Buff’d is like Digg or Reddit, but for WOW. It’s awesome! Still in beta (they say they officially launch July 1st) but it’s working mostly for now. I get errors when I try commenting, but I can vote just fine!
Things I like:
- They offer separate RSS feeds for overall info and by category
- Someone already submitted one of my guides there! I know, who’d have though people actually read my drivel?
- Unlike other link lists, the content here is purely driven by popularity
[ed: Art from Buff'd dropped by in the comments and clarified a few things, see below for details about how they plan on dealing with trolls]
Things I don’t like:
- Digg
- Wow.com comment trolls
You see where the problem lies? If these guys can keep the troll background radiation to an acceptably low level, this will completely change the way I read. If they can’t (trolls are surprisingly well organized and hard to filter), it will degrade to the point that Digg has and become unusable.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
Euripides
jurgwena
lemli
eidotrope
pherra
femaledwarf
Hi Euripides! And, thanks for the post!
Thought I would pop in and give a mention of how we are working to keep the spammers/trolls away.
This is our arsenal:
1. We use Akismet and Anti-spam IP lists;
2. We will be using email registration and captcha;
3. Our algorithm software will begin to screen out duplicate content;
4. We have admin and moderators who will catch anything that gets by the first line of defense; and
5. The community has the “nerf it!” button to down vote any spam/troll.
We really appreciate your feedback.
Art from Buff’d
Hi Art, the trolls I refer to would pass all of those measures. They are the people who whine eloquently about how something is so imbalanced that we should all stop playing, give new bloggers a hard time, and form voting blocks to have a larger say in a democratic news environment. Do you have anything that will help with this? The last one is particular hard to manage- so much so that Digg considers it the “secret sauce”.
Yes, we do understand.
We plan on dealing with that via a karma (or, as we call it, points) system that takes into account a number of factors to calculate the value of a vote. A user’s vote is assigned a certain number of points based on their actions. A story reaching the front page won’t be solely based on number of votes but rather on the stories accumulated points.
This algorithm attempts to stop block voting, constant negative voting and other troll-type activities. It’s our secret sauce.
OK, thanks :) I’ll amend my post!