Mixx Apology: A small inside look to Super Mixxers

Two days ago I wrote a blog post titled “Do You Hear Me Mixx?!”. There were some valid points I made and a whole lot of information that I had wrong. Do to my post I made Mixx look like an unwelcoming place, made it look like that the people behind Mixx don’t care, and slammed everyone behind Mixx which was really unfair to them.  Though yes that entry brought some attention to the issue at hand, it also really brought negative attention to Mixx it’s self and Google Alerts manage to pick that entry up and send it out. Even though CyberPhoenix had his Super Mixxer status revoked, I went about this entirely in the wrong way.

With that said I want to give my sincerest apology to the Mixx Team. It was wrong of me to post such an entry with out having my facts straight and I really should have come to you guys first. Myself and many others truly do appreciate all the hard work you guys put into the site and all of the new features you guys implement. I’m sorry if I made you guys feel like that myself or others didn’t in any way. So I’d like to take this opportunity after having a discussion with Kerry about some of the things that were false and misinformed about and make things right. But I also would like to take this opportunity to apologize to a user on Mixx that was mentioned in that post.

CyberPhoenix I know you and I have our difference’s a lot of them in fact. While I don’t think I did anything wrong just calling you out in the post, I do know for a fact I did not handle it properly. I shouldn’t have gone and just blatantly down vote every submission you made to try to make a point and that I should have only down voted the ones that didn’t have an appropriate title or description. Instead I should have just reported your comments, contacted the Mixx Team to discuss the issue, and left it at that. I hope you can forgive me for my actions of yesterday, and again mean while we don’t see eye to eye on the Microsoft issue, I do know that we both think and agree that Linux is a great Operating System.

So let’s clear some things up, I will be taking excerpts out of my previous post to clear the big issues at hand. Then following that I want to talk about the inside look behind Super Mixxers.

For the past 7 -8 months I and many others have been reporting this one specific member. We’ve reported him for revenge voting, hateful comments, spam submissions and spam comments.

This statement I made turn out to be absolutely false. Yes Brian and I did some reporting in the past. But the actual reporting of CyberPhoenix by a ton of other users apparently didn’t occur until my last blog post. He also was not reported non-stop like I had previously believed.

If digg banned him, you guys should be doing so as well as he is not contributing in any way and I’m sure he was banned for the same reasons for what he’s doing over here.

This statement should have never been made. If Mixx was to ban him because digg did, then many of the users like Greg who came over from digg for example would have been banned by Mixx.

After having him banned for about 2 days all of a sudden he was let back on to the site.

This information here really needs to be cleaned up once and for all. Yes for months I was under the impression that he was banned for two days. It turned out he was not after all. I’m not sure what happened those past two days as Brian and I did see the “Sorry never heard of the guy” error message. It could have just been a slight hiccup in the system. But I want to make it clear the CyberPhoenix was NEVER banned!

I believe those were the biggest faults in my previous entry. Again every one needs to know that the Mixx Team DOES listen! When they say they are, they aren’t lying. Just please trust me on this even when they don’t say anything about the issue you blogged about or sent a bug report on. They are working on it!

A perfect example of this would be my blog post back in February titled “Dealing with Spam on Mixx: Spam is a No No”. I had listed several issues that I saw on the site and the Mixx Team patched/fixed them with in a 7 day period and others took a bit longer to fix but were patched/fixed by July and one just recently. So remember they are listening! You may not see the results immediately but they are working diligently! We just need to be patient. If you are wondering what issues these were here is the list Kerry typed up:

1.  Use report this (we removed the limits for supermixxer to report bad content to us)
2.  Don’t send Mixx mail to 100s of people (its now impossible to do this unless you resurrect a previous thread)
3.  Need a “report this” link on email  (we now allow people to limit site mail to getting mail from people YOU are following –in other words, people you chose to communicate with)
4. Block user link in Report This form–at least I think that is the suggestion (this is a good one and something that we have not done, but we now offer the ability to block a user, and you don’t even see their comments)

Like I keep saying they are listening! Just be patient! If you blogged or sent feedback or something and want to know if they will be working on it. You can send them an email and ask. I’m sure they will gladly respond, but do keep in mind that other requests and features may take priority over yours. So again remember patience is key!

A small inside look to Super Mixxers

Well here is the topic everyone has been waiting for. While talking to Kerry the other day I asked her about Super Mixxers. I wanted to know mainly about the decision making of revoking the status, but what I got was an inside look so to speak on Super Mixxers. Being one I find it honestly rather interesting about what I had found out. Also please bare in mind that this is the first time anyone will really be getting the inside look. No one has really asked about it, and Kerry was more then happy to answer my question with out revealing numbers or anything of that sort.

So before I begin let me take a step back and just cover what exactly a Super Mixxer is. There are some people that read my blog and don’t use Mixx so I think it’s important that they have an understanding of what one is.

A Super Mixxer is some one who is given “Special Abilities” that other users don’t have. A Super Mixxer can flag a story as Breaking News, mark duplicate submissions or similar articles as related, and endorse a site if the content is great and meet’s their expectations of quality content I guess you could put it as. I want to clarify that Super Mixxers are NOT moderators of any sort. They simply have more features that’s all. I would look at Super Mixxers as Advanced Members on a website or forum. You know the sites that offer certain features to their valued and quality users.

Now with that out of the way let’s truly begin. To put it in Kerry’s own words the Super Mixxer status is an automatic thing. You simply have to be a member for a certain amount of days, achieve a certain amount of karma points with another time frame without getting “in trouble”. But not only that you also do need a diversity score related to your comments and source of submission. What does Kerry mean by getting in trouble you ask? This means having items removed for spam, bad comments or submitting too fast. The best way to tell if your in trouble is if you have a CAPTCHA appearing during your submits. If you see this take a step back and try to figure out what your doing wrong. If you don’t know contact the mixx team at feedback@mixx.com they will gladly answer your question and tell you what’s up. Don’t be shy they wont bite!

So how does Mixx go about a misbehaving Super Mixxer? It’s rather simple honestly.

1. They usually warn the user that is in trouble. The Mixx Team feels if they were good enough to make it through the fairly-high bar, that a warning usually solves the problem right away and the user corrects their behavior.

2. They also consider context as well. Let me quote Kerry on this as she explains it best.

” Don’t know if you are a football watcher, but I swear it seems like every time, the refs see the 2nd punch thrown and the guy who was retaliating is the one thrown out, but hte guy who starts it walks scot free.  We want to make sure that we don’t do that on Mixx. That we understand the context of what the conversation is before we just go banning.  We have a lot of back-and-forth on Middle East politics. Drop in the middle of one of these conversations and you might be like ‘DAMN how can these people still be on the system?” but do the research and you realize their are faults on both sides and that there are actually people who enjoy the conversations, even if they get heated. So understanding the context is important. “

3. If the user is out of bounds then they revoke the Super Mixxer status and let them continue on. Mixx likes to give their users the oppurtunity to prove themselves. If they stay on good behavior or “keep their noses clean” as Kerry put it the Super Mixxer status and badge returns. However if they don’t the status and badge will not come back. Also Kerry stated that if they continue to get VALID reports then they will boot them like they boot others.

So I hope this gives everyone some insight on Super Mixxers, how you become a Super Mixxer, what are the signs to your status being revoked and much more. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact the Mixx Team. They are pretty much an open book and will answer any questions you have.

Again the email to contact them is feedback@mixx.com, and they will get back to you as soon as possible usually with in minutes. I also want to thank the Mixx Team for being very understanding and professional about what happened the other day. Thank You Kerry, Kori, Will, and Chris for being very professional, you guys rock!

::Edit::

Submitted to Mixx. Please feel free to vote it up.

http://www.mixx.com/stories/1889420/mixx_apology_a_small_inside_look_to_super_mixxers_standardsdt