I hesitate to write this, for it risks pushing some important posts off the recently-added list. However, I think it is important enough to warrant a small discussion, particularly since I believe it will get no movement from TPM site administrators without significant support from the TPM reader community.

Genghis has recently lamented the overall lack of quality in many of the reader posts. The causes for this are undoubtedly numerous, and the solutions are not immediately evident. However, as I noted in a comment to Genghis' post, one possible idea that might help is capping the number of recommendations allowed per reader over some time frame. Each time a reader would like to recommend a particular post, an e-mail would be sent to his/her valid address with a link requesting confirmation of the recommendation. Maybe 2-10 such recommendations per week.

Such a system is most definitely not immune to abuse, but at a minimum, its implementation might help elicit a bit more thought on the part of genuine TPM readers before recommending any and all posts. The very ease of making recommendations is perhaps the single largest contributing factor to part of the problem that Genghis describes - namely the part relating to sub-standard posts on the Most-Recommended list. Will the larger overall problem of post quality be corrected by this action? Probably not. But perhaps it would help serve as a staring point.

I write this here because I do not see how TPM site administrators will ever find it profitable to spend time and money on implementing such a system unless there is overwhelming calls from the TPM readership to do so.

Wondering if there is some sort of mechanism by which we simple readers could form a petition or just generally describe change requests such as this to TPM administrators. I don't immediately see any kind of "Contact Us" info on the site.

If you liked this post, please do NOT recommend it.
If you hated it, please don't recommend it anyway.