The Solution to Social News
My last post was about how the value of social news sites, and social networks as a whole. Right now, all social networks are based on a democratic, almost communist model. Everyone is equal, everyone is worth the same. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking of my own value. Unfortunately, historically, pure democracy has never worked, what with the majority of the population being stupid, gullible sheep and whatnot.
So, how do we fix vote-driven site? Simple. Turn the democracy into a republic.
Keep the user-driven and user-submitted content, keep the voting to see which stories get to the top. But, at the same time, put in a protective layer. Put in editors who would correct spelling mistakes, remove duplicate and inaccurate stories and generally moderate the discussion. These editors should be chosen from the community, and each editor’s moderation record would be visible to all users. If enough users vote to “impeach” an editor, he would be stripped of his status, thus effectively preventing abuse of editorial power. By maintaining the voting element but superimposing a slight amount of control, a community-driven site can be improved greatly, and completely cleansed of spam and junk.
This approach has been very succesful in forums, where the moderators are chosen from among the community. A slight variation of this model is also used by Wikipedia. Everyone can contribute to the site, but contributions are overseen and moderated by a group of superusers.
But how should editors be selected? Who should be given the reins, the key to the chastity belt of Internet news? Obviously editors cannot simply be voted in because, as I never tire of reiterating, people are stupid. Let the general Digg audience vote on who decideswhat stays and what leaves the front page, and Digg will quickly become a tyranny of softcore porn and MS-bashing. Incidentally, “A tyrrany of softcore porn” would be a good name for
a.) a blog
b.) a rock band
More on that later. Back to the topic at hand. The average member of the public cannot be trusted to elect a competent executive- just look at our current administration for a perfect example of that truism. It is also impractical to give control to top users based solely on quantitative metrics. Many complain that users with the most submissions already dominate social networking sites, and, as can be quickly surmised from Digg’s “upcoming stories” view, quantity certainly does not equal quantity.
The solution for selecting users who will be given more power than the general rabble must be both qualitative and mechanically precise. This is where Avi Muchink’s Orbital Theory comes in. I love Orbital Theory as a beautiful metaphor for the power of an individual user in a community driven site. Using the mass and speed of an orbiting body(the user) as a metaphor, Orbital Theory effectively quantifies the value a user creates for a site, in terms of both content and traffic.
For social sites, content+traffic=value. It’s easy to see how Orbital Theory can be perfectly applied to the selection of editors for any community-driven site. The top X users with the highest “orbital values” are promoted to editor status. In order to keep their editor status, they must continue to generate value for the site, by both contributing new content and weeding out inferior content, ideally bringing in new users. They must also refrain from abusing their powers, lest their actions create too much “negative gravity”. The site grows, the community grows, quality AND quantity is increased, and everyone is happy.
Let’s face it- something is needed to sort the wheat from the chaff in the ever-increasing seas of information that wash over us every day, and it sure as hell isn’t the wisdom of the crowd. Right now, this is nothing more than a suggestion. But, perhaps one of the media giants, eager to jump into the social networking world will pick up on the idea. Netscape.com is on the right track with “Anchors” promoting certain submitted stories they feel have more value and singling out the top users as “Navigators”. Netscape, as a big corporation, cripples the system by hiring the Anchors full-time and paying Navigators for activity. This adds in an element of corporate oversight that, along with a truly draconian TOS that gives Netscape, Inc the power to remove all stories that they consider “old news”, turns the community into less of a republic and more of a tyrrany(but without the softcore porn). As millions of volunteer Wikipedia editors and forum moderators show, user-generated content that is allowed to flow freely will flourish with a little editorial control. As long as the idiots aren’t in charge.
Related Posts:
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The Trouble With Social News Sites(They suck)
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Digg Removes Rank Completely
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‘Put in editors who would correct speeling mistakes’
- ahem.
Got me!
There’s an interesting excessive reliance-on-technology story there. On my my laptop, I’m used to writing with Firefox 2, which has a built-in spellchecker. The computer I wrote this post on only had Firefox 1.5, which lacks a spellchecker but looks almost identical to Firefox 2. I wrongly assumed I was using Firefox 2 and, seeing no words underlined in red, assumed no typos and posted.
That sounds like a decent handling for Digg. This is, however, much of what Netscape.com currently has, does it not? They’re doing the editor thing, and selecting stories which they deem are important or “newsworthy” to be featured on the top of each major section.
Yes, but as I mention, Netscape’s editors are, for lack of a better word, corporate drones(full-time, paid employees). That creates the perspective that the corporation is in control of what is newsworthy. My proposal explicitly selects uncompensated editors from the community based on the continuing value they contribute.
How right you are
searchles looked like being an interesting alternative to Digg, with its “groups”. But it is complete anarchy.
You set up a group that is supposed to deal with a particular theme, and idiots rush in and post completely irrelevant links. And there is no way to vote them out. Even the owner of a group cannot demote irrelevant stories.
I’ve just given up on one that I started. It got stuffed with links that had nothing to do with the subject.
Forget about any system that relies on the goodwill and intelligence of the community.There are too many self centred buffoons out there for that line to work.
By the way, spelling is the least of the problems. I’m an editor by profession, but I don’t expect to see great spelling and grammar. Even spiel chequers fall over when it is a case of the correctly spelt wrong word in the wrong place.
Amy from Searchles here in response to Michael’s comment - we’re not trying to be a social news site or a digg. We’re a social search platform that showcases your expertise and enables you to collaborate with others who share your interests. Unlike other sites, we actually have kick ass search so you can drill down and find who or what you’re looking for.
We’re in the middle of a couple of key site enhancements that will address Michael’s criticisms including the ability for group owners to restrict who can join and post to their groups as well as the ability to rate people and content. So we hope you’ll hang in there and give us feedback on how we can improve. In the meantime, one way to filter out the noise is use our search bar at the top where you can apply various filters on what you see. First search box will find posts that contain the word or words you put in it on the page that was bookmarked. Second one is for tags assigned by you and other users to further filter the search. Third is an additional filter pull down menu where you can search everywere, just your own posts, your friend’s posts, your friends’ friends posts or your fans. Friends are other users you trust. Don’t make friends with people you don’t respect. Fans are users who admire you or the content you post and want to be able to search it.
Bottom line, we welcome feedback on how we can improve and hope our community will continue to share this kind of feedback with us so we can.
Thanks for your insightful comments, Michael and Amy.
I haven’t heard of searchles before reading your comments, and I’m glad I discovered it.
Searchles looks like a great hybrid of del.icio.us and Google. Giving more weight to submissions from trusted sources looks like a great idea.
The problem with sites like searchles, of course, is that it requires a large investment by the user before it becomes valuable. The user needs to build up a large group of trusted friends before searches within friends become useful. I’m guessing most searches at searchles are done in the “Everyone” category simply because most users don’t have enough friends.
Ilya,
We think there is enough value at Searchles right out of the gate by allowing you to create a personal archive of information you find on the web, and making it searchable in myriad ways. Then hopefully you are drawn further in through the sharing and collaboration features so that a few friends join you, or you discover people with similar interests on Searchles, then hopefully it grows to the point where you have a good number of friends and there is enough indexed content for it to be a useful search engine. Right now, we agree, Searchles is not good for just doing general searches. But I already see it as a good way to find people with common interests, and then connect to them so that you can interact with them . There are some stumbling blocks right now, as Michael points out, but we are just getting started! Much more to come.
thanks
Ilya - I meant to also say that I liked your original post. I also find the pure path “collective wisdom” approach creepy - it will lead to a dumbing down of the internet and reminds me of the lessons of Ayn Rand’s book, The Fountainhead. I haven’t made up my mind on the value of social news with editors - paid or not. I’m still trying to figure out what value they add when you don’t know the person’s creds. I guess I’m independent-minded and like to decide who feeds me what and whether or not I think it taste’s good!
Thanks for the nice plug on Searchles too! We are a hybrid with aspects of social bookmarking, social networking with an emphasis on search and I’m glad you get that.
You’re partially correct on the rest. As soon as you join and invite all your friends, you’ll have an instant trust network! In the meantime though, I think you’ll find it useful for just keeping track of what you care about, identifying trends and discovering others with the same interests. Best! Amy
True, Searchles is far too young right now to make any sweeping judgements on its value/usefulness. Certainly, the bookmarking functionality is reason enough to use the site. But Searchles’ ambition is much greater, so we will see whether that ambition comes to life in the coming months. Hopefully you’ve hunkered down with some venture funding
The thing with social news sites is that they live or die based on the community. We have yet to see where the Searchles community will take the site.
As an aside, it’s a very good sign that the site’s administrators are actively communicating with users and accepting suggestions for improvement. Very Web 2.0 of you(the good connotaiton of Web 2.0)
If it really is all about the people, it looks like Searchles has a good team at the helm. Incidentally, Ayn Rand is one of my favorite authors(although I could never get through that 50 page speech in Atlas Shrugged).
when we talk about social media, web 2.0 is the best to design those sites.
Old people fucking….
People fucking animals….