Choosing 3 classified cars to put on the PH home page

[Lordbenny]

So, how does PH choose the cars that get featured on the home page. The 3 cars usually seem to be either 911's, Ferrari's or R8's. So why not some real world cars, the classifieds are littered with amazing & interesting cars so why not pick out a few of them rather than the bland & anonimous cars that we're subjected to.

[Mr Will]

They are picked at random, with a minimum price to keep the boring stuff out.

Apart from picking them manually I cannot think of any easy way of getting just the interesting stuff on the homepage. Any suggestions on how to do it would be welcome though!

[Lordbenny]

Mr Will said:

a minimum price to keep the boring stuff out.

That's exactly the problem, the boring stuff isnt necessarily the lower priced stuff. Remember most people on here can't afford the super cars any way!

Three quick suggestions of what I'd rather see:

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/989334.htm
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/986324.htm
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/991701.htm

[Mr Will]

Lordbenny said:

Mr Will said:

a minimum price to keep the boring stuff out.

That's exactly the problem, the boring stuff isnt necessarily the lower priced stuff. Remember most people on here can't afford the super cars any way!

Three quick suggestions of what I'd rather see:

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/989334.htm
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/986324.htm
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/991701.htm

Loving the Stratos!

The problem is trying to pick the interesting stuff automatically, but I will have a think about it and see if I can come up with any tweaks

[Stu R]

Mr Will said:

Lordbenny said:

Mr Will said:

a minimum price to keep the boring stuff out.

That's exactly the problem, the boring stuff isnt necessarily the lower priced stuff. Remember most people on here can't afford the super cars any way!

Three quick suggestions of what I'd rather see:

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/989334.htm
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/986324.htm
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/991701.htm

Loving the Stratos!

The problem is trying to pick the interesting stuff automatically, but I will have a think about it and see if I can come up with any tweaks

filtering by keywords? Or for something altogether more elaborate a rating system?

[sniff diesel]

Stu R said:

filtering by keywords? Or for something altogether more elaborate a rating system?

Maybe just filtering by removing adverts written in text speak?

[Stu R]

sniff diesel said:

Stu R said:

filtering by keywords? Or for something altogether more elaborate a rating system?

Maybe just filtering by removing adverts written in text speak?

I've said for a long time that before registering on the site (and/or posting adverts in the classifieds) a basic langauge skills test should be compulsary

<doesn't-care-if-he's-made-any-mistakes>

[NiceCupOfTea]

Mr.Will> I've just loaded the homepage and refreshed it a few times and it hasn't changed the cars, so I'm assuming it picks them at set intervals rather than every time it's loaded?

Why not have it so that every day (or whatever the interval) it picks 3 at random but asks one of you for confirmation - if there's a Corsa in there you just tell it to do it again until it comes back with something more interesting.

OK, it's not automatic, but it's better than having to surg through it manually, and having 30k cars all over the front page makes it look a little elitist...

[Mattt]

Can't you just let Garlick sit there at lunch when he plays the classifieds game and do it

[mr_spock]

How about letting PH members vote on classified ads? Give us a filtered list to pick from (no parts, zero price, that kind of thing) and a rating system and put the top 3 on the home page and all in popularity order on a separate list? You'd drive much more traffic to the classifieds...

[theaxe]

Something like this might do it. Select at random but add a weight. So if there are 10 times as many Porsches as Paganis the randomiser takes that into account.

It'd also be good to have a check that ensures that no two cars from the same manufacturer appear.

[Mr Will]

NiceCupOfTea said:

Mr.Will> I've just loaded the homepage and refreshed it a few times and it hasn't changed the cars, so I'm assuming it picks them at set intervals rather than every time it's loaded?

Why not have it so that every day (or whatever the interval) it picks 3 at random but asks one of you for confirmation - if there's a Corsa in there you just tell it to do it again until it comes back with something more interesting.

OK, it's not automatic, but it's better than having to surg through it manually, and having 30k cars all over the front page makes it look a little elitist...

The homepage is a static page which is updated at 7am each day and whenever we publish a new story, so the cars will not change apart from at these times.

Picking them manually sounds fine and is okay most of the time, but when we are rushed off our feet with other things (as happens a lot of the time) then it can quickly become a chore.

I like the idea of somehow getting you guys involved though, so I'll have a think about ways we could do that. Obviously we'd have to have some mechanism for stopping people repeatedly putting their own car on the homepage, plus there are a couple of other issues, but it is definitely worth a bit of thought.

In the mean time I'll have a quick tweak of the current system, watch this space

[Mattt]

Have a rating system for logged in users? One vote per username?

Could be used to choose a 'classified of the week' article or similar.

[stimshady]

could you make a list of cars you don't want to appear and then not include them in the auto search? or vice versa?

or

have 2 'higher priced' and one 'whatever' selected?

Edited by stimshady on Monday 20th April 13:57

[dan1981]

How about using the most viewed 3 cars from the day before?

Granted every so often you *might* subject us to barried corsas after someone posts on in general gassing but other than that the stuff that most people are looking at would be displayed.....

[Mr Will]

dan1981 said:

How about using the most viewed 3 cars from the day before?

Granted every so often you *might* subject us to barried corsas after someone posts on in general gassing but other than that the stuff that most people are looking at would be displayed.....

We don't have a view counter on the private classifieds at the moment, but when we can it back up and running then this is a definite option, maybe combined with a list of categories to ignore!

[RacingPete]

Mr Will said:

dan1981 said:

How about using the most viewed 3 cars from the day before?

Granted every so often you *might* subject us to barried corsas after someone posts on in general gassing but other than that the stuff that most people are looking at would be displayed.....

We don't have a view counter on the private classifieds at the moment, but when we can it back up and running then this is a definite option, maybe combined with a list of categories to ignore!

The view counter idea is not going to work too well as once the highest viewed are on the homepage then people will click on them more and the view count for them will increase further, though we could look at something that incorporates it. We do currently count views of the adverts, but not anything we can show to users as it is stored in stats pages that aren't available to the front end (hence Mr Will's response above).

Though if you are interested the front page would be showing the following three cars if we went for this method without filtering:

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/680056.htm
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/395095.htm
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/710946.htm

The first one is due to a link in from another site!

I agree the system isn't ideal at the moment but obviously what we display on the front page is an editorial decision to reflect the type of audience we aim at, thus the 50k plus collection of cars that always appear.

We are currently working on the classifieds, news and homepage parts of the site and will look at a better way to have more interesting cars on the front page, but this will be a few months away.

[dan1981]

Thats not a bad three really?

Even the first one looks relativly well done.

Then you have a nice M5, and the classic.

A good selection I reckon.

But yeah you would have the problem of the top three being clicked on more and more, but you could surely exclude them form the next days results? or the next X number of days results?

And i don't think the public would need to see the number of clicks - that was just a method of choosing the cars that appeared.

[chris.mapey]

Was surprised to read this, as I assumed that it was a paid for upgrade to your advert - bit like the pick of the classifieds in Autocar magazine...

[RacingPete]

chris.mapey said:

Was surprised to read this, as I assumed that it was a paid for upgrade to your advert - bit like the pick of the classifieds in Autocar magazine...

Now you have gone and said it... the sales team will be knocking on my door any second now when they read this