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When Did Sphinn Get to be the Get Rich Quick Article Repository?
Went Hot: January 19, 2008 - 10:58 pm
Posted By: Jill 171 days ago
Topic Type: Discussion
Category: Sphinn Zone
I think it sucks.
I wish Sphinn was more about search marketing like I thought it was supposed to be.
How about you?
30 Comments
Comments
I agree, but the "what's new" is much better than "Hot Topics" section, that's so repetitive I rarely look at it much anymore. Actually the best place to look for me is the Comments tab, at least then you know the subject has generated interest and not just false popularity based sphinns with no-one really looking at the article.
With you Jill, though I think there's a fair degree of latitude there. In many respects, Search Marketing has become internet marketing ... so its a real fine line to police. I do agree though ... 'get rich quick' should be one of those stop words, that identifies articles as not being suitable for Sphinn.
Most of the get rich quick submits are wannabe affiliates who actually think you can get rich quick without putting in the 14 to 16 hour days needed starting off. The submits border on spam, not enough for me to hit the button; probably best to just ignore and let slowly die.
JohnWeb, sounds like we Sphinn in the same manner! I review comments first, then What's New, and once in awhile if I've been away for days/weeks I will also review the What's Hot page.
The newer Top Ten Most Sphunn in What's New is also a decent way to find a few tasty nuggets of wisdom!
My habits have changed as the quality of content has evolved. I visit far less because of that :(
The main problem with these get-rich-quick stories is that the author is just using Sphinn as a bookmarking site for free backlinks.
They treat Digg, Reddit and Propeller in the exactly the same way. The goal is not to share content with the community in order to elicit a response/discussion but to get their posts to rank better in the search engines. The same submitters rarely sphinn other posts or comment on other stories as well... which shows their true intent.
All social news sites fall prey to this phenomenon. This is probably just the way affiliate marketers have been taught to do social marketing. Not sure what we can do about it. Maybe desphinning will help in the future.
I do report some of them as spam, but I'm never sure if they're considered to be spam here or not.
It's like...wake up and check out Sphinn on a Saturday morning and the What's New postings are littered with junk.
"My habits have changed as the quality of content has evolved."
I know I'm going off-topic, but one complaint I have is some bloggers write 1,000 words about something that can be said with two words. I understand I should be entertained by what I read, and blogging isn't just about absorbing information its about engaging in a coversation. But sometimes I don't have the time to read a thesis on why I should respond more to reader comments.
At least they never frontpage.
Can we put a large banner on the submit section that says the links are no-followed, and that they will recieve no credit(and very little traffic) for the submission if it's crap?
Halfdeck, I respect what you say. Since November I'm cutting and deleting in my posts. Brining it back to the core, the heart of the message.
One thing: it's a lot harder than I expected -- and it's scary to post something that short. To say "OK, this says what I want it to say - enough!" even when you have just a couple of sentences.
Back on track .... Spam is to be expected. Part of the game.
JohnWeb & Jill -- good ideas about effective browsing here.
My pet peeve as well, Halfdeck. Being laser-focused and succinct is the difference between a good writer and a bad one. Unfortunately, a lot of bloggers aren't good writers...at least not yet. (But yes, this is a different topic in and of itself!)
If it is a total sales pitch, then I will hit the 'report spam' button.
Put out the message early and often that that sort of stuff isn't welcome here, and you have already set the precedent.
I will if the person overloads the damn upcomign page with 3 of their crap in a row.
SPACE IT OUT!
Examples:
http://sphinn.com/story/23989
http://sphinn.com/story/23988
http://sphinn.com/story/23987
I reported it...but it will probably survive.
There is going to come a time that the What's New page will totally change every hour, or every 30 minutes - interfaces will have to change to keep up with growth.
Some of these sites are also displaying Sphinn buttons, but they haven't got the readership of bigger blogs
I would prefer that they only do it with their best content, and only do it on sites that allow self submission, of which Sphinn is one of them, but at the end of the day, is using a submission tool so much worse than paying a consultant to do it for you?
I'm in full support of limiting people to submitting 1 story every 6 hours that's from the same domain. 99% of the time I see people loading multiple stories at a time into the upcoming(a major source of it changing so fast) it's all one domain.
Limit them to 1 per day and maybe quality over quantity will prevail.
@Bill, I said 1 per day per domain because I don't want power users like Dosh to be limited.
limiting new users to post 1 url/day is a good idea by Sphinn.com
All - New users are currently limited to 1 post per 24 hours for the first 7 days that their account is activated. And I agree about the get-rich-quick postings - but as we have an Affiliate Marketing category, it is a fine line. I'm going to alert the mods to this conversation and see if there's consensus amongst them for dealing with these types of submissions.
But by all means - use that spam button. The desphinn feature won't necessarily deter people just looking to drop links - as it will take users actually using that as well, and in large numbers, to get an item discarded - thus blocking any link benefit.
For things submitted as described above, by otherwise inactive users - seriously, spam button - use it early, use it often.
One of the mods chiming in.... :-)
I would love more freedom to kill the junk, but as Michelle says, we have an Affiliate Marketing category and an Other Online Marketing category. I think we need to reconsider that second one, or at least what's allowed in it. And I think no-following all outbounds on What's New would be a great idea. Only remove the no-follow for stories that go hot.
I would bet, if we had the ability to count the percentage of posts in a given category that have ever gone hot, that Affiliate Marketing and Other Online Marketing would be incredibly low. They're both very high on noise, low on signal. (Ironic in light of the current Shoemoney dust up, eh?)
And it's so predictable -- it starts every weekend, late Friday night. It never fails. I login here at about 11 pm PT on a Friday night and it's like spam-central. Same thing on Saturday nights. As someone said above, they just want the link, nothing else.
Thx for starting this discussion, Jill.
How about getting rid of the affiliate marketing category! :D Sounds like that would solve all the problems.
This is just a thought from dealing with similar things on forums. I think if you eliminate one category where you think the spam is going it doesn't necessarily cut down on the spam, but instead spreads the spam out to all the categories. Sometimes it's good to have a catch-all category where all the junk can play.
If I'm hearing everyone correctly it sounds like the problem is that you want to be able to look through the What's New posts without having to see certain categories. Is there or (could there be) a way to let people customize the categories they see in What's New?
Jill would it work if you could see everything in What's New, but be able to unsubscribe so to speak from seeing the Affiliate Marketing category?
Ahhh...that's an interesting concept. Yes, indeed that would make me very happy if it were an option! No more BlogRush, no more Entrecard, no more Get Rich Quick...no more noise!
That would be totally awesome, indeed!
A good idea for a feature - filtering categories out. But really, give the spammers some credit - they'll just start submitting their stuff to the "Google" category - or whatever category they see is the most popular. If they aren't really interested in anything but the link, they're not going to be concerned with properly categorizing things either. Also, you're just filtering out the noise - it won't assist in actually cleaning up the What's New page overall. They'll still get the link when the site is crawled, unless the item is discarded or killed as spam.
I think the nofollow on What's New could help. Though that might be punishing the many because of the few. Really tough call. I expect Rob or Danny will chime in on this.
@MattMcGee - that percentage is 32% (of all posts in 'other online marketing' and 'affiliate marketing' that do go Hot). Actually higher than I thought it would be.
Hope spammer URLs are being banned.
The problem with Affiliate Marketing posts is that they're submitted by Affiliate Marketers ;)
Most of the people who currently post in the Affiliate section are those who promote marketing products and ebooks, rather than the average affiliate who dabbles in anything but. The ebook authors (who wrote them because an ebook they bought on ClickBank told them to) actively encourage marketers to promote the product on their blogs. This results in a flurry of fake reviews, testimonials and articles with the sole aim of getting other marketers to click on their ClickBank link.
I'm not putting down affiliate bloggers, I'm an affiliate marketer myself.
Unless we restrict the Affiliate section to blogs who do not market marketing products, there is little we can do to stop these types of submissions from entering Sphinn. I should point out that Sphinn is an inclusive internet marketing community and not restricted to just search marketing.
The Sphinn team has been taking a zero tolerance approach to spam from the offset, although in the case of affiliate marketing, the line is hard to draw (did I just make up that metaphor?). Obvious promotional blog posts have been removed in the past and we also react rapidly to spam reports.
The problem with sticking "nofollow" on new submits is that half the people who cause the problem don't even check for nofollows and the other half try to artificially boost Sphinns to go Hot and get direct traffic. I don't think that it would make even a recognisable dent in the problem unfortunately.
To add to the above.
First, as Michelle pointed out, Sphinn is a site for internet marketers to share information, not just search marketers. That's what it says in the tag line right under the logo and in the site guidelines.
Second, most of the "get rich quick" stuff I find a turn-off, myself. We also go through these rounds of some new program that gets lauched, then twenty people all post one paragraph stories about it, and bleech. There's great stuff in affiliate marketing that deserves to be seen. Most of that stuff ain't it. Personally, I just scoll past and don't give it a Sphinn. Virtually none of that seems to make it to the home page, either.
In terms of the free backlinks, I've honestly not figured people have been submitting just to get a backlink off the site. My assumption is that are looking for the intial attention. If it really is an issue, then yep, perhaps we should consider nofollow for submissions that are either only on What's New or perhaps linked to the number of Sphinn. Right now, I'd rather wait to bring desphinn up first, then move on to the next step on our development schedule, the ability to see things that your friends are sphinning.
To skip both ahead and back, we've said from the beginning that we know What's New will come under pressure, and part of the value of the site is making sure that What's New stays relevant to people. We're expecting to try a system where you can filter out things not submitted by your friends or perhaps below a certain Sphinn level or maybe only from certain categories, if you want that. Ideas like this should help solve some of Jill's issues.
I think the desphinn will really help.