Sphinn - The SphinnBot - Auto Voting at Sphinn

8
Sphinn It!

Posted By: beanstalk 85 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.seoconsultants.com)
Category: Sphinn Zone

Edward Lewis of the SEO Consultants Directory discusses the abuse of auto-voting at Sphinn and it's negative impact on the system as a whole.

18 Comments

Who Desphunn This (3)

Comments

from g1smd 85 days ago #

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You know, the more I get into this Social Media stuff, the more I think that vast swathes of it is no better than the FFA link farm frenzy of the 1990s.

from tamar 85 days ago #

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Honestly, even if there *was* bot activity, who is REALLY benefitting in the end? Would it be the person that Edward has decided to put behind the crosshairs, or would it be the community here at Sphinn? At least Bill wasn't on a Desphinning rampage!

from g1smd 85 days ago #

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He marked more than 200 items of complete junk in just 4 or 5 days. I'd say that was significant.

from tamar 85 days ago #

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At the end of the day, it's still a judgment call. Your junk may not be my junk. The community will wholly decide whether the content gets frontpaged, but still, who is benefitting? I still like putting it that way.

from toddmintz 85 days ago #

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From my perspective, this person is "totally disrespecting" the Sphinn Community, the Sphinners themselves and the creators of the Pligg platform.

A perfect description of Edward's behavior at Sphinn recently.

from Jill 85 days ago #

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It's a shame that p1r's good points get lost in the nasty way he delivers them. It's difficult to take him seriously now that he insulted basically everyone at Sphinn during his seven (7) days here. (WTF was that number crap about anyway?)

from Halfdeck 85 days ago #

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It's obvious this one will never see the light of day; it's no happy birthday Sphinn post.

"even if there *was* bot activity, who is REALLY benefitting in the end?"

So you're basically saying you don't care if people are using automated tools to vote up submissions. That's good to know.

"At least Bill wasn't on a Desphinning rampage!"

And I guess desphinning a ton of posts = bad. That's also good to know.

Yeah the guy used 200 words to say what could be said in two words, desphunn alot of stuff, and nagged about an MSN Logo instead of talking about the blog post. He was confrontational, spammed the Latest Comments with "pageoneresults says...", and would call something spam without explaining exactly why he thought it was spam.

Obviously if a member persistently annoys the hell out of the Sphinn community it hurts Sphinn's business model. But I don't think all that deserves a ban, when another user who is constantly bombarding Sphinn with spam is given a slap on the wrist. It's easy to ignore moronic comments; I do it all the time. So I don't see why people who didn't like what pr1 was posting couldn't just ignore his comments and move on.

from g1smd 85 days ago #

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*** insulted everyone ***

Didn't insult me, I agree with most of what was said.

Sphinn is being gamed in several different ways.

Sphinn has a spam problem; there's a tide of it every night, and all weekend.

Sphinn has some serious loopholes which *ARE* being exploited.

Sphinn is inundated with low quality crap which is mostly repetition of low quality crap already submitted before.

The first nine topics in Upcoming are Currently:

- London Escorts - London Escort Agency, Escort Services London [SPAM]
- Flash Movies .. Potato (Misc) [JUNK]
- Does Your Website Sell? [Routine]
- Yahoo! dfgdfgdfg [Someone testing a BOT]
- 5 Reasons Why Your Company Doesn’t Need More Domain Names [Yeah, whatever]
- what if fox took over digg.com [Yeah, whatever]
- Importace of Backlinks [JUNK]
- Elgg The Open Source Social Networking System Launch New News Blog [Routine]
- Wordpress 2.6 Warning - DO NOT upgrade. [Important Story to Read]

*** At the end of the day, it's still a judgment call. Your junk may not be my junk. ***
You're kidding me right?

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There's a flood of that crap being submitted, some of it by bots.

from tamar 84 days ago #

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"So you're basically saying you don't care if people are using automated tools to vote up submissions. That's good to know."

Did I say that? I said that Bill isn't benefitting from such activities (if true) anyway.

"And I guess desphinning a ton of posts = bad."

No, I didn't say that either. I don't agree with the types of content he desphinned. His excuses for Desphinning were lousy too in my humble opinion.

"But I don't think all that deserves a ban"

Then take it up with the admin team. I didn't do it. But I'm glad he's gone and I agree with Skitzzo's Desphinn reason on this particular post.

As I said in previous comments, I hate how new bloggers and Sphinn newcomers who actually write good content are being desphunn for stupid reasons (MSN logo, FF2 issues, "content [on an entire blog] is king" etc.) That's not cool by me.

"You're kidding me right?"

That's spam. Not junk. The stuff Bill is sphinning isn't spam.

from SpostareDuro 84 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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What it boils down to is pr1 was stifled because Sphinns reputation was at stake.

from billslawski 84 days ago #

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Good article.

from Michelle 84 days ago #

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@SpostareDuro - p1r was not "stifled" becuase "Sphinn's reputation was at stake." His account was terminated because of his continued hostile behavior to members of the Sphinn community. He was asked, prior to having his account closed, to abide by the common sense guidelines we ask all members to abide by. He decided not to.

And if we really believed "Sphinn's reputation was at stake," we'd probably be more interested in keeping him happy, than unhappy, right?

The information he presented was not revelatory. We are quite aware of the limitations of the Pligg software, and have significantly altered it's core for our own purposes as a result. There's no foolproof system out there. Ask Google. Ask Microsoft. Ask the DOD. Industrious people will always find a way in and around, and do what they can to exploit things.

Does spam hit the What's New page? Yes it does. Do we do a pretty good job of getting it off the page - yes we do. And contrary to what he would have you believe in the article - we're not getting inundated with bots. They are few and far between. And are dealt with upon detection.

The Sphinn platform is evolving and will continue to evolve (away from Pligg), but I don't hold out the fantasy that no matter how tightly we secure the borders, things won't slip by.

from Halfdeck 84 days ago #

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"No, I didn't say that either."

Yeah, you did. Sure he desphunn several decent posts. What do you expect? The guy was new not only to Sphinn but also to social networks in general and didn't know what he was doing. But he does know a ton about SEO. That's why I wanted the guy to stay.

"I agree with Skitzzo's Desphinn reason on this particular post. "

How the hell do you agree with someone calling anyone psychologically challenged I'll never understand. If I said you made a bad judgement call because you're a girl, you wouldn't find that offensive?

"The stuff Bill is sphinning isn't spam."

Neither are the stuff network of "friends" sphinn up. As long as I manipulate votes with SphinnBots to help friends nail more hot stories using legit submits you're telling me that's ok.

"The information he presented was not revelatory."

Again, pr1 was new. His input would have been taken differently if he posted his ideas when the topic was still hot, but he missed the boat and instead people felt he was kicking a dead horse. That's just bad timing.

"His account was terminated because of his continued hostile behavior to members of the Sphinn community."

He isn't the only one on Sphinn exhibiting hostile behavior. In fact, compared to some Sphinners I wouldn't even call his behavior hostile. Again, what is so difficult about just ignoring his comments and desphinns?

Sphinn is under no obligation to enforce freedom of speech but banning pr1 to shut him up makes you and other mods look as if you're using his confrontational behavior as an excuse to sweep the inconvenient truth under the rug to protect Sphinn's brand and the rep of a high-profile Sphinner.

from SpostareDuro 83 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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Good morning Michelle,

Hopefully, my responding to you will not be ample reason to also be considered as one who isn't abiding by Sphinn's "Common sense" guidelines (that I wasn't aware existed. Maybe I didn't thoroughly read the registration agreement?)

It's not reasonable to suggest that Sphinn focusses upon the 'happiness' of those who make waves.

I am also speaking from experience. There's been times when commentary has been 'cut off' during discussions, and Sphinn also has a 'remove post' fetish. (funny, it seems that before posts are removed, it's usually after I've had the privilege of seeing evilgreenmonkey's face in my blog widget. Hmmm)

Also, when a topic gets heated, and discussion is spurred, the mods have been known to Desphinn posts. (typically when it is a post that makes negative reference to Sphinn)

Recently, a post that was submitted (mine, submitted by someone else) had approx 50 votes, was sitting on the hot page, then mysteriously disappeared. No warning, and no consideration to the voters who took the time to read the post and vote it up. None of the voters were spambots or otherwise 'ify' voters. They were regular, active participants, who are basically (otherwise) respected here. (at least, they are told as much) Plus, I used the contact page to ask why the post had been removed, yet received no response.

pr1 could have been avoided or ignored or the comment 'down vote' option could have been utilized for those who wanted to express their disagreements with his comments.

"And if we really believed "Sphinn's reputation was at stake," we'd probably be more interested in keeping him happy, than unhappy, right?"

Not from my perspective.

We all know that Sphinn has thousands of visitors who would have potentially viewed his interaction. Compared to the few he may reach without Sphinns viewers, makes it clear that Sphinn's 'remove' policy, as opposed to 'keeping him happy' policy, serves as a plus for Sphinn. Not a minus.

I am not flaming. I am stating my observations and have no hatred for any of you. I only hate injustice. Instead of my wasting time on anger as I have been known to do, I choose to discuss things. If it ends up being a flame discussion, I am learning to back off and blog about it as opposed to continuing drama.

Have a terrific Sunday.

~ And I mean that. :-) ~

from DLPerry 83 days ago #

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Just my .02. It's fine if you don't agree, but please keep a civil tongue.

I don't know a thing about pr1, who s/he is, what s/he does, etc. But I DID (and still DO) see hype and hostility slung around on Sphinn. I was admittedly a bit taken aback by pr1's posts, bragging that s/he was a 'sought after' Sphinner and such, but soon enough simply got bored and disgusted with the lot.

Sphinn is not a publicly owned commodity, and the owners/operators have every right to terminate whomever they wish, for whatever reason. In this instance it appears s/he was terminated for continued refusal to obey the rules of the site - and rightly so.

I wonder if I'm the only one who (sadly) reads Sphinn as a way to see what new 'lows' online marketing has sunk to, and so very rarely as a community to read, ask, discuss, and learn. Been there, done that, and the experience was less than pleasant and less than helpful. My mistake.

One thing Sphinn HAS done for me is confirm that I am not now and never will be 'in marketing' as it appears to be interpretted here - where lies, cheats, gaming the system, etc. are accepted norms. If that makes me an idealist, so be it - better that than being perceived as dishonest.

Good on ya Sphinn - you're battling uphill me thinks, but keep at it. And if ya need to terminate me for this - no worries. :)

from Michelle 83 days ago #

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Hello @Spostareduro - I think you are correct - there are many people that never see or otherwise bother to read the guidelines we have set for the community. I've included links to them below, and will ask Rob, our editor, to do a post on the Sphinn blog to reiterate, reinforce, or simply point people to them once again. (All are linked from the "Help" link on every page)

Please note that while his user account was terminated for his behavior, this story still stands on Sphinn. So the insinuation that we are trying to keep something quiet is unfounded. He is free to publish at will, and users are free to Sphinn his stories at will. You may disagree and feel he is being treated unfairly, but if it were your stories that he was reporting as spam and desphinning in the manner that he was, you might feel differently.

As to the story you mention that was pulled, I am not the mod that pulled it so I cannot speak for the person that did. It is the weekend however, so perhaps you'll get a reply when everyone's back on Monday.

Thanks for the well wishes, hope you're having a good Sunday, and have a good week. I start my vacation tomorrow so will be AWOL for the week! :-)

from Burgo 83 days ago #

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"The stuff Bill is sphinning isn't spam."

To be fair here Tamar, I actually have personally reported stories as blatant spam (that were subsequently deleted) that had been sphunn by Bill's account.
On one occassion I actually think I left a comment along the lines of "Why would you sphinn this Bill?", but unfortunately the story was pulled before he had a chance to reply. Not trying to incite anything here, but just giving my own experience.

from tamar 83 days ago #

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Burgo, fair enough. I may just be giving him the benefit of the doubt, which I prefer to do rather than put someone in the cross-hairs publicly. In any event, should there be a problem like this in the future, there's a great link on the bottom of the page that says "Contact Us" where concerns can be discussed privately and decided upon privately.

Who Desphunn This Topic what is desphinn?

Avatar tamar 07/18/2008 04:40pm

Desphunn for "who cares!" Edward, move on and find something more constructive to do with your free time.

Avatar toddmintz 07/18/2008 05:01pm

From my perspective, this person is "totally disrespecting" the Sphinn Community, the Sphinners themselves and the creators of the Pligg platform. Yep :.)

Avatar Skitzzo 07/18/2008 05:10pm