Why do I keep going back to digg?

Today mixx announced a new feature called “Breaking News” where if your a “Super Mixxer” you can move a story thats news breaking to the front page so everyone can see it before it gets old. Then when it hits a certain amount of votes it gets moved to the Popular Category.

Well a user submitted the story on digg and it got about “61 diggs”. I made a comment on the digg submission saying the following:

” Congrats to the Mixx guys on this! Another reason why Mixx is 10x better then digg.

Friendlier Community, A staff that cares and responds to it’s users, Suggestions taken Seriously, Open mindedness, First to have a photo section before digg, working comment system w/ nested comments coming soon, more interesting and new content that usually hits mixx first, related categories, tagable submissions, Super Mixxers, no autoburies, no bury brigades, no hidden moderators and now another great feature that no one including digg has ever done.

So explain to me why digg is so great. Oh you say cause krose runs it? Yeah umm nice try…. “

I was originally voted up at least 4 times but then the bury brigade came around and voted me down. I then got a comment response from a user saying the following:

“then why the fuck are you still here?”

I’ve been told by Honest_Ape to leave digg behind but for some reason, I find the need to always go back to see what submissions are worthy of Mixx, see how bad the flaming has gotten over there, and make a response to some ones comment if I find it necessary. You can read the rest of the comments here that were made on the article, which proves that the diggers feel threatened by mixx, don’t want a friendly community, etc. It probably didn’t help with me taking a stab at the guy and calling him an “ass hat” and that made me look like a hypocrite but hey what can I say I’m only human and I make mistakes.

I really should just let digg go as Honest_Ape suggested and just keep my eye on teamxbox, gamespot, engadget, etc. This community is hard to get respect in and hopefully people will start taking Mixx more seriously. Let’s see what next year brings, I’m sure things will be much different and maybe just maybe the users that are trash talking Mixx will swallow theirs words.

I also hope that these “diggers” will understand that the staff behind Mixx does not hate digg! Chris McGill has even stated that he doesn’t hate the site. Hopefully I can move away from that site 100% and focus on Mixx as I have a good rep there anyways and a very good following of people who think I submit quality content which I’m grateful for.

Well tomorrows another day and hopefully my next submission will be a brighter and happier one. Mixx on everyone!

Dealing With Spam on Mixx: Spam is a no no

Spam is something we all love to hate and we all have a good reason to do so. Almost daily like many of you I myself get the person looking to steal my identity claiming they are from some country and want me to have the money that belongs to a deceased person or the oh so lovely Enlarge yourself emails.

The same thing goes for the social media world. Some of the top dog sites such as digg for example has fallen victim to spam submissions and shouts. The same thing is now starting to occur on mixx. With the introduction of Mixx Mail it appears that the spammers have come out and decided to start sending links to they’re submissions or even other websites with this new feature. This has also increased the submission of blog spam from what I can see on my end.

Promoting what is obviously spam, blog spam, etc should not be done. This prevents articles worthy of the Popular Stories section including Photo’s and Video’s from getting there. On top of that it tells spammers that the community permits spam which is 100% entirely false. You can also blame blind voting on this as well. I’m guilty of doing this in the past and I don’t do this that much anymore and I try not to.

So I’d like to go over how we can combat this problem, keep it to the minimum and give some quick tips, suggestions, whatever you personally would like to call them.

Mixx has a way of keeping things clean on the site, but it does require the community to do they’re part. There are “Report This” links on every submission, and on every comment that has been made to a story. Simply click the link of what you want to report, the page will then fade and a dialog box will appear. Select the appropriate reason of what your reporting for by clicking the drop down menu. Your choices are “The link is broken”, “Content violates terms of use”, “Spam!”, “Someone is not being nice”, and “Other”. After that make sure you type a small but detailed description of what’s wrong with the article, what the user did, etc. This will help the people over at mixx in deciding if it should be removed, if the user should be contacted, if they should be banned etc.

That’s the best way in dealing with spam, blog spam, etc. Chris McGill said it best on the Mixxing Bowl:

“Our experience here to date is that if you ignore this stuff, it just gets 1 to 5 votes and the submitters really go nowhere. We have also found, however, that if we rile them- with comments or otherwise, then they make it a mission to come back and screw thigns up. so - in sum- my advice (and you do not have to take it since everyone is allowed to act of their free will) is to just ignore it. If a voting rings forms… then do NOT ignore it and please report it.”

Unfortunately Mixx Mail does not have a “Report This” system built in. The only thing it does have is a block user link. I personally think that something such as this is needed to be put in place now before it is too late. It’s important to remember that Mixx Mail is to be used to contact other members. This feature should never be used for promoting articles or promoting websites. Use the “Share This” feature to promote an article you think is worthy of the front page. But remember everything I mentioned here applies to that as well.

Also please remember that sending out a message to hundreds of members shouldn’t be done as well, this can get annoying and could also cause you to end up being blocked. If any of you users do, don’t get your panties in a twist if you got your ass blocked as Greg Davies put it. You have no one to blame but yourself. Many of the messages I have received could have done with out all of the hundreds of people it was sent to. Maybe 50 or even maybe a 100 max would be ok but past that it’s pushing it.

So on that note I’d like to bring this post to a close and just remind all of you to keep the community in mind and feel free to comment and post your own suggestions and input.

Mixx Messaging

Now that the messaging system from Mixx has officially launched. I figured that some of you might need help on how to use this new feature. But not only that I also figured that some guidelines/suggestions for using the system needed to be put in place. So here we go.

Purpose

 I’ll start with going over what the purpose of the messaging system is for. Mixx for a while had no way for the users to contact each other except through comments and sharing. Many mixxers for a while asked for this from what I could tell on The Mixxing Bowl (including myself). The release of this now means the community now can contact each other privately if they let’s say want to ask a question, put some one in they’re place if they were out of line, discuss something, etc. The main purpose though I personally feel is to prevent the comment section from being cluttered with off topic discussions. Many of you may disagree but that is just my opinion.

What not to do

Now that the purpose of it has been covered. I want to quickly go over what is not to be used for.  The messaging system should never ever be used to spam anyone, share mixx stories (there’s a reason the share feature exists), start fights, flame one another, etc. I think everyone get’s what I’m trying to say. Just don’t be stupid and be responsible with it. I’ll cover more of this in my next post.

How to use mixx messaging

The Mixx Messaging is pretty straight forward and simple. To access it simply click the mail icon located next to the “Your Account” along the top. The icon will be yellow when you have a new message, and will display the amount of new messages you have. If you don’t have any new messages it will default to a grey looking envelope.

 To send a new message click send new message, this will bring up the compose new message. Here you can choose either individual mixxers from your list to send a message to, or you can choose to send a message to all of your friends by choosing select all. If there isn’t some one on your friends list that you’d like to send a message to, you can fill in they’re name in top field. After choosing who you want to send a message, give your message a title, enter your message, and send it away!

Welcome to Social News

Welcome everyone to my new blog. I used to use the blogger service but found the service very restricting. I am currently test driving wordpress at the moment to see if it suits my needs. In my entries I will be covering different topics such as Social Newsg Websites such as mixx and digg, Gaming, Game Development, Personal Life, and much more.

So for my first entry I’d like to talk about Social News. I mentioned mixx and digg above and they are actually what I am covering today. Currently digg is the top dog in Social News Networking. I was a big fan of a digg because of they way it so called revolutionized the way we view news. I loved how it was great place to come to for diverse Tech News, Gadgets, etc. But some where down the line they made a wrong turn. One for the worst, what once used to be a great service is now nothing but a slow loading web site, a broken comment system (which I’ll get into later), front page filled with spam, moderated submissions, etc.

I’m not the only one that misses the old digg. Many others do as well and have even voiced this. Last year digg encountered it’s revolt with the HD-DVD Key and now just recently they had another one due to the algorithm change. This is a slow sign that digg is just going to be getting worst. As I mentioned before the comment system is broken. Yes Mr. Kevin Rose released a statement on the digg blog saying they are releasing a faster and better version soon. The thing is though I don’t believe that it’s coming out soon. Everyone was promised a new comment system back in October and still nothing.

I have moved on from digg now to a much better Social News site called mixx. It reminds me of the digg everyone once new. It’s friendly, no one tries to compete, and there is a great community called The Mixxing Bowl which I’m currently designing it’s new forum layout. Which is to be released hopefully in a matter of weeks. All of the spam stories usually never make it to the front page and everyone does they’re part to keep it that way. On top of that the best thing to is, the creators of mixx are members of this forum and take feedback and feature requests from everyone. Something that the digg community doesn’t have and is an upper hand to mixx. I’ll blog on this more later. But I think as of right now you guys get where this is going.

Till then peace!