What stories are included
Stories can be added to AroundTheCapitol.com either by eureka!, the AroundTheCapitol.com robot, or by users. Any registered user can submit a story at submit a story. Registration is required to minimize spam and increase the relevance of the site.
If you would like eureka! to crawl a specific newspaper or blog, let me know.
How stories are ranked
Stories are ranked using several factors, including but not necessarily limited to:
- Votes by users for and against stories. The votes of registered users value more than unregistered users. You can vote on a story every 24 hours.
- Recency of the story
- Keywords in the headline and summary
- Who submitted the story (more frequent contributors are treated as respected users)
- How many people have visited the story from AronundTheCapitol, and how recent the visits were
- How many comments have been posted on the story
- Whether the story has been mentioned on other respected sites (i.e. Rough & Tumble, The Roundup)
- ElectionTrack alerts are weighted based on the size of the contribution.
The ranking algorithm is constantly being changed, and your suggestions are welcome.
Who runs the site?
The site basically runs itself. The code was written by Scott Lay, who during the day is the President/CEO of the Community College League of California. Scott has a bachelor's degree in political science public service and a juris doctorate from the University of California, Davis.