the response and committing to the standards of the community. We all really appreciate this, and are happy to have another member keen to take part in building a good space!