Loads of people relied on lensroll as a quick and easy way to give their own lenses links from their own lenses. In fact – some people absolutely abused the feature.
With lensroll gone very soon (some time today), it’s time to replace those links. Not, as HQ suggests by using the related lenses feature.
I recommend putting up my lenses modules on all your lenses. Simply set it to promote the best 25 lenses in the category the lens is in. That will be good enough for most lensmasters.
For those who have MORE lenses than that in a category you should definitely have a lensography and make sure the lensography is always featured (using the featured lenses module for instance) on lenses in that niche.
More granular methods are also possible – but the above is a method that will give the best of your lenses an easy backlink from related lenses, which is the least you should have.
[ source for the changes: http://www.squidoohq.com/2011/05/23/big … post-ever/ ]
Of course the above is NOT the way to help promote other people’s best lenses. I’m afraid I’m not bothering replacing lensroll links to other people’s lenses at all. It’s just too much work (I have over 600 lenses in total). We’ll just have to get used to doing that through on topic lensographies, blogposts, forum posts, link lists or featured lenses modules.
Some of the questions (and m y answers) in this thread that I think are pertinent:
CruiseReady wrote:
Do you think that, in light of this change, the use of plexos will increase in the future? Would this be a good way to feature / interlink to the lenses of OTHER people on your own lenses?
True – you could use (link) plexo’s that way. However, they have been buggy on and off for years (for instance, last time I checked I could not vote), so I’m personally hesitant to use them.
tandemonimom wrote:
I had a thought – if you have more than 25 lenses in a category and you DO want to have them all listed on your lens, you could use modified tags and two My Lenses modules. So if your main tag was “elephants” you could have “elephants 1″ as a tag on 25 lenses and “elephants 2″ as a tag on the second 25 lenses. A little bit of work, but once it was done it would be simple to use two (or more) My Lenses modules to have all your topical lenses listed instantly.
Personally I think that’s a bit convoluted. Also – linking to more than 25 lenses on a regular lens is overdoing it IMO. That’s what I was referring to when I said I thought people had been overusing lensroll sometimes. I’ve seen people lensroll over 50 lenses. Not a good thing.
One way I have dealt with this is create tags for subniches.
For instance, I have a tag for all my spiritual lenses, another for all my buddhist lenses, a third for all my buddhist gifts, and also one for all my lenses on buddhist books. I use the one that fits the lens best.
There are always subniches in topics you have more than 25 lenses of.
Another trick I use is to use the top 25 lenses on most lenses in a niche, but on some I’ll use the latest created, or the latest updated. Just to mix things up a bit.
Also – aside from using the top 25 in a category or niche – a featured lenses module (or link list) can be used to pick the 5 or so in the niche most related to the one you’re working on. If I do that I usually list only the top 20 or so in the my lenses module itself.
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Why do you recommend we don’t use the related lens feature?
Because it’s just 6 spaces.
But really – now that lenses that do NOT have the feature turned on also show up on the related lenses feature, I guess I would recommend using it. Just to crowd out the people who are using the system selfishly.
I thought this was a bug, but since it’s been over a week since I reported it, and it’s still happening, I guess it’s a feature somehow.
It’s really that I recommend being social online – this feature interlinks Squidoo lenses based no their tags. It’s just a good idea to get links that way and give them too. Looks better, more social. However, since the system is at present rewarding selfishness, I will slowly start filling in those related lenses myself.
One advantage of automatically filling them is that new lenses also get a chance.
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