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Hey gang - it's been a really, really exciting launch weekend. We've had more than 12K visits on Saturday & Sunday, 800+ registered members and 1,000+ submitted articles. That said, we're already seeing some issues around vote manipulation and attempts at gaming, so we want to figure out how to handle these early. Some questions we've got for the community here that are worth discussion (rather than just an executive decision): 1) Should members be allowed to submit their own work/content/self-interested links? 2) Should members be allowed to directly tweet/G+/email links on Inbound.org to encourage voting? 3) Should a certain number of flags auto-remove an article's ability to go "hot?" 4) How aggressive should we be with banning accounts that submit bad stuff (or even good stuff, but then try to manipulate it to the homepage)? Appreciate all your thoughts on these topics (and any other related ones I've not considered).
Hey Rand, I'm not sure you have read my suggestions on one of the earlier feedback threads. Thus I will repeat some of them here. There a few simple methods of curbing blatant self-promotion etc. 1) Only allow seasoned users to submit stories. A karma of 20 or rather 50 would be a prerequisite to submit stories then. 2) Do not allow one domain to be submitted twice in a row. Ideally a submitter would have to submit 4 different domains until s/he can self-submit again. As people usually have several domains it won't prevent self-submission completely but it will slow it down. 3) Do not allow submissions of more than two posts in a row. Or allow one post below 100 points, two below 200 etc. 4) Do not count bounce visits from outside as votes (people who only land on a page, vote it up and disappear) 5) Make users vote up stories or comment before each submission. Now everybody submits and no one votes for the others. So unless you vote first in a session you can't submit. Sharing links to submissions on social media is great to spread the word about the community so I wouldn't discourage it altogether. The flags should be counted and compared to the votes. A story with 10 votes and 3 flags should still stay "hot" wile one with 4 votes but 5 flags shouldn't. Banning: Self promoters should be able to learn how this community works so banning should be the last resort when someone proves that s/he is unwilling to learn and play by the rules.
Are you going to support "Ask Inbound" style submissions, similar to "Ask HN" on hacker news, where you want to ask the community a question but are not posting a link? I think that would be very useful here.
I was just about to post the same request - of course we need that! HN is more than just links and Show Inbound: Who's Hiring
1) Should members be allowed to submit their own work/content/self-interested links? Yes but I like the idea that Tad has that there should be limits to the number of links submitted from one domain by one individual in a certain time period. 6 submissions in a row from one person from the same domain is not a good user experience and is akin to astroturfing. 2) Should members be allowed to directly tweet/G+/email links on Inbound.org to encourage voting? Well, I'm not sure how you can truly police this unless you track voting referrals and voting patterns. I'd like to ensure that stuffing the ballotbox doesn't happen but going down this road might be time consuming. Instead a moderator could 'balance' what they perceive as manipulative behavior. Yes, that puts a lot of power in the hands of moderators so you better trust them. 3) Should a certain number of flags auto-remove an article's ability to go "hot?" Potentially but again, if I have an axe to grind I could just get a bunch of people to flag something. Tracking flagging behavior could be nice but again, might be a lot of work. Also, I think the flag option is a bit ... fuzzy. Someone might apply it because that link is old, another because they don't like the content and another because they view it as spam. 4) How aggressive should we be with banning accounts that submit bad stuff (or even good stuff, but then try to manipulate it to the homepage)? Me? I'd be pretty aggressive, particularly if you could give folks a warning (2 week ban) versus a lifetime ban. I think quality has to be the ultimate goal (because it's what will drive usage) and should override any blowback from people feeling like they've been wronged. 5) Other things to contemplate I think a meritocracy is certainly something to think about (call it Karma if you like.) One way to tackle this might be through a Klout like feature - you can only submit 3 links a day and upvote 10. The scarcity of providing your endorsement might ensure that only the best content floats to the top. (It might also allow others to submit links instead of the voracious readers who quickly submit everything as they awake on the East Coast *shakes fist*) Of course you could then loosen that based on the type of engagement those links receive. Those who submit links that consistently get upvotes and who are active in comments can be provided more leeway.
Hi Rand, my personal view on above discussion is : No. 1 and 2 should be okey but to stop SPAM no 1 and 2 you should have some volunteer member (like in forum, moderator or whatever we call) continuously looking at the post. I think no 3 can be okey to have flag but after flagging admin (you or SEOmoz TM) should check and take the decisions. Banning login (twitter)account could be a optional but at least not for the simple mistake. .. like mine.. :) I ask you this question on my last comment as well : Can't we have downvotes as well just next to upvotes ?? How about login alternative to twitter? thankx Keshab Raj
Just saw your tweet. I think @Ross_Quintana wanted to help a friend (you replied to him and me - @osakasaul ) - and didn't spend the time to read (find..?) the TOS for tInbound. We simply need to understand your guidelines. Once we've done that, I'm sure neither of us will be aiming to game your system. Thanks for understanding, Saul Fleischman Osaka, Japan
Thanks - yeah, I think that unless it's spelled out right on the guidelines page very literally, there will be misunderstandings. Thus, I opened this thread to provide more clarity and transparency around the issue.
Yes, that article was not mine, and I wasn't gaming anything. I read the article from a friend and thought it was good enough to upvote and I shared it. Many of my followers are into SEO and so I encouraged them to vote and also posted the article on my stream in addition to asking them to go and vote. Not sure why it got flagged social media is about sharing good content and getting involved. Am I missing something here? Also please don't remove the article as it has nothing to do with the author. Seems a little shaky, this is my first visit here. It appeared that you voted for articles if you like them. Please explain why I was called uncool on Twitter for promoting content.
"Be cool." is the guideline here currently, and on launch, we're asking folks not to tweet/share links asking for votes, as this games the system (particularly because the community is new, so just a few votes will change the balance). We're examining and talking about this in this thread to figure out the long term plans. Thanks for understanding!
I read the TOS and it doesn't say you can't tweet about a article on your site or share a good article to your followers with a suggestion for them to check it out. If policies are being worked out, and you haven't clearly stated rules I think banning or penalizing people is going to create bad first experiences with your site as mine was. As a Business manager I can tell you first hand. Posting things publicly to Twitter that someone is uncool instead of privately or on your system is "uncool" and rubbed me the wrong way. People on Twitter don't know this is your way of saying it doesn't line up with your policy so it comes off as a negative comment about that person and people have to guess why. Most people will see a site like this where you vote up articles like other sites where you vote and on those sites you share stuff with your network if you like it so others can vote it up if they like it. The users first experience should be transparent, if you don't want them to tweet about it then it is your job to disclose that before people can vote. Somehow my vote and tweet for people to check it out got someone I never met's article removed. Personally Rand I would prefer you contact me privately do discuss this as I am offended at how it was handled.
For what its worth, with respect, and in the aim of addressing your questions, I submut my own articles and those of guest authors on my blog: to Reddit, Pinterest, ScoopIt, Twylah, StumbleUpon, because you know what? If I don't NO ONE WILL. You may want to allow people to sumbit their own material. On the other hand, for your question no.2, I say "no." This encourages abuse, and what's more, you'll still see people running Empire Avenue "Missions" (check into those, if you don't do the EA thing yourself) that reward people for upvotes. Let me know if these thoughts help > @osakasaul
1. Yes - if members aren't allowed to submit their own material, the majority of the little guys will not be heard and the site will form into a compilation of posts from the same old blogs everyone already reads. 2. This is a tough one due to the lack of anonymity leveraging the more well known marketers, but I think the answer should be yes. How would this rule possibly be policed if it were in place? 3. I don't think this exact rule, but the concept behind it comes from a good place. Instead of looking to limit a submission, how about one that benefits a site that has under XX submissions? 4. "Bad stuff", aside from spam, is pretty subjective. Because there is no down-voting system in place for self-policing, this will likely be a decision that shapes the atmosphere of Inbound.
1. Yes - I think members should allowed to submit their own material because as @jamie said the little guy won't get a chance to show up their post. 2. No - In terms of begging. We should not beg for voting up from our twitter followers. If the article is interesting enough, than surely it'll be voted up. 3. Yes. 4. We should not banned them but yes penalty would be a better idea to teach them a lesson. Like they can't submit post for around 30 days or 1 week.
Posting to twitter is not begging. If you have people who you suggest content to then they obviously are going to check it out and that drive traffic both to the site, increases membership, and gets people involved in promoting content that they like. I think your taking a narrow view.
1 - Yes 2 - On the fence 3 - Yes, but could this be gamed too? 4 - Yes. Some criteria for 'bad stuff' would be handy though.
I was submitting some of my own stuff (along with a healthy mix of other good stuff I'd found), but I'm going to hold off on that until I hear a further ruling on that. I want this community to work, and even though I think submitting your own stuff should be OK (perhaps with some sort of cap), I don't even want to appear to be gaming it!
Only slightly related, but I don't know where else to ask: How is karma earned here?
Looks like consensus so far is that submitting one's own links is OK as long as done in moderation and balanced with other submissions and participation. So I'm going to proceed with that as my guideline until the community decides otherwise.
1) Yes, but can we see a number of articles posted all-time next to their username (and maybe their Karma too)? 2) I think so. Will there be more manipulation than community building? 3) Are the flags from trusted members? 4) I'm concerned about the criteria. I definitely approve of a warning shot first. My initial thoughts on the site from the other day: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103545771675553354924/posts/DWyNRCy3AsM
Hey Rand, I spent a year as an editor at Sphinn before changing to Marketing Land and many of these issues were seen there as well. Here is my $0.02 for what it is worth. 1) Should members be allowed to submit their own work/content/self-interested links? - Yes. Otherwise they will just submit it under an alias and then the transparency goes out the the window. 2) Should members be allowed to directly tweet/G+/email links on Inbound.org to encourage voting? - Tough call with pros and cons. Saying no would be similar to #1 and reduce transparency, but keep voting cleaner to community members who spend more time here, which would increase loyalty between staunch community members. Yes, would encourage community growth on a platform with close ties to twitter. Very tough call. 3) Should a certain number of flags auto-remove an article's ability to go "hot?" - I would recommend it do this until a community manager(s) can hand review the the post. 4) How aggressive should we be with banning accounts that submit bad stuff (or even good stuff, but then try to manipulate it to the homepage)? - Since sign up is through your Twitter account (at least that is how I signed up) being banned will severely limit the spam that people are willing to risk their account for. You ARE going to get a ton of off topic spam, especially from submitters in countries such as India. At least that is where I noticed most of the blatant spam coming from. I would recommend that you definitely implement a "spam and ban policy" for the sake of wasting continued resources keeping quality up. If possible, it would be great to have a 1st "lite ban" for offenders who "mistakenly" submitted spam (aka did not read policies), that could sign up a 2nd time if it was an accident. But a 2nd ban could/should be permanent. Good luck on the new site!
Yeah I know you have to consider spam, but if people want to be on your hot page that is good don't forget that. If it ends up being a closed site where the people who have been around and politically play ball, then people won't value the site other than the core users. Depends on your strategy. I think that you have to be careful that in trying to limit spam you don't limit growth and use of your site. That fine line is what separates the good and bad management of a site. It is like patting down everyone at the airport. In an attempt to stop a small group of people you can create a negative experience for all your regular users. That is the caveat.
1) Should members be allowed to submit their own work/content/self-interested links? - Yes. But their karma should be reflected by their share habits. At risk of stating obvious, good communities (like SEOmoz) give incentive for "good" citizenry. 2) Should members be allowed to directly tweet/G+/email links on Inbound.org to encourage voting? - Yes. 3) Should a certain number of flags auto-remove an article's ability to go "hot?" - I don't oppose this. Let users curate, give inventive for good content curating. Classes of users? Super users with different permissions? 4) How aggressive should we be with banning accounts that submit bad stuff (or even good stuff, but then try to manipulate it to the homepage)? - I don't think banning is the move. However, I do think there should be carrots and sticks. Give carrots to provide the right community incentives. Use sticks to discourage behavior that doesn't represent community standards. Of course, this is more easily said than done. At the risk of being called naive, I'm a market place of ideas kind of guy. Everyone come to the market place with content. Good content gets voted up. Bad content gets flagged. Community rules give incentive to users to be good community citizens and punish those who break community guidelines.
1) Should members be allowed to submit their own work/content/self-interested links? They should, but there should be limits (5 max submissions per domain per month per user, or something to that effect). 2) Should members be allowed to directly tweet/G+/email links on Inbound.org to encourage voting? Yes. Why wouldn't you leverage others' social networking influence to build your site's traffic/awareness? It will do more good than harm IMO. Wouldn't they copy and paste the link anyway? 3) Should a certain number of flags auto-remove an article's ability to go "hot?" To me, this one remains to be determined. Your algorithm to determine "hot" should be tweaked after a few weeks of activity after you see how users trying to "game it". After that, put some tweaks on it to auto-remove based on that data. 4) How aggressive should we be with banning accounts that submit bad stuff (or even good stuff, but then try to manipulate it to the homepage)? Very aggressive. If the goal is curation of the best marketing content, then users that abuse the system should be dealt with. I like what Digg did back in the day; they would basically take away your accounts diggs/buries, and discount your submissions. This was good because users kept participating and interacting, but it was bad because the user never new that they were banned.
I would recommend letting the algorithm you have already designed work for another week or two and see if the patterns you've seen over the weekend continue. See how people are gaming it. Maybe it's not a problem, maybe it is but I'd give it more than couple days to do some more learning. If you share your algorithm that may encourage a different kind of gaming where you just get the really dedicated people who submit according to the rules. We see this with grey-hat link building efforts people trying to game Google search.
Though it is important for people not to game your system, it is also important to get people using it and voting for articles they like. I think there will always be a portion that abuse it, but clear guidelines set upfront is what is needed. If the rules are changing or not set then how can the people know how to use the site. Userbase should come first, then building systems that let people do what the site is designed for should keep misuse down. I think policy is the least viable way to control how people use your site. Design is better. If you want only members to vote who are long standing then make people not get to vote until after they have commented x amount of times. This will keep people from bouncing in and voting if you don't want that. Systems rule over policies because you create a job for yourself by choosing only policy. Then you create the job of monitoring and you have confusion because not everyone will understand your policies even if they are clearly laid out which they aren't yet.
I don't really get the flagging yet. Obviously I should flag spam, but should I flag low quality articles also?
No, that doesn't make sense. the votes determine the quality, if you are flagging it should be for misuse. Otherwise people will game the system in reverse by flagging other people's articles just like Craigslist.
I added a post that was near the end of January of this year because I noticed a few others were also from January. Is there going to be a limit on how old a post can be to be included? I know there have been some awesome posts that are several months old, but would it make sense to post them here?
Josh I've seen a number of poss even older than January go up here, and I think it's fine. I've even seen people tweet that they're getting a new set of traffic from it, which seems great to me. I think we're all looking for great content, more than just "new" content necessarily. My 2 cents. :)
I think I can agree with that. Another traffic source can never hurt and it might be interesting to see some older posts I might not have gotten to read before.
There's a huge tonne of buried old gems beyond the instantaneous obsession of the new we all too often suffer from.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. Went over all of this, plus what I've received over email, and here's the current plan: #1) Yes, anyone can submit anything. If a member's abusing the system by submitting a ton of stuff from their own site only (particularly in rapid succession), we'll ban them. #2) Yes, folks can directly ask for votes or discussion on specific inbound.org stories. We'll control this by having low-quality stuff or purely promotional junk flagged/removed. #3) Flags will simply make admins aware, from which action can be taken as appropriate. We may use flags in the algo, but in a small way so that "bury-brigades" don't become a problem. #4) Given we don't have the bandwidth to monitor these, we'll try to send a tweet to anyone abusing, and ban on a second offense. Unfortunately, because we're super-busy, that warning may not always be perfectly delivered, so we may be a bit overly-aggressive with these, but I think that's the better alternative then letting inbound devolve into a low quality portal. Other: Submitting "oldies but goodies" is totally kosher, as is submitting stuff outside the "pure" definition of marketing (e.g. http://inbound.org/technology/2012/02/the-science-of-tear-jerkers/ is not really marketing content directly, but might be very interesting to marketers). We also need more folks checking out the "incoming" page on a regular basis and voting on good stuff / flagging bad stuff. If you like this community and want to make it better, that's the biggest thing that would help right now :-) I'll be putting these into the formal guidelines in the next couple days. Thanks everyone!
Just realised I've missed the boat on this one but I wrote the damn comment now so here it is! 1) Should members be allowed to submit their own work/content/self-interested links? 100% they should! To be honest for the first few days I only submited my own stuff because I felt a little awcward about getting Karma points for somebody elses work. 2) Should members be allowed to directly tweet/G+/email links on Inbound.org to encourage voting? Why wouldn't that be ok? It's only like asking for RT's. If people don't agree that it's a good article they're unlikely to upvote just because you asked. We've got minds of our own, right? 3) Should a certain number of flags auto-remove an article's ability to go "hot?" Unsure on this one 4) How aggressive should we be with banning accounts that submit bad stuff (or even good stuff, but then try to manipulate it to the homepage)? I'm not sure the onus should be on banning accounts, more about putting checks and balances in place to prevent the ability to spam. Prevention is better than cure after all. They'll only come back the next day with a fresh account if you ban them. I'd also like to suggest the following: Changes to the Karma score so that it takes into account the amount of articles you've submitted. It currently encourages people to throw up a large quantity of stuff in the hope they will get one or two upvotes on each. It doesn't seem right that somebody who has 20 articles with 2 upvotes each has the same Karma as the person who uploaded 1 killer article with 40 upvotes. I'd also add Karma for comments and flagging to encourage engagement. Maybe also – Karma if a submission gets 0 upvotes I believe as standard you should only be allowed to submit one article per day but I’m certainly in favour of earning the right to submit more, again based on your Karma score If we could drop anything out of the site if it receives no upvotes in a 24 hour period (and prevent it from being resubmitted) that would help clean the place up
1. yes. (collective member IQ will spot a serial offender though) 2. yes (but you would socially promote the source URL anyway, so this matters less) 3. yes (but weighted by karma flag power ie less karma, less flag power and interval between flagers). 4. lower priority (define abuse policy & reserve right to act). I noticed today the share box prevented me from posting a previously submitted article. That's welcome as I hadn't noticed it on the front page and so dupes are being weeded out. (That said also I spotted a dupe submit and flagged it, so maybe the system is not quite as accurate yet (did the URL have UTMs appended to it?)