News Source: 1
Published: Apr 20, 2008 - 02:55 am
Story Found By: ciaran 1887 Days ago
Category: Sphinn Zone
I love Sphinn. And I really love Search Engine Land. But if the two are separate, why do you force me to submit something from SEL to Sphinn in order to comment on it?
There are times when I don’t want to Sphinn a story (not because I don’t think it deserves it, but because another Sphinner would probably have a better chance of getting it ’Hot’) but I do want to comment. So why do you force me to ruin your story’s chance of going hot in order to comment?
Please can you fix it for me to be able to do both.
Cheers,
Ciarán
17 Comments
Comments
What Ciaran said. SEG has this functionality and I believe it adds to the story value.
"Please can you fix it for me to be able to do both"- You do realise that Danny isn’t Jimmy Savile don’t you?Sphinn and SEL are the children of Third Door Media. Would you allow people to make nice comments about one child but not the other? What kind of parent would you be? (When are you and Vanessa having kids by the way? I’d make a great Godfather.).It seems a little silly having to comment on both sites about an article, in fact a few people have asked to be able to insert Sphinn comments on their own blogs.What do other people think?
I’ve not been busy on Sphinn ’cause I’m technically on vacation this week. But I caught this one.Basically, it’s simply too hard for us to moderate both comments on SEL and Sphinn. Because the two sites are so closely related, we just felt it was better to have the comments be in one place. It’s not the best solution, but I honestly think we’ll be sticking with it for the time being. We are looking to make the integration better.As Rob said, we’ve been looking at a way that Sphinn comments could be used on other sites, as well. That was long our thought, that people who want to have a single commenting platform might be able to use Sphinn this way. But we’ve got more upgrading to do to Sphinn first, and the solution wouldn’t be for everyone anyway.
It definitely would be nice to be able to comment on the SEL articles without having to Sphinn it. Which I guess you can do once someone else submits it, but if you’re the first you have to sphinn it, right?
I stopped following SEL entirely and this was one of the reasons.. I like the conversation aspect and especially like reading what other people think about something.. I figure anything important enough will get sphunn and commented so there is not point in even going to SEL..
I can understand how it might be too tricky to moderate comments on 2 sites (although surely donkey does nothing but). That said, you were arguing last week that Sphinn & SEL were 2 entirely different products. Srsly, comments on SEO would be way cool...
I’ve often wondered if SEL posts would get more comments if Sphinns did not have to be made first. There’s been many times I’ve thought of leaving a brief comment regarding a post but didn’t want to go through the process of initiating the Sphinn. I may be selfish or lazy (or both) but Auto-Sphunn SEL posts would be sweet. We already know they are not spam so they wouldn’t require much moderation, and it may stimulate more comment activity.
Auto-Sphunn SEL posts would be sweet. We already know they are not spam so they wouldn’t require much moderation, and it may stimulate more comment activity.Now there’s a great idea! That would totally solve the problem, and I bet Michelle could whip that up in the programming fairly easily?
Auto-Sphunn SEL posts would be sweet. We already know they are not spam so they wouldn’t require much moderation, and it may stimulate more comment activity.Sorry but I think its a terrible idea, while I am aware SEL and Sphinn are owned by the same company and so are unique why should SEL be treated differently, if you saw yet another round up of daily links, which SEL does at least once a day on Sphinn from a different site would you sphinn it? and while SEL might not produce spam they don’t always have articles people want to vote on the volume of noise would increase but at what benefit.Of course if they do go through, then the obvious next step is to let "partners" be auto submitted lets say SEOMoz after all they never spam, maybe greywolf blog or to stop any call of bias SEG?Its a terrible slope, after all once you start down it you end up asking shouldn’t noted bloggers like Michael Grey be auto submitted what about people critical of sphinn, Andy Beard for example would he be allowed to be auto submitted?Is it really so hard to click submit? maybe rather then auto submitting, perhaps they can work on a method to make submits from SEL a 1 click process, so pre programmed title, url and category.
We decided against auto-sphinning SEL stories because not every SEL post is Sphinn-worthy. In fact, I worried that we might have too many SEL stories getting put into spin because people wanted to comment on them, rather than them being important enough. My worries haven’t really panned out in that regard.In general, I’d say that SEL stories are getting roughly the same amount of commenting activity if not more via Sphinn that when we had our own separate system. But I really will give it more thought about whether we should go back to letting SEL have its own comments. For one thing, that made it easier for me to keep up with things people were commenting about our stories.
I’m glad that it’s basically a logistics issue as I’d love it to change at some point in the future.PS - Rob; the Jim’ll Fix It thing was on purpose, for all the Brits who read Sphinn!;)
why not consider an SEL tab or sidebar addition?..fed the same way as the comments and the most sphunn posts? the daily submits would be as auto-sphinn, but having a tab or sidebar feed won’t flog the what’s new page as it happens or force it down anyones throat.
I like Kimberly’s suggestion of auto submission of those, with a separate section (with tab or sidebar) for them.There are a number of SEL posts that are shorter new pieces that are definitely worth discussing, but may not be posts that I would think about sphinning. As it is now, if they don’t go hot, they may not get discussed in a meaningful way. If Sphinn is going to serve a dual purpose (social bookmarking/voting and SEL discussion forum, it might be best to do it in a way that enables people interested in discussing SEL posts get to do so...
Actually, I like it the way it is. That said, it would be great for new folks just DISCOVERING our community to see a truncated list of the most recent comments for that story directly under the SEL post page to draw them in. Not everybody understands straight away the relationship between Sphinn and SEL. For our clients’ landing pages we often notice a measurable conversion bump when we "show evidence of human life" by mashing in headline and truncated description-content from active community areas other places on the site to the landing page.Blogs are totally immediate that way but Sphinn "comments" are sort of "slightly removed." There IS a happy in between. When someone clicks on a "comment" link (and yes new users understand "comment" more than "Sphinn") in SEL, take them to Sphinn and they will discover the method to the madness...and possibly stay or come back for more.
i’m partially in agreement with you marty. although, the same applies here in sphinn too..not everyone has an understanding of the correlation between the SEL tab (which already exists) and sphinn. what should incline them to click on it? i wonder how much traffic comes from that tab?many new visitors to sphinn, do so by suggestion on someones blog or otherwise being referred by avenues that are not SEL related. although, your suggestion would be a way to develop more activity TO sphinn, we could optimize two way visibility by way of a feed in the sidebar or by using the already existing tab in the same fashion as the usual submission fashion.
@SpostareDuro: I like the duality of that thinking.
"In fact, I worried that we might have too many SEL stories getting put into spin because people wanted to comment on them, rather than them being important enough."@dannysullivan: See, this is exactly how I feel. Don’t get me wrong, a good chunk of what comes out on Search Engine Land is fantastic, but not every single post.Also (whether you guys realize it or not), Sphinning has become a vote of confidence in the Internet Marketing industry. A sphunn article symbolizes important reading material. And having every SEL article essentially pre-Sphunn, sways attention from other, possibly more relevant, stories.Just a thought. I love both sites all the same. Keep up the good work!