Side Channels

A few weeks ago I’ve written some criticism of reddit.com that got some attention and was moderated up quite a bit over there (it’s at a 105-point standstill and now off the top page.) I was happy to know that people mostly agreed with what I had to say and in general responded in a positive manner. I could write more about the aftermath of that post, but it’s no use… I’m giving it up socially “democratic” bookmarking services. (I know I am using this term loosely, so don’t get all caught up on the definitions.)

Let me explain…

1. It doesn’t work. Most of the links are crap not worth the time clicking and reading. Since these services are not moderated, the content quality is poor. “But Saar, that’s why the readers moderate the links — to weed out the bad ones.” Well, that’s the idea, but in practice, we all have different likings and a (social bookmarking) site that is “everything new” (reddit) or even “everything geek” (digg) just doesn’t work. Democracy doesn’t work here, and hey, it shouldn’t…

2. It doesn’t work 2 (maybe.) I don’t have the statistics to back this up, but the admins of those sites must, so chime in. My intuition tells me that there are many more submissions than eyes looking for good content. Someone can post 15 articles in a row (I’ve seen this happen) and immediately shove everything before it to oblivion. Even the greatest content wouldn’t have a chance to shine. If it was my site, I would limit one submission per 10 minutes or per 10 other submissions. “Whoa? But that’s moderation! Moderation baaaaaad…”

3. People don’t read the articles. From my experimentation — and from the shaming fact that I do it myself — people mostly moderate based on the title and the domain the link is from rather than content. People flame and demote self-posting while I don’t see anything wrong with that… if something is good, it shouldn’t matter who submitted it. I truly don’t think content is evaluated in a fair manner.

4. Repeats and similar content. If there is a popular link, many “copycats” appear almost instantly… same item from a different source or a different spin. Some of those don’t get “socially” filtered; no good.

5. Old news. Yesterday, I had an embarrassing incident. I forwarded a BBCNews link I got from reddit to a fellow blogger to write about. Turns out he already did, 10 months ago! I didn’t even look at the date and assumed it was fresh news (after all, “reddit: what’s new online” says the title.) It wasn’t, and I was left feeling stupid. Lesson learned, but reddit got moderated down a notch in my book although realistically it is not entirely their fault; I should have looked at the date.

Overall, within the last few weeks I have concluded that non-moderated social bookmarking of the reddit type are a time-wasting hype that will soon (i.e. 9-12 months) make way to some other hype and be forgotten. Bold statement, some may say, based on the fact that Yahoo! just purchased del.icio.us for $25mil… but I’m sticking to it (del.icio.us isn’t the same as reddit/digg, to be fair.) People (with lack of time to spare) will soon want to go back to the good-ol’ days of moderated content providers (i.e. slashdot,) with all their shortcomings of the occasional dupes and some old content. Admit it though, in general it does the job very well. Why? Because it is specialized and moderated! No silly news and content about why Bush burped in China, 10 Mind-Numbing Quotes By Tom Delay, Lindsey Lohan’s constant expression, the next 1.2234GB iPod Nano or why Python eats Lisp for breakfast with AJAX sprinkled on top. I don’t care about that crap. When I do want crap news I visit CNN or BBC.

Just to be clear and avoid some flaming from the minions: social bookmarking is a good thing… but not for me, not anymore and I’m willing to wager I am not the only one. At the end of the day, the whole “social” part doesn’t work in sifting through the content to bring out the best. Nonetheless, I will keep self-posting content that I believe is good because it is great for traffic and exposure.

So, I’m giving up reddit, digg and all the rest and getting my geek news from slashdot with the horrific two day delay after everyone and their grandmother blogged about them in the “blogosphere.” The rest of my info needs I get on demand from Google and from my favorite weblogs.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 at 7:03 pm and is filed under rants, tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.