Lately, I have to say I've been somewhat disappointed with Mixx. It's a great site with a great crew working behind the scenes, but with the spam issues, blind voting, and revenge voting, it seems that they may not be willing to push back hard enough against the growing problem.

For any who may not realize what blind voting is, its simply users voting on stories without actually paying attention to, or looking at what the story is. Its often done for reciprocal voting...an "I scratch your back you scratch mine" type of thing. People vote up other people's stories in hopes that the other user will then vote up theirs. Where Mixx is concerned, it could also be users trying to rack up Karma Points. This is especially bad when a lot of times these users are voting up complete and utter crap, spam, and hell knows what else. This is something that is not always apparent in every submission, but when you see users voting up "How to get cheap Viagara", its then apparent as to who they are. What Mixx needs to do is crack down on this more and dare I say it, go after the users who do blind vote. No one wants to see spam hitting the front page, and blind voters help this happen. I would actually go so far to say that maybe dock the user several hundred karma per blind vote or vote up on spam submissions, to maybe even temporarily to permenantly suspending user accounts if they are continuing to vote up spam. Now this could be problematic and potentially alienating users, but so long as the Mixx staff is open about it, letting the users know why their account is suspended, it may not be as bad as one might think. (On the dark side, Digg is INCREDIBLY tight-lipped when it comes with informing users why their account is suspended) Plus, the fewer blind votes, the less spam that gets promoted and the better the content that people will see. And face it, if new prospective users check out Mixx only to find spam on the front page, they're going to lose interest in checking more of Mixx out, which would mean losing a potential new user who would make the Mixx community proud. The Mixxing Bowl has a good thread naming names so check it out.

Mixx chooses to show the users who both voted up, and those who voted down submissions (Digg just shows diggs, not buries) and this I think helps make things more open in terms of identifying "bury brigades" as they're popularly called on Digg. This can lead to revenge voting where one user votes down all of someone else's submissions simply because that one person happened to vote down one of the other user's stories. I don't know what Mixx does for this if anything but again its something that Mixx should not tolerate and take head on with maybe the same reprocussions as I mentioned in the Blind Voter penalties. I know i've been hit several times by blind voters, mostly the spammers who I have been going after lately.

Then there's the spam problem. Social Media sites are going to get hit with Spam, thats a give-in, and Mixx has been pretty good with removing spam quickly once reported, but the obvious cheap pills-type spam is not the only type. I'm not going to name names, but one user who is great with this...you know what, the hell with it, I will name the user...CyberPhoenix. CyberPhoenix is a huge Linux fan which I can accept since I am a fan of Linux and open source as well. But this dude takes it to extremes. He/She makes fanboys look tame. Now this in itself isn't that big of an issue, only that he constantly submits anti-windows/microsoft articles filled with childish name-calling. But to make matters EVEN worse, if anyone posts a story that goes against Linux or Pro-Microsoft, he leaves like 300 line comments that are pretty much completely off-topic and spam themselves. To see what I mean, go to http://www.mixx.com/users/cyberphoenix/comments and you can see the crap he leaves as comments. i'm sorry, this is SPAM and should be treated as such. You want to leave a 300 line comment? Fine, keep it on topic and make it meaningful. Why Mixx really isn't doing anything about this is beyond me, apparently he/she was suspended briefly a while ago, but apparently has not learned his/her lesson. StandardsDT said it perfectly

Stop spamming other articles. Keep irrelevant content out of others stories. Some people are ASP.NET programmers and this might help them. We get it you hate Microsoft, this does not mean you have to ruin a submission for others. Spamming is not permitted on mixx. Your comment has been reported.

This kind of stuff also needs to be looked at by the Mixx crew and acted upon when necessary.

Voting rings, while harder to determine, are also on Mixx and I can name 2 users who are most definitely part of a rather large one: Sunita and Windows. While real evidence is needed to do something, these 2 are either paid submitters or part of a ring...or both. This should also be looked into and acted up if such is indeed the case.

I realize that some of the actions against certain problem users may sound steep, harsh, and could possibly cause some alienation, but I know I am not alone in these thoughts, and that some of the biggest and best users on Mixx agree with some or all of my thoughts on what needs to be done. In the end I think we would end up with a good Social Media site with MUCH better content. And let's face it, for social sites, content is king. Get better content, and you'll draw in more users and generate traffic.

I want to apologize if anyone thinks I'm being a little too harsh towards the crew at Mixx. They are a great team and I'm always excited to see the new stuff they add to the site. I'm simply suggesting that maybe more drastic actions are needed to combat these issues. And anyone in the Mixx crew is free to contact me if you want to talk to about this.

***UPDATE***

Make sure to read my latest entry "The Good Outweighs the Bad" because as bad as this may sound, the good that Mixx is trumps and overcomes what is mentioned here.

Tags: mixx, socialmedia