I recently blogged about the glory of goobers posting one-star reviews of things.
Well, we got our own first one-star iTunes rating, though, alas, with no accompanying review. Now, I had thought that this was actually a good thing, that we were finally getting big enough that hostile people were actually getting tuned into us, i.e. no one bothers to rate anything that they don't care anything about.
However, on further review, I see that a lot of the other podcasts on the "featured" list also have a single one-star rating, with no two-star ratings at all, even "Philosopher's Zone," which is a very professional, soothing podcast that could not possibly actually offend anyone (whereas I can at least picture someone being totally turned off by our attitudes).
So, I'm forced to conclude that someone is gaming the iTunes rating system, likely because these determine in no small part which podcasts appear in the "featured" section of the philosophy category in the iTunes store. Now, we've been in there quite a bit, and this explains quite a lot of the growth in our listenership (i.e. more people stumble across us on iTunes than via this blog).
The only way to cancel out negative ratings like this is for you, our loyal readers/listeners, to go to our page at the iTunes store and give us a nice (5-star, if you think we deserve it) rating... and a text review wouldn't hurt either, if you feel so inspired.
So, if you've been enjoying multiple hours of us, I ask you to kindly go take the two minutes or less that this will require, and nudge your friends/roommates/spouses/pets to do likewise, and that'll actually do more to spread the gospel of PEL than nearly anything else. For those of you that don't use iTunes, if you're actually motivated to download and install it JUST so you can go to the store and give us a nice rating, well, let us know and we'll be extra grateful (which along with fifty cents will buy you... well... a gun, I think, but not a very good one).
I see we have a meager 27 total ratings there now; I'll check back in a few days to see if this here request gets us the goods. Thank y'all for your continued support; the encouragement we've gotten from you has determined us to keep doing this and strive to make it at least somewhat listenable, with a minimum of celebrity impersonations and wacky morning-zoo-type sound effects.
Sincerely,
-Mark
Gave you guys 5 stars. I really love your stuff — and as I wrote before, I didn’t expect to. So far have listened to the Wittgenstein (2), the Nietzsche, the Aristotle, and now the Leibniz (about 15 more minutes to go; plan to rehear it, as well as maybe the Wittgenstein at some point). Want to hit the others, too; so I feel too overwhelmed right now to start suggesting other possibilities. But probably will eventually…
Thanks so much for what you’re trying!
Best,
Kathy Ryan
Thanks, Kathleen!
In response to a question for clarification I just received: Apparently you can’t enter a review or rating on the HTML site that comes up initially when you click our link; you have to actually let it launch iTunes, and then from there, where it says “Customer Ratings” on the left, you can just click the stars to rate it, or at the bottom under “Customer Reviews,” there’s a link to “Write a Review.” If anyone knows of a way to submit a review w/o having iTunes installed, I’d be happy to hear it.