Spamming Sphinn
I am a fan of Sphinn and generally find a bunch of good information and discussion there. Lately though I have noticed increasingly more SPAM submissions there. If I see Spam I report it right away and I hope others do the same. Unfortunately the problem seems to be getting worse though. I like to check in on Sphinn early in the morning and now it seems that I am trudging through more Spam than real posts. This is a problem. Sometimes the Spam is cleaned up quickly but far too often it stays alive for too long.
Recent Spammy Sphinns
Here are a few recent examples of the Spam I have been seeing all too often.
Porcelain Veneers
Viagra & Foreign Language Porn, Really?
Spending Half of My Sphinn Time Reporting Spam
I now spend as much time reporting Spam as actually reading useful articles and this is a problem. I understand that this is the nature of social media when a social news site becomes popular but it is getting out of hand. Something needs to be done. To all the Sphinners out there make sure you are using the Report Spam button when you see spam. Don’t just ignore it, take action and let the mods know so it can be eradicated. I like Sphinn and don’t want to see it go down the toilet because it is a Spam haven. And IMO it is getting close to reaching a point where the useful and interesting discussions will be overwhelmed by garbage. I hope that it does not come to that and I will do my part to keep it from happening and I encourage everyone else to actively identify and report spam.
Popularity: 54% [?]
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I hear ya! I’ve been spending much less time there lately because of it. I’m not sure what the problem is, either it takes too many spam reports to do something or none of the mods are paying any attention to it. Some stuff stays there for for hours. I think they should look for some mods that care and not just their buddies. During the conferences it’s really out of hand because nobody is moderating it at all.
Oh well, it was a good idea, perhaps someone else will try it and do it right.
March 29th, 2008 at 2:11 pmAgreed…. with greater popularity comes more spam. I used to report the stuff but it didn’t seem like it made a difference… hours later, still there.
They should give us mad Sphinners (Maki, myself, Marty, wiep, Bill H etc..), those that are there A LOT, a chance at cleaning up. It does get frustrating seeing all the blantant crap…
Oh well, guess that’s what the buttons are for. But do I really want to write X- number of words simply to say - SPAM ? and then see it still there hours later? I dunno….
March 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pmDav: That is a good idea. Maybe enable a few power users the ability to eradicate spam more quickly. I have begun Desphinning and filing Spam reports for blatant spam even though the Desphinn button is not really supposed to be used for Spam. Maybe if the mods see something reported as Spam with -5 Sphinns they will take action more quickly.
If you only read the front page (like I do) you wont notice the spam
April 1st, 2008 at 8:56 amSphinn def works… while I’ve been to piloseo a few times, I’m now here because of this post:
http://sphinn.com/story/43750
But I doubt the spammers get much out of a link from Sphinn. I would guess that most of us see that it is spam and avoid clicking through the links anyway.
It may help them to temporarily get a boost from Google or something but eventually these posts go away. I kind of wonder if it is actually meant to make these companies look bad in some way…
I just posted a bit about this myself as well:
http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2008/04/spamming_sphinn.html
It is obviously a problem for many social sites. You can rely on trusted commenters and such but after some point even they can start ruling the roost and you get a kind of philosophical tug of war going. I remember the words going around about how there is a “secret” digg moderation staff that may ignore diggs picks and pans despite what the “community” votes.
Like most things kind of an enigma to ultimately fix.
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