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Aug 19 2008

Site "Launch"

by John Dyer

Yesterday, after adding a few final features to the site including Amazon reviews and an updated algorithm for scoring (when there is a tie, newer works get a higher rank), I "launched" bestcommentaries.com.

I emailed Andy Naselli and, as soon as he posted, the interwebs lit up with links to the site. I've also received lots of super-helpful emails from students and professors noting books to add and update. Thanks to everyone!

Here are some links:

Jul 1 2008

Weighing Review Scores

by John Dyer

Now that the site is getting more reviews in, I'm going to start working on a little bit more complex ranking algorithm. Here are some of the factors for calculating the review score:

  1. Total number of reviews - a person who only submits a single review shouldn't have a much authority as a person who has reviewed dozens of commentaries.
  2. Number of reviews in for a bible book - the more reviews a user does for a given book of the bible the more their reviews will count.
  3. Number of "Helpful reviews" - Much like Amazon, the site will eventually have a "Did you find this review helpful?" link.
  4. Account Age - over time, older accounts may gain more weight.
  5. Internal modifier - for some reviewers, I may add a behind-the-scenes modifier that will give their reviews more or less weight . The reason for this is to be able to give more weight to credible academic sources that may not have many reviews.

Other factors that might adjust the score would be to take into account outliers in the data. For example, if a book has 5 great reviews and a single 1-star review, that single 1-star shouldn't tank it's score.

May 31 2008

Tagging and Sorting Systems

by John Dyer

This week, I was created a "tagging" system which allows sets of tags to be added to books in various categories. Right now, every book of the bible has a set dealing with the academic level of the work. A give title can be tagged as:

  • Scholarly/Technical - heavily utilizes original languages
  • Pastoral/Expositional - less academic, but geared toward learned pastors
  • Devotional/Popular - geared more toward the "lay" person
  • Special study - some works, like the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture are distinct from regular commentaries.

Some works fit into just one category (ICC and Hermenia are clearly "Technical"), but others span more than one of these categories, such as the NICNT/NICOT series which are technical, but also useful for pastors and expositors. So I have made it so that multiple tags apply to each work. This is a distinct advantage of a web application over a traditional book since it's not limited to just one list or categorization.

In addition to the tags above, some books such as Daniel and Revelation also have another tag set called "Millennial View" with the following options:

  • Premillennial
  • Postmillennial
  • Amillennial

Other views could be added, such as Idealist, but these should work for now. The other tag set that I am considering is some kind of range between Liberal and Evangelical. John Glynn does a great job of this in his commentary and reference survey.

In addition to tags, the table of books can now be sorted by column for further refinement.

May 17 2008

Alpha Site

by John Dyer

This weekend I finished an alpha version of Best Commentaries. So far there are commentaries from 50 different series, and the total number of commentaries is somewhere a bit north of 1,000.

I've gone through several iterations of the database to come up with something that I'm pretty sure will work for the long haul. At this point there are 5 types of entries in the database:

1. Normal - this is a commentary where one physical book represents a commentary on one book of the Bible.

2. MultiVolume - covers a single book of the Bible over several physical volumes. This is needed so that reviewers don't have to review both volumes separately.

3. Volume - a child entry of the MultiVolume. This is needed to keep track of individual ISBNs for purchasing.

4. MutliAuthor - one physical book which has several commentaries of different Bible books written by different authors. This has the ISBN for purchasing the physical book.

5. BookPart - a child entry of the MultiAuthor entry. Reviews will happen at this level instead of for the whole physical book.