Sphinn - Is This the End of Sphinn

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Sphinn It!

Is This the End of Sphinn

Went Hot: January 18, 2008 - 7:37 am
Posted By: swags2804 270 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.essence-seo.co.uk)
Category: Water Cooler

What is one of the most successful tactics for destroying a community or your opposition?

22 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from dannysullivan 270 days ago #

Votes: 2 | Vote:

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From what I commented there:

Some people already say there are "sides" in why some stories go hot, so you could argue that Desphinns are a tool to keep things in balance as the community continues to grow.

Personally, I think we need to try it for a variety of reasons, if only to ensure people who disagree with a story don't vindictively use the spam button instead.

I think the key difference with us and Digg or other sites is that Desphinns will be public. In addition, despite debates within Sphinn, we have a community that is largely respectful of each other. These things make me think Desphinn will be used lightly and in an appropriate manner. If not, we'll change it up.

from TimDineen 270 days ago #

Votes: 4 | Vote:

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Surely I'll end up choosing the wrong side.

from patrickaltoft 270 days ago #

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If nobody tried new things the world would be pretty boring. It's not like they can't just remove the feature if it doesn't work.

from baiduyou 270 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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Not sure if the spam justification is that valid. If people are spamming stories that aren't spam they need to be advised by the mods that they're misusing the feature.

from dannysullivan 270 days ago #

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It's a lot of work. The mods have to go into a system, see who actually put in a spam report, then go back and send individual messages? It's easier to have other options. Most of the mod time when it comes to spam is spent checking on stories that get killed by member reports and ensuring they are valid (so far, they all are).

from baiduyou 269 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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Nothing's ever as easy as it first appears is it? ;)

Good to hear the existing system is working pretty well though.

from aimClear 269 days ago #

Votes: 3 | Vote:

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Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The Sphinn crew's vision has worked out so far. They work really hard to engage users and get feedback. If it sucks, I'm sure they'll change it or remove it.

from bwelford 269 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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From what I commented there:
I think the whole debate has become divisive because the thinking is linear. The measure is [Sphinns - Desphinns]. So the side conditions must be made onerous so that not too many Desphinns are made. This polarizes the debates (conflicts).

This will still leave no room for those who don't think the Sphinn was deserved but don't want to make a big thing about it. What you might call the Ho-Hummers?

I still think if they show both measures, the Sphinns and the Desphinns (the Ho-Hums), then you get a better appreciation of how opinions divide. It doesn't need to affect the Going Hot process (Published). However I guess there's some reason why this approach doesn't seem to be getting through.

from jimbeetle 269 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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I'm in favor of the Desphinn button, but gotta' say, that's a great on-the-other-hand post by swags.

from dannysullivan 269 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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So again, we have a ho-hum button. It's called not doing anything at all. If a story doesn't do something for someone, they already go ho-hum and don't vote for it.

There are some stories that some people simply feel more than ho-hum about. They watch them going popular and think, bull. And they can comment all they want, but they are not empowered to actually slow a story going hot. They just have to sit back and take it.

Desphinn allows them to do more than that if they really think it is necessary. Again, I understand all the concerns about how it might get abused and again, I say we will watch that. But being public, requiring comments, I think these are good initial measures to have out there.

If it's not working, then maybe we'll go to adding in an actual Ho-Hum or so-so or whatever type of thing. But one thing at a time tends to be a god way to progress. We brought in spam reporting, and that has been working very well. We'll try this and see how it works in practice. If it's causing issues, it's not going to stay. It's easy enough for us to shut it off at any time.

from iBrian 269 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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The desphinn is a great idea - the point about a community is that it balances multiple interests.

"voiced his concerns about every one of his submissions standing the chance of getting voted down into oblivion because he discusses what might be considered to be ‘Black-hat’ SEO techniques, which a lot of people disagree with and take a firm stand against."

If any blackhat is worried about getting voted down for their tactics, then I respectfully suggest they think carefully on that next time they power up Xrumer and try and spam the very webmasters they are then looking to for support.

from bwelford 269 days ago #

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@dannysullivan
I hear you loud and clear, Danny. You only want to have the really, really unworthy Sphunn articles DeSphunn. That's fine.

Perhaps the other part of the suggestion still has merit. Why not leave the Sphinn/Publish process in place as at present, but also have a clear indication on any article of the number of DeSphunn's it has received? That way people can more easily understand what is really going on.

from dannysullivan 269 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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Right now, we think there will be a cumulative total in the button showing Sphinns with Desphinns deducted. Then if you hit Who Sphunn, you'll see the total Sphinns with no deductions along with all the individuals. Hit Desphinn, you'll see total Desphinns, who did that and their comments. The number of Desphinns will also be shown in the Desphinn link if anyone actually does that. We talked about this last night as a further step so that those who want to see total Sphinns cast could still get that number.

from baiduyou 269 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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*cups hand to ear*

I also think I hear Danny loud and clear - from all the way across the Atlantic I can detect the distant echo of him repeatedly hitting his head against his desk ;)

from bwelford 269 days ago #

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Seems the right way to apply that Desphinn approach. As you imply, Danny, with these rules I think it will be used very rarely.

from swags2804 269 days ago #

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First off, of course I don't believe this to be the end of Sphinn! That's just a bit of sensationalist headlining to grab the attention. What I do believe is that by highlighting any particular doubts we may have to the Desphinn device, we can ensure that they don't manifest themselves down the line, when its way too late for a full product recall.

Thanks to everyone for their part in this.

@dannysullivan - I would like to thank you for taking the time to comment over on my blog, and to reiterate that I'm not in any way taking a shot at you or the people at Sphinn, I think you're all doing an exceptional job here. I just wanted to highlight a particular danger that such things might lead to; after all, Sphinn is one of the few social networks without a down-voting system and its built itself up to great things in such a short time. I trust that it won't be allowed to slip into the nightmare scenario I alluded to in my post, where the community is torn apart by in-fighting and division, and you have a top team of moderators here to enforce that. Many thanks again.

from seanmag 269 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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"As it stands, it will take 2 Desphinns to remove one sphinn – I should add that a user can only vote once on a submission... If the story reaches the front page then the ratio changes from 2, to 5 Desphinns to remove 1 Sphinn. Basically, 5 down-votes will cancel out 1 vote in favour of."

What a ridiculous system. Whatever happened to democracy? You should be able to vote for (Sphinn), against (DeSpinn) or abstain (hohum). The simple fact of requiring a comment and "outing" the DeSphinner is enough to keep it from getting out of hand. Requiring multiple DeSphinns to remove a Sphinn makes no sense at all. As far as the author's sensationalist title and expanation of dividing and conquering - Do we forget that the very strength of democracy is "equal vote count"? The best democracies in the world foster an environment of argument! (see USA).

As it stands right now, with all due respect to Danny Sullivan and Co,. and the community at large, Sphinn is not just a clickfest, but a cliquefest. For example - if DoshDosh spins it - it goes hot (we can all give many other examples). Do you really think that all of these people are reading all of these stories? BTW - I am an avid fan of DoshDosh.

What you might want to consider is requiring the potential Sphinner or DeSphinner to visit the IP address of the story, stay for at least one minute and only then have the ability to Sphinn or DeSphinn on a particular story. Your vote counts would probably go down about 80%, but they would be a helluva lot more accurate in terms of what's really hot and what's really not. I realize something like this will never happen because a big part of the appeal is allowing people that have no clue what a story is about, to simply vote along party lines and to work on kissing ass with the right people to be loved and cherished so they too can have their stories go hot. That's what the current system fosters.

The way this system is setup right now, and the way it will remain, even with the Desphinn option, is that there will be trusted leaders (DoshDosh), an army of blind clickers/cliquers (i.e. followers) that vote blindly, and a host of folks that fall somehwere in between.

Nevertheless, I love Sphinn, but to me the real value is not the number of Sphinn's on an article, but rather the central repository for them. Would be nice if you improved the Search function.

BTW- Great article. I read it from start to finish.

from wheel 268 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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That was a waste of your developers time. It does next to nothing for those of us looking to get rid of the self promotional clique crap that goes on around here. Which makes it a waste of my time to bother using the buttons. There's folks sick of the pointless self promotional/latest blog post on the same tired subject or nothing at all that'd be happy to vote this stuff out - I thought that was the point.

This doesn't fix the problem. This place is rapidly moving from a must read daily into a visit once a week. We don't need to visit daily to read about the next seo contest for $10, or the self congratulatory blog posts about winning the no0name contest. Or whatever; there's about 3 storylines here these days, and I've read them all before.

If you want the community to police the stories, put the desphinn ratio the other way around.

from iBrian 268 days ago #

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I presume it's not been implemented yet? Simply that I don't see a desphinn feature with story entries in Firefox.

from dannysullivan 267 days ago #

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Not implemented. Wheel, I do think it will help, and we have other things that will help you weed out junk from What's New planned.

Sean, it's Digg that talks about being a democracy. We're a community -- what type of community, I don't know. But no, it's not the case where one vote is the same. IE, right now, a story technically could go hot without any votes and just lots of commenting activity. Down the line, it could be that members with more authority and reputation in the system are able to give more credit to stories they sphinn.

So why not make it one vote for, one vote to take away? Caution. I think it's easy for communities to get very negative online, much more than being positive. Asking people to think twice with a comment before being negative doesn't seem unreasonable. Using a ratio also seems a cautious way to start.

I keep repeatedly saying that we will change or adjust things as needed.

FYI, in terms of reading stories, I reported that people from Sphinn going to Search Engine Land spend like four minutes there. If you want to argue it's all just a big clique -- hey, SEL is the sister site to Sphinn. It should be any of our articles go hot, no reading at all. But that's not the case -- not all of our articles go hot, and people are spending tons of time reading them when they come to them.

And improving search -- yeah. Yeah. We need to get on that.

from seanmag 266 days ago #

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@Danny. Although I still disagree with the DeSphinn system you're planning, I appreciate the response. I truly believe you'll find that documenting the DeSphinner will be enough of a deterrent. Just wait until you see the revenge casting that will cause! ;)

That said, I don't doubt that you'll keep tweaking the system until you feel you've struck a nice balance.

Cheers.