Greg Davies (aka cGt2099) posted this over at the Mixxing Bowl...check it out!

Mixx: The Ultimate Challenge

Tags: mixx, socialmedia

This is a follow-up to my last post "Come On Mixx"

That post gave a somewhat negative view on Mixx, which while that needed to come out, does not outweight the good that Mixx brings to the Social Media world. I'm not entirely sure when I joined Mixx, but I would say I joined late 2007. Since then I have been incredibly impressed with what Mixx has done, and have pretty much left Digg almost entirely to focus my attenion on and become part of the Mixx community. I have not given up on Mixx, and I have no intention of doing so, I still love Mixx and would reccommend it to anyone. So while "Come On Mixx" brought up the bad, I want to say why despite the bad, Mixx is still the place to be.

I think what makes Mixx what it is most, is the crew working behind the scenes: Kerry, Joe, Chris, Doug, Will, and everyone else. They legitimately care about what the users think of the site. Instead of just doing what they want and what they think looks or works best, they honestly want to know what WE, the users think and will work things out to make us happy. A perfect example is that right after they released the nested comments update, some users mentioned, and I agree with, that the nested comments stood out more over the parent comments. So what did Mixx do? They changed the look on them and they're now improved upon and not quite as more prevalent over the parent. The whole idea of truly listening to the users is probably what really makes Mixx stand out.

Mixx is also constantly pushing out new updates to the site. From the nested comments, to communities, groups, MixxMail, Kudos to comments, now being able to follow comment conversations, the list goes on. These new updates and abilities enhance the Mixx experience and the Social Media experience entirely. Let's go through a subset of all the things that Mixx has added to the system.

Communities

Mixx has added this community feature to pretty much be a "mini-mixx" where users can form communities and focus on a specific topic. These topics can pretty much be whatever the community admin desires, tech, news, environment, games, you name it. The community page can be customized and you can even set up for ads and be able to make some money off of it. This is what social media is about, sharing stories and discussing them, and communities make that even easier when you can use them to browse through stories of a more specific topic than standard tags and categories can allow. And the best part is of course that these communities use the same engine as Mixx does so they're just as powerful.

MixxMail

Not as new as other features but this feature gives users the ability to talk amongst themselves or in groups in what is pretty much a light e-mail system. If you want to share stories, submissions, thoughts, or just talk about this and that, the MixxMail system provides a great way for you to do so.

Comment Kudos

Now, similar to Digg, but different enough to be in my opinion better is the ability to give kudos to users' comments that are worthy of them. And each user can only give out 5 per day. This prevents for abuse of the system whereas Digg uses the up down votes on comments which are unmonitored and unlimited. This can lead to abuse of the system when something like this happens.

Breaking News

This one was added a while back. Pretty much if a story is what would be considered Breaking News, where its a big story like the Plane Crash in Spain yesterday, or someone famous unfortunately passing away, Supermixxers can mark is as breaking so that it appears on the front page sooner in its own side-section. To combat abuse, Mixx allowed for the need of 2 supermixxers to flag it as breaking before it will become breaking news. This is simply so that the big stories make their presence known sooner.

Your Mixx Page

While this may not seem like much, this is a great way for users to customize the Mixx home page so that they see what they want to see. Users can add tags, categories, subcategories, and users to their Your Mixx page to be given the stories and topics they want to see. The customization here is essential to Social Media...weed out the stuff you don't care too much about and focus on what you do.

There are countless other great things about Mixx but I think even with just this subset, you can see that the good strongly outweighs the bad. The crew behind Mixx are a great bunch and will continue to improve the site to make it better for all of us. I have faith that Mixx will get through this and become the site we all want it to be. I have no intention of leaving the site, because I still think its the best social media site out there. So Kerry, Joe, Doug, Will, Chris and everyone else, keep up the good work, and I apologize again if my last post seemed utterly harsh and/or hurt you, I respect you greatly and am always looking forward to what's new at Mixx.

Tags: socialmedia, mixx

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

This is sort of a followup to my post "Spammers Beware".

I recently found 4 or 5 users all called freevicodenonline or free{insert drug name here}online spamming on Mixx. This got me thinking. Spammers have been pushing drugs and perscription drugs and "cheap drugs" online through countless sources most notably the CH34P V14G4R4 emails I'm sure all of you have seen either in your inbox or your junk folder. These spammers have been doing this for so long it makes me wonder why they even bother anymore.

Seriously, who has not seen one of these emails offering cheap drugs, fake rolexes, or hell knows what else? This shit has been so rampant for so long, you wonder how many people actually pay attention to or fall for them. They've been around for so long people should know by now that these emails are complete and utter crap and anyone with 1/10th of a brain can see right through it.

Yet they continue to push their shit everywhere. E-Mails I can pretty much just ignore now as they find their way straight to the spam folder so I never really see them, but now these assholes seem to think that this time putting their shit on Mixx and social media sites will actually produce different results. I got news for them, no different results, no accomplishments, just wasting our time.

Good Riddance

Tags: socialmedia, spammers, mixx

Lately there's been a lot of Spam being submitted to Mixx, some even being made popular and onto the front page. I know many top Mixxers are pissed off at it and I'm one of them. Social Media/News sites are always prime targets so having some spam submitted has to be expected. But what's been going on at Mixx lately is well beyond that. Mixxers who have been around are even voting for some of this shit that gets submitted, some Supermixxers even. I don't know whether they're voting for it because they're part of some spam voting ring, whether they just are too lazy to pay attention to what they're voting on, or what, but that's fucking wrong.

Then there are the voting rings, people all linked together voting stuff up just to get their shit on the front page, submissions that probably wouldn't even get to 5 votes without the voting ring. I've seen evidence of it and voting rings HURT sites like Mixx. And the fucking spam voting rings are even worse. All of a sudden some porn video or some spam makes front page, you view it and 20 spammers all voted for it. Spam accounts solely there to just vote up spam (sock puppets if you will) to try to get it to the front page. I report it and there are 5 more votes for it also from spammers.

Then of course there are the revenge votes, I got many of my stories voted down yesterday by a few spammers and other jackasses in revenge for me voting down and reporting them for spam. And don't think revenge voting is limited to spammers. Normal users too are guilty of this. Assholes who get pissed off that someone downvoted ONE of their stories, take revenge by voting down EACH AND EVERY ONE of yours. Grow up people, one downvote isn't the end of the world. And of course you have those people who will downvote anything and everything that doesn't match up perfectly with their beliefs, the ones who feel that if you don't believe what they believe than you are wrong. I may not agree with everything everyone else believes in, hell I'm sure I don't, but you won't see me going around and just voting it down because of that reason alone.

Comments are another issue, leaving only comments like "great article", or "nice" do nothing but clog the comment stream. Once in a while is ok, but add some value to the conversation, don't just post comments. I'm not even going to get into the one Mixx user who happens to write 300 line comments that pretty much end up being off topic onto articles that don't conform to what he/she wants.

I know Bdog2g2, gbarberi, loup.dargent and others, including myself, yesterday were trying to go through Mixx and help get rid of the crap that's been building up and submitted to Mixx. I hate to say it but we showed very little mercy. We all like Mixx, and don't want to see it filled up with spam, so we decided to go on the offensive for a change. I can't speak for them personally, but I know I want Mixx back, the Mixx I saw when I first joined where there was a lot of conversation, and quality discussion over some of the crap that makes the front page.

So to any other Supermixxers out there, keep your eye out for the spam that gets posted...report it and note it to help keep shit off the front page, we don't need to see it.

I just want to end with one note.

Yesterday I downvoted some spam stories and reported a user for spamming. About 15 minutes later I get a MixxMail from him saying that he reported me and was gonna get me kicked off of Mixx, also saying that Mortalwind did so before and he got back anyway. He then also proceded to downvote every story I submitted over the last 2 months (I really don't feel like spending the time counting how many back were downvoted, suffice it to say, it was a LOT) Well when I got this, I just laughed and shrugged it off because I didn't do anything wrong, I'm simply going after the spammers who think Mixx is their stomping ground. It might be kind of jerkish to say, but I wish I could've seen the look on his face when he realized he just got the boot from Mixx (he was booted sometime in the evening yesterday).

Tags: mixx, spam, crap