Raising the Bar, 30 Steps at a Time

With New Curve and PostRank, We're Upping the Minimum Points for Entry

Posted by Charlie Moran on 06.10.09 @ 04:52 PM

About a month and a half ago, we introduced PostRank into the Power 150, and soon thereafter we switched over to a more nicely-scaled Power 150 that spreads people's point totals out more evenly across the board. Now we're taking advantage of both improvements in order to update our pre-evaluation system.

We've had a 20-point barrier of entry since last fall, and it's made the approval process saner and more manageable. However, with the shuffled weights of the different metrics and the new scales in place, this bar has become less and less meaningful. As of now, there are only a handful of blogs out of more than 1,000 that would not make it in today, whereas, when we first implemented the pre-evaluation, a new blog that passed would have landed at around the 600 mark. So today we're adding PostRank into the pre-evaluation mix and raising the minimum objective point total 50, which will put new blogs around the 720-730 mark when they enter the Power 150.

If you've already submitted by the time this post goes up, none of this applies to you. We try not to impose ex posto facto rules on the Power 150, so you are grandfathered in. However, all newly submitted blogs will have to meet this requirement.

Because of the scaling involved, this isn't as much a steeper barrier as it is a return to the one we erected a while back. In fact, because of our new scale, it's an even lower barrier than what we had before. We understand that there's a lot of would-be Power 150 bloggers out there who will be disappointed by this, but we feel that it's the bare minimum for you to be competitive on the list, and it's an effective way to balance our time.

If you're new to the Power 150 and looking to submit, there's nothing new involved. Just head over to our form and submit. You should receive a response within 24 hours if you don't make it, and if you don't hear anything back, you'll be queued up for us to make sure you meet our content minimums and then a Todd score.

Evaluating whether new blogs fulfill our requirements and then having Todd review them is, as you might imagine, fairly time-consuming, and we'd like to not only keep the submission process rolling in a timely matter but also have more time to develop new features for the Power 150. And don't forget that, if you don't make it, you're welcome to resubmit a few months later when you think you'll have a better shot. Please drop me an email if you have an comments, questions, etc.

3 Comments

  By srpatterson | Columbus, OH July 26, 2009 03:25:47 pm:

I think the new system is worthwhile and grades everyone more fairly.
Steve
http://fryingpansports.com

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  By MartinHudon | Montreal, QC August 7, 2009 02:13:49 pm:

Good improvement! The new ranking factors should make the list much more relevant. It was already relevant but relevance is something hard to achieve. That's another great step in the right direction. Keep up the good work.
Martin Hudon
http://reflexity.com

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  By steveraymond | Columbus, OH September 3, 2009 12:02:05 am:

The best ranking available online from all the searches that I have done.
Raymond
http://ReverseCellPhones.org

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