News Source: http://www.gregboser.com
Published: Sep 14, 2007 - 12:06 pm
Story Found By: SearchBuzz 2078 Days ago
Category: SEM
48 Comments
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News Source: http://www.gregboser.com
Published: Sep 14, 2007 - 12:06 pm
Story Found By: SearchBuzz 2078 Days ago
Category: SEM
48 Comments
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Comments
I like Danny’s response in the comments on Greg’s site: " I really lean toward several buttons: Spam | Disagree | Dupe | Old News or maybe “Lame” "
Yeah - I am partial to the ’lame’ option!! :p
Maybe "Inaccurate | Dupe | Spam " would work and perhaps "Weak" or "Not cool" could be used in place of "lame". Lame is just a tad harsher and "weak" could refer to a weak argument, which is mostly the case with some submissions. :)
I’d hate to see a bury brigade emerge but yeah bad or inaccurate articles that have been sphunn up need to be shouted down
Yeah, I was reaching for the bury button while reading that BlogCatalog post, somethings needed. Danny’s button suggestions are good, especially the Old News.
So I’m a dumbass am I? Matt did reply to that thread so are my claims really false? I guess we should have a lame button then I could mark the edited photo of Matt Cutts as lame and several other insulting posts submitted to Sphinn as lame. I could even mark this thread as a lame. Thank you for the link love.
I gotta say I like the idea, but I’ve always had a problem (especially with tight knit and snarky communities (hmmm SEM maybe...)) with the concept of mass "bury it" actions. I think a button that signifies the sphinn may be useless or dumb is useful, but not something that hinders the sphinner’s rep, or that could be used multiple times... God that’s convoluted. What’d I say?
"then I could mark the edited photo of Matt Cutts as lame" Wait a minute Rose, *which* edited photo of Matt? You’re not dissing lolcutts, are ya..? :P
I’d love to see the "Dumbass" button, but would be happy with Lame as well. A "Dumbass" button would help to alleviate some ThreadWatch withdrawal symptoms.
Aye! A way to vote on inaccuracies would be righteous, if it could be worked in there.
I’m not dissing Matt at all. However someone else here is dissing Matt. See http://sphinn.com/story/5385 It was allowed to remain, yet my comment regarding Andy was removed and I’m now being referred to as a Dumbass?
Ah, kk, thought you might’ve meant this one: http://sphinn.com/story/2102 :D
What was I thinking. That certainly is more respectful. Maybe I should have photo Andy’s pic on to the head of a guppy? :)
I posted this there, but I think it bears repeating. What I would like to see is rather than a "bury" type button that takes away sphinns, A "lame" or whatever button that has it’s own count. And the ability to see who sphunn and who lamed a particular article. Especially with all the disagreement on certain topics, and the speculation that naturally comes with SEO topics. There may be times that one group disagrees with another on something, and this would make the process a lot more transparent than simply burying stories.
You guys crack me up. As I just mentioned in another comment, we are not all clones of each other. What is lame to you may be brilliant to someone else. There is a reason why geniuses are often not recognized in their own lifetimes. When what they share goes against the current paradigm most of their ideas get instantly dismissed. Has anyone else noticed that when someone new becomes active here, others seem compelled to take potshots at them? Why? Are you that afraid of them? Why? What does their sharing their truth have to do with you? Your insecurity is showing. @Rose (the other Rose) - anyone who speaks their truth must get used to dodging arrows. Those who are silent or who "preach to the choir" by agreeing with the majority are fairly safe from complaints. Look, for every single thought you voice or thing you do, there will be some who applaud and others who boo. That is just how it is. Since it is clearly IMPOSSIBLE to make everyone happy, you may as well please yourself. (That is in the lyrics of some ’70s song too.)
I’d love a dupe button.. Or maybe an "I politely disagree with your assumptions" button.. I can see a bury brigade happening very easily in a group as small as this with personalities as divided as they tend to be though..
Some new buttons would be nice, especially to those of us seeking to learn the lingo around here. I’ve figured out Sphinn & Sphunn, but while I’m waiting for the button to change am I Sphinning? Sometimes there is a time lapse before Sphinns are Sphunns, is that because the site is still in Spheta? When content obviously doesn’t belong here is it Spham or just Sphlame?
Question to all on this thread - [mod]which is verging on the edge of personal character assassinations again so please let’s stop that or we’ll have to edit out the comments again [/mod] - If we were to put up non-snarky labeled buttons, would that discourage discussion? Isn’t the point here to discuss different issues, tactics, etc.? It would be pretty boring if it were all just preaching to the choir stuff - disagreement and discussion are good, especially to newcomers in this space, of which there are many here. If someone posts bad info, someone else should step up to correct them - and then all can discuss. And this is in general what has been happening. Buttons would be a more expedient way for people to give an opinion on a post - but I’m not sure they would help add to the community building and information exchange here. I think the opposite would likely be true.
Btw, Danny, if you do add some sort of down vote button I think you could avoid much of the problems that Digg has with it by *not* making it anonymous. @Rose (non-flying) - it wasn’t disrespectful, it was funny (albeit a tad bit geeky). Even Matt said he liked it. I’ll tell you what though, if there were some sort of bury style button when that post got Sphunn I already know ahead of time that it would have been a candidate for burial. Obviously not everyone has a fully developed sense of humor. Some people even did call it lame. Doesn’t mean it is something worth getting all upset over though.
@Michelle - if the button was simply a negative vote, and not an off balance ability to kill something, then I don’t see it as being that much of an issue. Right? I mean, otherwise, why have votes at all?
If we get a "dislike" button, I’d think it should be required to provide a reason in a text field.
@mvandemar - agreed on the down vote; more concerned with the other buttons recommended and their ability to easily discourage actual discussion. @sebastian - agreed. if we had the buttons but users were still required to comment along with the click, that would work.
mvandemar In my opinion calling Andy a Guppy was funny. That is the point I’m trying to make. Would it of been funnier if I edited his pic? :) Rose- Well I have gotten use to dodging. ;-)
@Michelle - what if it just said "Oh, puh-lease!"?
I think silence is stronger, and more polite, than any button passing a negative judgment on something could be. I don’t like the vindictiveness with which bury-type features are used. What’s the point? To tell someone you think their efforts are dumb or worthless? Do you really want to spend your time telling people that? Why not just refrain from commenting rather than putting out negative vibes if you find no merit in what someone submits? Why go out of your way to use a feature designed to make someone feel badly?
I enjoy pushing buttons.
Miriam, politely debunking BS would be a valid reason.
@mvandemar - now *that* is inspired! :-) But, it still adds nothing to a discussion. @miriam - I think a down vote button is as relevant as an up vote. It’s the other buttons that concern me - and go directly to your point about passing judgment. But I think passing judgment is ok, just make your case - politely and respectfully - if you disagree with something someone posts.
Too many buttons will just lead to every topic having more stats associated with it than useful information contained within it. The topic that prompted this one would have simply had a bunch of "for" and "against" votes, hardly any comments, and no-one would have learnt anything from it.
g1smd good point.
Hi Michelle & Sebastian, It was good of you to reply. I’m all for discussion, and definitely agree that if you see something you think is mistaken or false, it’s really helpful to others if you speak up. But I’d like to see the comments feature used for that, rather than the coldness of ’nay’ with no explanation. To me, that’s the difference between educational debate and flinging mud. The former results in a more informed community...the latter only results in bad feelings and a negative atmosphere. I’m concerned about the recent spate of name calling and general nastiness that’s been present on Sphinn. If people want to engage in that kind of silly, puerile interaction...there’s always Digg. Sphinn is so much better than this. I want it to stay really positive and exciting. Debate is exciting. Bickering is embarrassing. Just my two cents. Miriam
Reddit has a pretty good system (although anonymous) which allows you to downvote an article you dislike. They do this not only to rank articles and decide which to push to the frontpage, but to provided customized news via the ’recommended’ tab. I think zacharyfox suggested using a Reddit style voting system which subtracts votes instead, which is a good idea for those who disagree with it but don’t want to get personal or voice/label their opinion. In any case, ’Dupe | Spam’ are not value judgments, although they can abused by haters. Making down-voting transparent will combat that. Sphinn is a still a tight niche community and we are all largely familiar with most of the active users around. @g1smd If someone feels strongly enough on a topic and if the topic is controversial, you will get comments inevitably. Both Netscape and Digg have down voting and I don’t see the comments going down on frontpage articles. IMO, voting buttons don’t hamper discussion.
@DoshDosh "I think zacharyfox suggested using a Reddit style voting system which subtracts votes instead, which is a good idea for those who disagree with it but don’t want to get personal or voice/label their opinion." Exactly the opposite. I suggest having "lame" (or whatever) as separate than sphunn, rather than an upvote / downvote system. And complete transparency. If we can see who likes things, we (as a community, not just the moderators and editors) should be able to see who dislikes them. It could even create a new category "Controversial Topics" in addition to hot and new.
"Dumbass" button is a dumbass idea, seriously. Rose crossed the line by launching personal attacks against Andy Beard. But calling Rose a dumbass using a dumbass button - even if she is a dumbass - is just as lame as the initial flame...unless you wanna turn Sphinn into a geeky version of Jerry Springer.
Are the comments section not enough if you disagree with a particular post?
@zacharyfox Got it. Thanks for clarifying and apologies for misreading your comment. Well, I’m personally in favor of the Reddit style approach but with transparent down voting and up voting. It keeps it simple.
With an option to "Disagree"...
Half- Hey now! I’m not a dumbass.
I’m going to cross post this, and I’m also going to be doing a little public moderation as part of it. I apologize for that, but it’s the best I can think of in handling this. To recap, Rose submitted this topic about BlogCatalog not passing PageRank: http://www.invision-graphics.com/ftopicp-135.html#135 For the record, I’ve never been to BlogCatalog before. It is apparently a directory of blogs on the web. Looks like you can submit. Looks free. And I gather there’s an issue of whether the links pass value because of onclick being used. That went hot. Well good. Sounds like an interesting issue for BlogCatalog in particular and on the topic in general. We had some discussion come out of that thread, and it looked pretty mellow. There were folks who disagreed with the facts of the article, but I didn’t see them coming after Rose in particular. And Rose came in and pushed back to argue for prove that the article was wrong. Good for you, Rose. But Rose, I’m sorry, you also started getting personal in that thread. LadyNada asks how things would look with I gather another blog directory, and you chide her with this: http://sphinn.com/story/5310#c7763 "Lady well this post is not about blogskinny. The post is about the fact that BlogCatalog does not pass PageRank. What of that is hard to comprehend?" At this point, the thread was touching on passing along link love in general. She wasn’t out of line to winder this, but asking what part is hard to comprehend sounds kind of insulting, like you thought she was dense. TimDineen asks later why you were so bitter about BlogCatalog. Well, borderline. I mean, he might have felt you were personally upset with it -- especially as he points out later that you’re looking at one directory in particular and that you had, indeed, jumped on LadaNada. OK, you later apologized to LadaNada (thank you), and I’m not sure if you were saying "bye bye" to Tim about whether you thought he should leave or you were. But I appreciate you didn’t start getting into it more with him. At this point, the thread had ended -- and I made edits in another topic, over here: http://sphinn.com/story/5432 That article that Andy submitted in response to your initial post. After responding to the points Andy had raised, you came along and said this: “Ps: Andy I dislike you greatly. Everyone else might think that you are all that and a bag of cjips, but this lady here thinks you are nothing more than a BC Guppy.” I’m sorry -- that was just uncalled for. At that point, it stepped way over what I thought was acceptable under the main rule I’ve asked people to follow here: http://sphinn.com/discussion.php “Be respectful and polite.” Arguments can get heated. Personal stuff can slip through. I can’t, nor can any of the mods or admins, go through an ensure that threads are completely free of personal attack. But this one, a deliberate PS that added no value? If you don’t like Andy, you tell him privately. The rest of us don’t need to hear it. I killed that. I killed a few things in response to you, as well. I cleaned it up, doing something that wasted time, but it goes with the territory. And I have to say, the vast vast majority of the time, it’s not something any of us have to do. Discussions have stayed civil. Now after that, you started peppering me with examples. Why’s this thread allowed: http://sphinn.com/story/5385 It’s about a picture of Matt dressed up in a cop suit that was kind of, well, revealing. Well, as I told you: "No, I’m not pulling that. There’s a difference between an article that someone has posted off our site and you just telling someone you don’t like them in the middle of a debate. In addition, knowing Matt fairly well, I highly doubt he’d be upset by that image." Hey Matt, if you’re upset, you let me know. Since then, you peppered me with more examples of stuff. Why, for example, was this post allowed: http://sphinn.com/story/5605 Where you felt you were being called a dumbass? To be specific, the article Greg wrote was about wanting a dumbass button, not that you in particular are a dumbass. Still, allow? If he came over in and in conversation with you said you were a dumbass, no. If he weren’t to have just called you -- and you alone -- a dumbass, yes. But this is about in generally wanting a way as Sphinn to indicate you dislike a story. At Digg, they call that buries, as I’m sure you know. We don’t have buries here. I disabled them when we started because I wanted to have a conversation with the community about them, in particular because so many SEOs on Digg feel they have stories that get buried for no good reason, and there’s no record of the buries. So maybe if we do buries, they should be open for all to view. But then again, there’s a good reason why you might want to private disagree with something. I think when I formally have that thread open, a lot of SEOs that feel Kevin Rose should open up buries might change their minds, when it means buries they do here might be open. I suspect the solution is like I told Greg -- we might have several buttons. If it’s spam, obvious spam, we want that gone. If someone disagrees with a post, they might want to vote it down. I don’t want to go with Lame to avoid the semi-personal nature there. So yes, I’m leaving this thread alone. In addition, there’s been more personal stuff all around. I’m not going back and cleaning it up. Instead, I’m pushing reset. I’m asking the community to step back, take a breath, and then come back and discuss the facts of topics without getting personal. Please.
I think I need to point out that several people assumed he was calling me a dumbass - me included. http://www.themadhat.com/news/friday-tequila-time-91407/ Let me quote here "Kudos to Boser for calling her a Dumbass." Please read Halfdeck’s comment. He too assumed I was being called a Dumbass!
Final word from me, before bedtime. He did call you that. http://www.gregboser.com/why-sphinn-needs-a-dumbass-button/ I really don’t know why all this stuff had to get so personal. Shakes head in disbelief. Mutter. Mutter.
"Are the comments section not enough if you disagree with a particular post?" Amen to that! I mean, why don’t we hand out mod points and ensure every post degrades into either a Mac v PC flame war or Why George Bush is Evil thread. I read the posts here and not other Digg like places for a reason. It’s simple and stays on topic.
I am in favour of topics reaching the front page based upon the comments and I think any voting mechanism that prevents that happening would be a bad idea. Maybe there should be 2 levels of voting. A Sphinn for suggesting it is a story worth reading A vote on the content of the story - whether you agree or disagree with it. If you Sphinn something it would default to a positive story vote, which you could change to a negative story vote, and back again as many times as you like a bit like the tides. The voting situation would have to somehow appear in RSS feeds, preferably at the top of the story, because some people would treat a story in the feed as gospel without referencing the comments at all. People will increasingly monitor RSS feeds of the top stories and not necessarily the conversations, which may also not happen on the stories themselves if they have some form of closed discussion area. Positive / Negative story votes would have no effect on whether something was promoted. In addition you could also display both the accumulated points for positive comments, and the accumulated points for negative comments. That would give an indication of the level of controversy within the discussions.
Cross-linking all the related threads: http://sphinn.com/story/5310 http://sphinn.com/story/5432 http://sphinn.com/story/5605 http://sphinn.com/story/5625 http://sphinn.com/story/5648
Thanks g1smd for the cross-links. Every conflict is the result of judging others, personal insecurities, and lack of tolerance. When someone feels personally attacked they often respond emotionally. Although it is our personal responsibility to find enough self-esteem to stop reacting, that can be a long process. Few are already at the point where they have no buttons and there is not shortage of people who love to push other people’s buttons. People do not HEAR precisely what you meant; they HEAR what comes through their filters and what they THINK you were saying. Many times it is totally different than what you meant. Sometimes YOU don’t realize what you meant and the other person knows you really DO consider them a ____________ {dumbass, idiot, etc.) Behind all humor is some truth. Behind every conflict there is a breakdown in communication. When someone does something "wrong" instead of attacking them why not consider gently helping them understand? The SEM group here doesn’t realize how difficult it is for those outside your circle to feel heard. Instead of running them off, how about welcoming them and educating them on what you know? No one here (or anywhere else) is perfect. No one here knows everything and no two people have the same knowledge and skills. Everyone else is a reflection of you. What you truly dislike about someone else is what you most deny about yourself. If you’re criticizing someone else you’re criticizing yourself.
Isn’t this the reason why we’re here as opposed to Digg or another site? So people don’t call each other dumb asses, lame, and so on?
In terms of the button and the vote down process. I agree with most others; it’s definitely needed, i just question the processs. I think the vote down button should be limited in its use. By restricting a users ability to vote down a story, you’ll make the user think twice about how they are casting their vote. Burying stuff should IMO be a one time a week option. Admins and mods can always tweak the truly awful stuff anyway. maybe that can be linked into the number of comments or something. Just to add to the general thread, I like the way that flyingrose said what she said, especially the "gently helping them understand?" part. Sometimes people simply lack in certain dept’s and that really isn’t the fault of anyone, that’s just how it is. That said, I wouldn’t go into a nuclear energy conference and start correcting well knowns with inaccuracies about how atoms are split. If I did, then I wouldn’t be too surprised if I got strange looks in the lobby after. This internet thing can have the effect of isolating ourselves in a level of understanding which is quite often insufficient to know that which we think we are aware of. Without the modifying influence of others in the same room, it’s easy to go off on one and draw all manner of differing assumptions.Some of this stuff can after all, be pretty headache inducing especially on matters where the players involved have differeing aims and agendas. Suffice to say that at some point we shouldn’t be too surprised that someone somewhere might just lose a little patience and grace and say what others might be thinking too. Most of the people here are here to engage in one way or the other. Some wish to promote, some wish to learn some wish to stir the pot and antagonise. I suspect that the latter aren’t particularly welcome and after due course are probably shown the door. Its easy to forget that the rules of good sense and manners apply here like in any other social setting. If a person walks into a room shouting the odds, espousing factual inaccuracies, then at some point it would follow that someone somewhere would inevitably question their behaviour. It’s just how it works after all, why should this social setting be any different?
I don’t like the idea of a lame button and certainly not a dumbass button, though it is a good headline:) I think comments and discussion do a better job of this as evidenced by this and the original post. (sans personal stuff) Danny said "most discussions are civil" and one of the reasons for that in my opinion is the absence of such a button. Before I implement any advice I read using RSS, I just shimmy on over to the site and look for comments, so I don’t think that is a big issue.