Rankings Should Incentivize Writers To Do The "Right" Thing

Before ranking writers (or other workers) it helps to know what you are ranking. Quantity or quality? Popular topics, or original topics? Mass market appeal, or impact on a few.

If your goal is maximizing readership, you probably want writers to put pretty (sports) girls in the photo (as I did). That would probably increase "views."

On the other hand, it might draw the wrong kind of following: people who are out to see the photo rather than read the article. If there is a test of (content) "recall," say a few days or weeks later, maybe the article will do poorly on that metric, and maybe rightly so.

One of the issues that I face as a baseball writer deals with the fact that "large" markets like New York City, have more viewers than "small" markets like Oakland or Pittsburgh. My two articles on the New York Mets averaged over 100 views (one over, one under).

On the other hand, I am lucky to get 40-50 views for my Oakland or Pittsburgh articles. Am I really twice as good a writer about the Mets?

And if I want to maximize my rank on the top writers list, do I concentrate on the larger markets where there are more readers? Or would I maximize my contribution to the site by writing for the smaller, less-covered markets, where an additional article might have a larger (percentage) impact.   

Some clue may be found in the fact that I rank higher in the smaller markets (Oakland, Pittsburgh, Toronto), than among New Yorkers, even though "reads" are less. And the favorite of my articles of a professional sports writer was my Toronto piece about a former Pirate (Jose Bautista), even though that is far from the most popular article on the site.

But it seems that I have a large "share" of the smaller markets, meaning that I'm having a larger impact there. That may mean that my articles in those markets are objectively better, at least on the curve, even though they don't draw as much absolute attention as my New York City pieces.

In the end, I'll probably end up writing about what I want, without regard to rankings, on theory that "passion leads to popularity." But these considerations do come up in the deliberations of most people, certainly yours truly. 

Hence, reader feedback on what is most important to them will be important. And if there are qualitative (as well as quantitative) measures of value, that could be a good thing.