TheTopTens Blog

TheTopTens Blog is our way of shedding some light on some of the "behind the scenes" of the top ten lists. It gives us a chance to explain some of the particulars of the site and to share some of the hidden aspects of TheTopTens.

An Alaskan's Take on Sarah Palin

September 4, 2008

What follows was written by Alaska resident Brandon Anderson and is being republished with permission.

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I spent last night in an angry funk. I have chosen to share my thoughts with you, so that I might vent. Please feel free to share them.

Along with billions of others, I watched our unbelievably charmed governor speak last night. The gushing of Sarahlove was amazing. Not everyone in Alaska is similarly infected. At least not those who have the ability to think, study, reason, and pay attention. Here, as in most of America (and probably the world), those folks are in the minority. I have been in a position to be close to some of the issues that are being raised. I personally know many of the players. And because I pay close attention to what goes on in Alaska, I am one of the people who knows how much dishonesty is at play here. The thing that made me so angry last night was the realization that, at that level, no one cares. In fact it is by design.

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New Feature: Member Blog Posts

August 31, 2008

As a few of you have noticed, members of TheTopTens now have the ability to create their own blog posts. It has taken quite some time since this feature was first suggested by preachinpreach, but the basic version of it is finally here.

Moving forward, the plan is to better integrate your blog posts into the rest of the site, but before doing so, now is as good a time as any to discuss some of the do's and don't regardign blog posts.

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Just a Reminder, They are Your Lists, Not Ours

May 28, 2008

The following are messages we have received from visitors to the site. Instead of responding to each person individually, I'm going to simply post them here and remind everyone that we do not dictate the items that are on each list or the order they are ranked in. You do. So don't worry about wasting your time asking us to fix lists or do our homework.

If you disagree with a list, do you part to correct it. Vote on items that need to be ranked higher, add comments to convince others of your opinion, and add items that you feel should be in the list.

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Can't Delete Messages Bug - Fixed

April 21, 2008

We recently received a report that members were unable to delete personal messages sent to them from other members. After looking into the issue, it looks like there was a problem with the way Internet Explorer was displaying the messages page so while the option to delete the message was visible, people could not click on it.

As of a few minutes ago, we updated that page to fix this bug and successfully tested it in Internet Explorer. You should now be able to delete messages but if you ar

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Recent Updates to TheTopTens

February 1, 2008

As you may have noticed, we have been hard at work over the past couple of weeks making tweaks to the front-end and the back-end of the site. The goals of these tweaks have been to make the site run faster and to improve the comment approval process.

The first major update was a change in how the vote link functioned. Before, when you clicked on the vote link on a list, you would be taken to a page that recorded your vote (even if you didn’t see it), and then to the updated list page. Now, as a result of my newly discovered Ajax coding mojo, when you click on the vote link the vote is recorded and the list is updated all without requiring you to reload the page. This should make the voting process much faster.

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What Would Make You Want to Add to TheTopTens?

November 6, 2007

It's an interesting idea that I have toyed with, but now that preachinpreach has brought it up, let’s discuss.

There are a number of loyal contributors to TheTopTens who have made the site what it is today. Launched just two years ago, TheTopTens was a pet project of mine to help me learn more about website development, SQL, SEO, etc. Today, I’m astounded at what the site has become and am excited to see what the future will bring.

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The Good News is, The X-Files Was Never Canceled...

November 6, 2007

... the bad news is that it is still off the air.

A few of you have noticed that The X-Files is no longer on the list of Shows That Should Have Never Been Canceled. It used to be number 1 on the list.

The reason it is not longer on the list is for the simple fact that it never should have been there in the first place. The X-Files was not technically canceled as it was a choice by the creators to end the series.

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Adding Your Signature to Comments and Lists

October 23, 2007

Judging by the number of people who write their name, nickname, handle, etc., at the end of their comments, people like to claim their contributions to TheTopTens. Fortunately, we have made this easy.

When you add a comment or a new list, we automatically add comment signatures when you are logged into TheTopTens. Registering is free and it creates a page where you can let other know a little bit about you. It is also a good place to put links to MySpace pages, Facebook pages, or just about any other site you want other people to see.

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A Few Quick Notes on Adding Things to the Site

October 23, 2007

- We automatically put quotes around comments so you don’t need to worry about it.

- We also automatically add the number before each list item. So if you want to add peanut butter to the list of best foods, please just submit peanut butter and not 34) peanut butter.

- When adding items, it makes our job SO much easier when you match the formatting of the existing items. For example, if every item in a list of best songs follows the format Song Title – Artist, then please submit Wicked Game – Chris Isaak and not CHRIS ISAAK (wicked game).

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Anyone Know This Comedian?

September 17, 2007

We just received this message and while we're no expert on stand up comedians, there are probably some of you that are. Can you help this person out? If you know who this comedian is, please leave a comment and share your wisdom.

“hi, i'm trying to find a specific comedian. he had a stand up which I saw on TV 2 years ago. He is white male, and was talking about how the speaker on subway is never clear so u never hear what station u are at. and there is allways some weird guy on subway who is flossing his teeth with a floss, xcept that he doesn't have any floss so he is doing this hee he shows an imaginary floss and is trying to floss his teeth), and how the plummer is trying to fix ure pmumming but he doesn't have the part, and it will take 20 or 30 days maybe even a month. i really need to know his name, but can not find it...



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