This week we’re announcing another new tweak to improve the quality of small business news and information readers can find everyday on BizSugar.com.
A new algorithm has been added to our Website to flag sites or accounts that are voted to the “hot” list an inordinate number of times during a short time interval.
The new algorithm has been installed to prevent attempts to “game” the system to push content repeatedly onto the “hot” section or front page of BizSugar.com in an effort to monopolize top positions and decrease the participation of other members here on our site.
For 99.99 percent of members here at BizSugar.com this algorithm change will never come into play.
Flagged content will be immediately relegated to the “recently submitted” section regardless of the number of votes achieved.
The system will allow for all special contests and events such as the SugarTone Sweet Business Blogging Contest and other instances where organic voting might ordinarily push large numbers of submissions from a single site or submitter to the front page over an unusually short interval. (Note: if you wish to run a contest, please notify us so we can make sure it doesn’t trip the filter.)
We believe this step necessary in order to continue offering the opportunity for a variety of content and participation here at BizSugar.com and to prevent any person or small group from manipulating results and votes for their own benefit over the best interests of the small business community at large.
Again we emphasize: the new system will cause no inconvenience and no change whatsoever to the vast majority of members in the BizSugar.com community. We are happy for your participation, and we encourage it. But as the site grows we feel we needed to install this option to make sure the site continues to provide a variety of great content and opportunity for participation for all BizSugar members. We are looking to the future, not the past.
Thanks for being part of the BizSugar community. We appreciate it!
Again I have to take exception.
By “gaming” I believe what you are saying is those who submit quality material and through their support of others, by participation and by builing up a blog readership which follows them to BizSugar and votes for them loyally. I’m still not sure why this is being frowned on or punished.
What’s left is a welfare system whereby people are being given votes to boost them. It will land them on the front page but will not change their behavior. Most will still not vote or comment. They’ll see themselves as successful and know that they can continue to be successful by doing not very much.
My analogy is to say to high-school students: ‘The same people are getting A’s all of the time. They study too hard and it’s just not fair. Let’s take the C students instead and put them on the honor roll and ban the A students because their success is bad for morale.
What I think is going to be the unfortunate outcome of this is that the people who participate most and have put their heart and soul into building this site…and as a by-product have become successful, will stop posting on the site. They will see their banned success as a slap in the face.
What will be left is a large group of people who post but don’t participate.
My husband Yoni…boo-hiss sent an email to his core group of readers last week telling them to curb their voting as his success was getting him in trouble here. Almost everyone replied by saying that if they weren’t going to vote for him here there was no real reason for them to continue visiting the site. This is truly unfortunate as Yoni has always encouraged them to read other articles and vote. These 10 to 20 people have a combined tally of almost 8,000-10,000 votes.
Yoni has also always told his followers never to give him an automatic vote but to vote based entirely on merit.
I have to close by saying that I have never in my life seen any type of venue or scenario where success and hard work is frowned upon.
It’s stunning.
Rivkah
I would also like to add respectfully that I have just looked at the Hot Topics list going back one month. There are more than a few members, perhaps as many as 5-10 who are averaging twice per week on the Hot Topics page. There are many mebers who have at least a 70-90 percent HT publication rate. As far as the 99.99 percent stat of those who won’t see any difference, that is only of the algorithm is not applied fairly. I believe it will be close to 10-1 percent who should feel the algorithm in action. Again, it is the 10-15 percent who are active participants and make this site successful.
Rivkah
In my short online life of writing and marketing I have seen this issue popping up on many social bookmarking sites.Any site that has any type of user based voting system will always reach a point where, even if legitimate, those who dominate the standings will deter fresh faces from putting forth effort to an extent.
Some sites have such close knit groups that no matter how good the links you share are and despite your best efforts to integrate yourself and brand into the site it’s a seemingly pointless endeavor.
This makes a site become stagnant very quickly and lowers it’s validity in the eyes of the search engines in my opinion.You also end up with the superstar effect where no matter the quality of the link it gets voted up automatically.Then comes the constant changes to voting systems and algorithms in order to stop this from happening.It’s a never ending constant cycle that can be mind numbing.
Here is what I have proposed on many bookmarking sites that is the only way it would ever be fair to everyone.An internal voting system done by the people who run the site.The links are already scrutinized on here to see if they meet the standards so why not take it one step further and when a link is reviewed assess it a score.Rank them accordingly in their respective categories and have a limit as to how long they can remain on the so called hot list before they are archived to a regular listing. If it’s a quality link users still get the same benefits and it keeps the site looking fresh for the search engines.Win,win in my opinion!
I must say that despite the algorithm, the monopoly of people at the top has not diminished, actually it looks as if it has grown even stronger. Same people on Hot Topics, same voting blocks. Hmmm…