FAQs

  • 1 - What is the Cosmos?

    The cosmos is a view of shows that have been similarly rated to the one you are looking at. Most of this site is based on personal predictions, but in this case everyone sees the same thing. The cosmos for a show are the shows that have most commonly received the same rating by the same people. If two shows are always rated the same by all users, whether that is high or low, they will always be high in each other's cosmos. It should be noted too that cosmos are not necessarily symmetric. One show can easily be the top entry in another's cosmos but not vice versa.

  • 2 - Why don't you have a list of the highest rated shows?

    This site has a different slant than many directory sites. It is our belief that what most people listen to or watch is irrelevant, what really matters is what you will like. Our statistics are used to generate predictions for individuals but not to generate the lists so common in the podcast world.

  • 3 - Why should I rate something 'not interested'?

    'Not interested' is a special class of rating that marks it as something you have rated, but doesn't contribute to your neighbors or predictions. You can use it to remove from your list of predictions things you just don't plan on ever listening to. Local political shows in an area you don't live, for example, might be an example of a show you have no interest in. Use this for shows you haven't listened to and don't plan to. If you have listened and have an opinion, give it the appropriate star rating.

  • 4 - Why is the Evil Genius Chronicles at the top of the rate list, you egotistical schmuck? Why do things disappear out of that list?

    The rate list is a general list to get started. It is ordered by the things most commonly rated to the least. Amongst shows with ties, it is ordered by last show date. If you are logged in, this list won't include shows that you have already rated. If you rate a show and then come back to this list later, you won't see it in there.

  • 5 - Why don't I see any way to rate?

    There should be a star controller everywhere that you see anything about a given show. Anywhere that you see those stars, you can rate. Red stars are predictions for you, yellow stars are your ratings. You can always change or clear your ratings at any time. If you aren't seeing the stars, you might need to turn javascript on if it is not already enabled, and it needs to be able to change images.

  • 6 - What do the red and yellow stars mean?

    Yellow stars reflect your ratings in the database. Red stars are your predicted ratings. Anywhere that you see the stars, you can rate or change or clear your rating rather than needing to go to a special page to do it.

  • 7 - How can I edit my show descriptions / change the feeds? Why is this bad /old information in there?

    The first time a show enters the system, it comes from an RSS feed being submitted, imported or auto-discovered. At that time, the title and description used in the RSS feed are taken as those for the show. If that changes over time, it won't automatically update. If you have information you want changed, send it in an email to data at amigofish.com . At this time, there are no immediate plans to do a "claim my feed" style thing to allow show producers to manage their own entries. If the need for that becomes great enough, we'll consider adding that functionality.

    As far as the feeds, there is some effort made to keep the feeds current and inactivate old ones. You can always help streamline the process by emailing to tell us which feeds are obsolete and what they have been changed to. Dealing with changing feed URLs is one of the biggest ongoing AmigoFish challenges on a day to day basis.

  • 8 - My search turns up nothing! My search turns up too many things! How can I find things?

    The searching functionality has recently been changed. It now searches on whole words. This is a change from the previous functionality which would find substrings. However, an advantage of our current system is that you can do wildcard searches. The good is that you can often find additional things that way; the bad is that if your search is overly broad you might end up at the error page (until this can be fixed.) If so, just search again and add in a few more letters to narrow it down. You can also use multiple wildcards.

    If you want to narrow down results, you can also enclose queries in quotes. This will only turn up entries that have that literal phrase in that order.

    Example of queries that work:
    pod*
    *thepodcastnetwork* (finds all shows on the Podcast Network)
    "Evil Genius"

    Example of queries that won't work:
    *
    www.*

  • 9 - I've recorded ratings so why don't I have any predictions?

    Your ratings are used to match you to other users, and then these matches are used to create the predictions. You need four ratings in common with another user to become their "neighbor". If you have rated fewer than four show, you will not be matched to anyone else. If you have rated four or more but some are relatively obscure, you might not have four in common with any single person. If you keep rating shows, you will eventually get predictions but if your early ratings are not widely rated by other users, it might take you a few more ratings to get there.

  • 10 - I use iTunes and want to import my subscriptions into AmigoFish so that I can rate them. How do I do that?

    To export OPML from iTunes, select the "Podcasts" item in the left hand column and then go to "File" > "Export Song List" from the menubar. You may then choose Plain Text, Unicode Text, XML, or OPML from a popup menu. OPML is what you want to use so select that option and use the file it saves as what you upload from the OPML import functionality of AmigoFish.