So here at 10Questions we don't just reply to your feedback with blog entries. We include site updates too. This week's highlights: grid or list viewing and the ability to filter videos based on whether or not you've voted on them. Micah summarized these in his last post, but I'd like to add a little background. Most of the blogosphere has nice things to say about 10Questions, but let's focus on some criticism. We learn more that way.

A few people have been asking "Why trust the public to choose the best questions?" Aside from the obvious retort that the public is behind choosing the president, there's more. It's often called "the wisdom of crowds," a phrase popularized by James Surowiecki's book of the same name. The idea is simple. Under specific conditions, a group can make better decisions than the smartest of its constituents. This doesn't require all members to hold expert knowledge, only a diversity of naivete. The assumption being, there are lots of ways to be wrong and only a few ways to be right. Given a diverse enough group, the different ways of being wrong cancel each other out, and the right ones work to reinforce one another. This is why well-structured markets exhibit strong predictive power. The catch, your group better be diverse, otherwise people start having the same wrong answers, and the filtering doesn't work. Your intelligent group becomes a mob. This brings us to our first update and how we display questions.

Today James Kotecki of Politico.com echoed a common question. Why don't we display videos randomly on the main page? Sure we have a "Random" sort by option, but doesn't displaying the top-vote-getters only reinforce their lead? The answer's not simple. We've known from the start that 10Questions will succeed or fail based on our users. So we were very careful to put together a large cross-partisan coalition of sponsors, and I'm pleased to say that they've helped make the mix of referring sites ideologically balanced. However, we also wanted to tap into the web's ability to spread content virally, from friend to friend, via links, emails, and embedding. The idea being, the more voters the better, but remember, we have to avoid group-think, and viral videos spread among like-minded individuals.

The nature of our traffic is such that isolated blog posts can drive eyeballs to individual videos, skyrocketing their votes. The fact that the main page displays the top videos provides a community check on such runaway behavior, alerting the greater community to this activity and allowing an opportunity to vote videos up or down. It's this ability to vote things down that mediates the reinforcing issue. A video on the top can just as easily be voted down as it can be voted up. Implicit in the question over what videos to display on the main page is the assumption that many voters won't get past the first page. If its contents were random, runaway videos would dominate the top ranks, their voting having escaped scrutiny by the larger group. This is something we very much want to avoid.

Now, of course, it's not all or nothing. So our default display includes more than just the top videos. To give new or overlooked videos a chance, we have a dynamic "Overlooked or Just Added" column. This column changes on-the-fly to display videos which haven't gotten a lot of attention. Already we have videos in the top ten that started in this column (e.g., Is America unofficially a theocracy?, and Pre-Emptive Attacks by US).

In the future we might consider some other hybrid, perhaps a random ordering of the top ten to place different videos "above the fold." We want this to succeed, and that means being flexible. Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

A number of people have expressed concern about the site being gamed during this stage, but if you're really worried about an imperfect process that is hugely gameable, take a look at Iowa. 10Questions is an attempt to add something to the dialogue, and I think we're doing that well. On a similar note, a few people have also expressed worry that round two's voting will turn into a popularity contest. To this I have to say, you haven't seen how we're handling it yet. ;) What seems clear, however, is that alienating those you're trying to win over is the surest way to lose votes. So candidates wishing to reach out to 10questions voters will be mindful of the fact the community will be evaluating their replies.

Now for this weeks tweaks.

1) You can now view questions as a list or in the default grid view. Look for the small set of links directly below the sorting options and right above the first video. Clicking "list" will collapse the display, showing only a thumbnail and some video stats. Once in list view, you can click on a title to show an individual video and vote. Clicking "grid" returns you to the default layout.

2) For the return visitor, you can now filter out videos you've already voted on. Simply click "SHOW ONLY VIDEOS I HAVEN'T VOTED ON" next to the list/grid links. This will hide all the videos you've voted on, but still lets you sort and search to your heart's content. Similarly, you can keep tabs on the videos you've voted on by clicking "SHOW ONLY VIDEOS I'VE VOTED ON."

3) We moved a link to the blog up from the footer and into the tabs selection.

4) We added a more prominent email button, to help spread the word.

5) Last week, we added an RSS feed to let you know when videos are added. You can find the link at the bottom of the page or here.

Now I'm betting on this post generating a lot of comments. Don't disappoint me. You are 10Questions. Tell us how best to keep you engaged, and consider posting a question or two. Test for yourself how well new videos rise to the top.