SandHill Toad FAQ

Check the About SandHill Toad page.

It depends. You don't need a SandHill Toad account if all you want is to browse through the stories, sites and comments submitted by other SandHill Toad users.

But if you want to really get the most out of SandHill Toad, have your own personal Front Page, submit stories, vote on stories, leave comments, etc. then yes, you need a SandHill Toad account.

To fully experience SandHill Toad, we invite you to do create an account. You can always cancel it later at any time.

Click on the Submit Story link in the left menu and enter the URL of the story you'd like to submit. After that, you'll need to enter a title, a brief descripion of the story and select the most appropriate category for the story you're submitting.

That's the number of up/down votes the story has received so far.

Depending on the "theme" (see My Settings), next to the number of votes, you will see either two small thumbs up/down icons, two up/down arrows or two text links:

Just click on the one you want, and your vote will be casted.

Once you vote on a story, you can not vote on it again nor change your mind. What you voted will be reflected by a grey thumb/arrow: it will be pointing up if you voted "up" or down if you voted..."down" :-)

Simple. If you liked the story/website/etc and it's something you would recommend, then vote "up". If you didn't like it and it's something you definitely wouldn't recommend, then vote "down". Anything in between? You could think of it as "if I had to choose one, which one would it be?" or simply skip voting and move on to the next story.

"My Favorites" is a collection of those sites or stories that you particularly liked, kind of like your browser favorites/bookmarks.

You can add a story to your favorites by clicking on the circled image with a + in it that appears next to each story title:

Other themes, instead of the image, you'll see a link that says "Save":

Once added to your favorites, the circle is replaced by a yellow ribbon (or by the text "Fav!", depending on what theme you're using).

Click on the story title.

You can click on either the "More..." link at the end of the description, or on the "Comment (x)" link (where X is the number of comments already made).

No. Although your Front Page will only get stories and sites based only on what your Toad Source think of them, when you engage in a conversation with other SandHill Toad users, the conversation cannot be broken.

• My Front Page
  This is supposedly your entry page to SandHill Toad. It contains four different blocks of information:
  • Alerts
    Here you will receive different alerts, so you know what's been happening since last time you visited. For example, you could be notified that someone has added you as a Toad Source, or that someone has replied to a comment you've made, etc.

  • My Toad Source
    An excerpt of the last news stories and web pages that reached your front page (more on that later).

  • Last comments
    A quick list of the news stories where you last left a comment. This way, you don't have to remember what stories were the last you commented, and can quickly and easily see if there are new comments, follow up on the conversation, etc.

  • Last voted
    Another quick list, this time showing the latest stories you voted. Like with the last comments block, this allows you to easily monitor how the latest stories you voted are evolving.

• My Toad Source
  This is where the most interesting submitted stories, as determined by your Toad Source, will appear. Not all stories that receive a positive vote by some of your Toad Source may necesarily appear in this page. Only those that obtain certain ranking or score will. In short, this is your Toad Source for really interesting stuff.

  You can, however, from your My Settings page, modify this behavior and, if you like, set it up so that al stories submitted or voted up by at least one of your Toad Source will appear in "My Toad Source" page. Bottom line: you're in control, and it's very easy to do.

• All Toad Source
  If "My Toad Source" was presenting you the most interesting news according to your Toad Source, here you'll see what the most interesting news are according to all SandHill Toad users.

• All Upcoming
  This is where all new stories submitted land, regardless of whether the person who submitted them is your Toad Source or not. Usually, unless you're really curious, or have time to kill, or really would like to see what anyone is submitting to SandHill Toad, it's not a section that you would be checking often

• Profile
  Here you can see and edit your profile info.

  You can also see your site stats: How many stories you've submitted, votes you've made, how many people have looked at your profile, and how many people you've selected as Toad Source, as well as how many people have selected you as a Toad Source (your fans).

  Folllowing the "Toad Source" and "fans" links in the Stats box, you can actually see who those people are, and add/remove them as your Toad Source anytime you want.

• Favorites
  Here you can see what stories you've marked as "Favorite". That way, in addition to vote up/down on stories other people send, you can keep a collection of those sites or stories that you particularly liked.

  The main difference between your Favorites and anything else, is that you can modify the title and description of your favorites, so you can describe them however it makes sense to you. After all, they are your favorites. Note however that when you actually go to the story page in SandHill Toad, the original title and description are preserved.

• Stories
  This option will show you three different sub-options:
  • Submitted
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the stories you've submitted.

  • Voted
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the stories you've voted on.

  • Comments
    A list in reverse chronological order of all the comments you've left.

    In this page, you are also notified anytime someone posts a reply to any of your comments. That way, you don't have to be sitting on a story page and reloading it countless times to see if someone replies to you. Just come to your Comments page and if someone does reply to you, you will see the alert message with a link to the story page. Extremely useful especially if you've left several comments on different stories.

• Network
  Here you will also see three different options:
  • Toad Source
    A list of all users you have selected as your Toad Source.

  • Fans
    A list of all users who have selected you as their Toad Source.

  • Like-minded
    A list of the SandHill Toad users who seem to have the closest similar interests to yours. You can use this list for example to add any of them as Toad Source.

• My Settings
  Here you configure how you want SandHill Toad to work for you. From the criteria SandHill Toad follows to build your personal Front Page, to the look and appearance of SandHill Toad itself.

The User Ranking measures your degree of "SandHill Toad-ness" somehow. By voting, submitting stories, posting and ranking comments, etc. you'll be doing things that may give you a better ranking. Of course, sending 30 comments a day or submitting 10 stories a day pointlessly is not going to do it for you.

Other things affect your ranking of course, but without getting into great detail, if you use SandHill Toad and are a good sport, your ranking will go up.

Remember however that in SandHill Toad, the influence of a user when it comes to get stories in other user's front pages is determined by those who select him as a Toad Source, not by the user ranking. When you submit a story, when you vote, etc. you are treated the same as everyone else, regardless of ranking.

So, what's the point of having a ranking then? Well, 99% of what makes SandHill Toad is the people who use it, and let's just say that we like to know who those people are. Why? Because as time goes by, it will matter.

SandHill Toad also maintains two different rankings: one global and one that resets the first of every month. In fact, somehow we try to give the monthly ranking a bit more exposure than the global ranking.

This means that the very first day of each month, we all are equally ranked :-)

By the way, both rankings are updated only once every 24 hours, usually between 12-1am Pacific time. So if you're interested in seeing whether someone's position in the ranking has gone up or down, you really only need to visit the page once a day.

This might happen especially as long as the number of users isn't very large, and even more at the beginning of the month when the monthly ranking is reset.

SandHill Toad uses an internal "point" system to determine a user's position in the user ranking, where the user doesn't always get rewarded (or penalized) only depending on what she or he does. For example, a user accrues points when someone else assigns that user as their Toad Source.

And since I used the "selected as a Toad Source" example, it may be worth mentioning that a user won't gain nor lose points by being assigned as a Toad Source, then deassigned, then reassigned again, etc. If someone assigns you as a Toad Source, you'll get X points, and if later that person doesn't want you as a Toad Source anymore, you'll lose the same number of points you were given in the first place. And if too many people assign you as their Toad Source, the amount of points you get may decrease every time, depending also on a number of factors.

Most of the ranking rules are made that way, not to claim that it's impossible to game or trick it (it is not impossible), but to avoid making it at least too trivial to do so.

The short answer is no, at least not yet. However, if enough users give it a thumbs down and almost nobody gives it a thumbs up, the story will eventually dissapear from everyone's view.

Yes you can. Visit the Tools page where you'll find how to do that.

Yes. Again, visit the Tools page where it explains how to add a widget you your website.

Yes, they do, but they count just as any other Toad Source's votes. No more, no less. You could say that SandHill Toad assumes that your opinion is as valuable to you as any of your Toad Source opinions.

No. If you don't like a story or site, why should it still make it to your front page?

On the other hand, if you give thumbs down to a story that is already in your Front Page, for now it will still remain in your Front Page until new stories push it down, however very soon this will change so that stories you voted down do not show up in your Front page.

Not exactly. Depending on how busy our servers are, SandHill Toad calculates what new stories should go to your Front Page every once in a while, but never exceeding 60 minutes. Of course, whether it updates your Front page every 5, 10 or 60 minutes, it always takes into account whatever happened ever since the last update.

Therefore, whether you check your Front Page via web or via RSS, usually you don't need to reload/update your Front Page more than once an hour in order to see whether there are new stories in your Front Page.

The number of votes and comments on a particular story are updated in real time.

Once a story makes it to your Front Page, it can only be pushed down by newer stories, but not removed, regardless of whether you add/remove Toad Source or modify your settings.

For example, say today you add 3 new people as Toad Source. These people's votes cause some stories to apear in your Front Page. Then, for whatever reason, you decide to remove them as Toad Source. Those stories previously promoted to your Front Page will stay there until new stories "push them down". Once a story makes it to your Front Page, it'll stay there.

The only case where a story can be removed from your Front Page is if you give it thumbs down (read the previous FAQ 19).

It all depends how you've configured your "My Toad Source" page includes... settings.

For example, if you've configured that option as:

• All stories... Submitted by any of my Toad Source

The only new stories you'll get in your Front Page will be stories submitted by your Toad Source.

If you have instead (or also):

• All stories... Voted by at least one of my Toad Source

Then all it takes is for one of your Toad Source to give a story a thumbs up to make it to your Front Page, regardless of who submitted the story. It's very straight-forward, really.

Things get a bit more fuzzy if you select Promoted stories instead of All stories, because now the promotion algorithm comes into play.

What this algorithm does is to look at how your Toad Source (plus "Toad Source of your Toad Source" if you selected that option) have been voting on a story, then, depending how they voted plus a number of other factors, a story may or may not be promoted to your Front Page, regardless of whether the story was submitted by one of your Toad Source or not.

On this first implementation of our FAQ we tried to cover the basic questions about using SandHill Toad. As we write a more comprehensive FAQ and Help pages, should you have any questions, please contact us.