Pandora: song seed vs. thumbs up, what’s the difference

From the Pandora FAQ

There are two types of skip limits:

All Pandora listeners are limited to 6 skips per hour, per station.

Listeners to the free Pandora service are limited to 12 total skips per day, across all stations.

NOTE: The hourly limit is based on a rolling sixty-minute interval for each skip. So if you give four skips at 12noon, then you give another two skips at 12:30pm, you'll have another four skips available at 1pm-- one hour from the four you gave-- then if you still haven't given any other skips in the meantime, you'll have all six skips back at 1:30pm.

NOTE: The daily limit resets all at once overnight, and is not based on a 24-hour interval.24-hour interval.

I don't think you can look up how many skips you've used or have left.

The Pandora algorithm, in an overly simplified explanation, uses a weighted system on various attributes of your music to determine what you most prefer to hear. When assessing a song on one of your stations, try to compare this specific song to all of the qualities you want your custom station to embody. If you feel this song meets a large enough number of those qualities then you should "Thumbs Up" it. Pandora then adds extra weight behind ALL of the attributes of that song (whether they were exactly what you wanted or not).

Sometimes an upbeat song is what I'm looking for, but because it's also atonal, in a minor key, has a swing rhythm, has a male voice, and harmonized backup vocals (all of which I am trying to avoid) it would be more helpful to "Thumbs Down" on this song instead. If I had done the opposite, I would now get MUCH more of those qualities in addition to the upbeat quality which I originally liked.

Over the long term, your preferred weighting will work itself out but for something as detailed as song length, I think you'll find Pandora will not be able to zero in on that attribute specifically.

(These are my unresearched observations from using Pandora over the past several years.)