The plan is here, it’s voting time

by Nic Haralambous on 6/08/2007

I mentioned that I would be coming up with some sort of a plan. I have struggled and battled with internal strife and maintained my dignity – to some extent. Here is the plan for now:

Gather a group of like minded bloggers (by that I mean bloggers who are tired of spammers on muti and self-promoting-spammers – SPS – on muti). Get these bloggers to vote down Spam and SPS on muti.

Now you might ask who gets to decide what is spam and what is SPS? That’s a good question. But let’s rather ask: What makes spammers think that they can use muti as a service to spam me?

I have spoken to Robert and a few others bloggers who are keen.

The simple process is this: Spot a post on muti that is excessive self-promotion or spam and vote it down. Then comment on the muti post with “SPAM” for spam posts and “SELF PROMOTION” for excessive self promotion.

I think that it is ok to promote your own sites or posts to an extent. It is when this self promotion becomes excessive and meaningless link-baiting, that it becomes spam. Simple.

So, if you are interested in joining us on our voting down syndicate, please email me and let me know!

Here goes…

nharalambous@gmail.com

There are 17 comments in this article:

  1. 7/08/2007Robert says:

    What? Nobody got a point of view?

  2. 7/08/2007Nic says:

    Can you believe it?? No one wants to actually dedicate their time to fixing the issue. so strange.

  3. 7/08/2007Wezzo says:

    Nic I saw you submitted an SA Rocks article a few days ago. This is me typing this with a confused face.

  4. 7/08/2007Nic says:

    Wez, I didnt write that post… and also, that doesn’t count as spam. Of the hundred or so submissions I have on muti, I have submited I think two or three SA Rocks post ever.

  5. 8/08/2007Mike says:

    With respect, I think this is a really lame and really scary idea. Self-appointed moderators? I thought that we all self-moderate by not clicking on a link if it doesn’t interest you.

    I would be interested to know what Neville’s thoughts are on this. I for one would NEVER visit Muti again if the links were being filtered by this private cabal!

  6. 8/08/2007The Durban Scout says:

    I don’t like it. Muti’s problems with Spam are because it hasn’t reached critical mass like Reddit and Digg. When enough people are using it, the spam naturally gravitates to the bottom.

    So to solve the spam problem, we need more people on Muti!

  7. 8/08/2007Eishman says:

    I will have agree to disagree. I don’t see any problem with self submissions. As “The Durban Scout’ states, once more users pop in to Muti and, more importantly, participate the submissions will no longer skew the lists.
    Perhaps what could be done is users can declare their sites on registration, and should they submit from that site, no vote is counted at submission?

  8. 8/08/2007Neville Newey says:

    I think I have to chime in here: Firstly, thanks Nic and others for bringing up these issues and for the ideas.
    I have said it before and here it is again: The solution to spam is simply having more people voting. (Durban Scout you are right!)

    That doesn’t mean that people like Nic shouldn’t make an additional attempt at rallying people to vote, in fact that is commendable. After all, Mike, if you disagree with the votes, its easy enough to rally people around you to vote differently. I think thats called ‘democracy’ :)

    Mike I also don’t get your point about being ‘filtered by a private Cabal’. Muti is already a filter controlled by its users. That is the point of it! Its not an aggregator, its a filter and Mike you should be voting too! (Nic is not suggesting ‘moderation’ as in the ability to actually remove items, I dont think?)

    Note also that the default page is the hot page (what you see if you go to the root muti.co.za url) There will always be spam in the new page (check out digg and reddit as well) but the new page is where you find new stories and vote them up and vote the spam down so that it never even appears on the hot page.

    Mike just one other point. You said: “I thought that we all self-moderate by not clicking on a link if it doesn’t interest you.” This is not correct, you self-moderate by voting not clicking. Clicking does however affect the “score” but the score is a permanent feature and has nothing to do with the “hotness”.

    Regards

  9. 8/08/2007Mike says:

    I still am concerned at a group of people who will themselves identify anything they wish to vote down over and over and over again – just because they believe it is spam. What if I got 10 friends together to vote everything submitted by Nic down, every time he added something. And let’s say I didn’t like IOL articles, could 10 friends and I all vote it down (and off Muti’s hot page completely) just because I prefer News24?! If this is going to be endorsed, there will be no use in viewing anything on Muti, because all that will be left will be sites that have been ‘approved’ by the elite voting squads, all in their own camps, voting things down-down-down, then up-up-up.

  10. 8/08/2007Nic says:

    Mike: This is not a case of self moderation. Neville is 100% spot on. This is just a way for me to feel that people are voting, and competent people are voting. Simple.

    Durban scout: you are mistaken if you think that Digg and Reddit have all the spam voted down. There is LOADS of rubbish on those two sites. They are not simply better by default because they are bigger sites from overseas.

    Eish: Self promotion is one thing. Submitting EVERY SINGLE POST that one writes is spam, not self promotion. Muti is meant to have relevant, interesting blog posts on it. not spam. This can be avoided by people voting spam down, but there are not enough people doing that, hence my call for bloggers to vote spam and excessive self promotion down.

    Neville: Thanks for the feedback, votes are our goal in the end. I could have called bloggers to rally around eachothers posts and vote them up. If I got 15 bloggers to do that we would dominate the charts with our up votes! So we are just looking for some participation really.

  11. 8/08/2007The Durban Scout says:

    But how do you define rubbish? Anything that hits the Digg front page has about 200+ diggs normally. It may be “rubbish” to you, but the nature of the site is that the majority decides what is rubbish and what isn’t. Is that not the premise of Muti?

    I didn’t say they were better by default because they are overseas. What I said was they have reached the _critical mass_ that is required to run effectively. When Muti has 100+ active voters, then good articles will reach the “hot” list, and spam will disappear into nothingness.

  12. 8/08/2007Nic says:

    Well, rubbish is obvious, and don’t try to play dumb to defend your point. You don’t like it when a blogger submits 4 of their own posts every day, or once a week. that is rubbish and that is spam.

    Advertising is spam on muti, or don’t you think so? and if the public is to decide what goes up and down then why not mostly let the public decide if your content on your own blog is worth being placed on muti? And once in a while you vote your own post when you think it has some REAL value, not just value cause you wrote it.

    (note: When I use the word “you” I don’t mean you personally)

  13. 8/08/2007robert says:

    Now this is good conversation going on here. I like it.

    Moderation is out. Monitoring spam might be in.

    There is no cabal. There is no Muti police.

    Hopefully we are all sensible people trying to get our writing abilities improved and recognised for what it is – good writing, good subject matter and able to impart some value to the reader.

    If you are not able to comprehend the unfairness of spamming your works on Muti then ….well….?!

    [Note]: When I use the word “you” I mean you if you are a spammer at Muti. If not then this does not apply.

  14. 8/08/2007Guy McLaren says:

    I have responded to this stupidity here

    http://www.guymclaren.co.za/viewblog.asp?id=15

  15. 9/08/2007Capetonian says:

    If you like a posting vote it up, if you don’t like a posting vote it down, if you’re neutral then don’t vote. It’s that simple.

  16. 9/08/2007The Durban Scout says:

    Nic, I would appreciate you keeping to the point and not resorting to personal insults. I am not “trying to play dumb to defend my point”.

    What you are suggesting in your original post is that you want to get a whole bunch of people together to vote down spam. Which is absolutely fine, if you can convince a group of people that self-promotion is wrong, and get them to all vote together on Muti, then go for it.

    However, if I can get another, bigger group of people who think that self-promotion is fine, and we all vote UP our “self-promotion” posts, then I have just as much right to do that as you do.

    Your idea is in fact the way Muti is intended to be used. Of COURSE people should be voting against things they don’t like. There’s no rule saying people can’t form particular groups and do it.

    I can get 100 of my Buddhist friends to go on Muti and vote down anything that looks remotely Christian if I want.

    It’s a democratic system.

  17. 9/08/2007Nic says:

    Durban Scout: Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be an insult, it’s a turn of phrase. And… Well put. I think your response above is brilliant and to the point.

    If my posting and my “controversial” approach or “stupidity” as others have put it, can get rally more people on to muti to vote my posts down or anything else that they dislike then even better!! :)

    Thanks for your comments.

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