The BloggingZoom Bury Brigade Is Coming

It's inevitable. The BloggingZoom Bury Brigade is coming and there's nothing you or I can do to stop it. Before I tell you why BloggingZoom (BZ) is at risk, I'll explain how Digg already has this problem.

The Digg Bury Brigade

I first learned of Digg's Bury Brigade through HTMKSteve's articles, "The top 11 things I have learned from Digg" and "The truth about Digg's bury brigade". I didn't read them, of course, until after Steve submitted my article, "Downloading Pirated Anything Is NOT Illegal", and my blog was subsequently digg-slammed and inaccessible for hours.

If you ever wonder why your Digg submission (if you use Digg) gets buried just before it hits the Digg home page, the Digg Bury Brigade is responsible. Sadly, it appears that Kevin Rose and his cronies (I mean staff) have no intention of fixing the problem. After all, as long as the money keeps rolling in, they couldn't care less.

Is BloggingZoom Doomed?

Whenever a website service, especially a social website service, gets attacked (BZ was recently hacked), it's the first sign that it's getting extremely popular. The next stage in the game is (all puns aside) people gaming the system.

I thought nothing about this until the new interface was put in place and I saw that it included the "bury" feature. Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely necessary in order to keep the spammers at bay. I already buried 2 obvious spam posts and I'm sure other zoomers have buried some other spam submissions. The problem begins when a group of individuals team up to bury legitimate submissions so that one of their submissions can make it to the BZ home page.

Court's recent announcement at BZ, "BloggingZoom Growth And 15 Zooms", may be the impetus for the scum of the Earth to make their first appearances.

What Can Be Done About It?

If you see something suspicious happening, like submissions with a lot of zooms not making it to the home page, it could be the BloggingZoom Bury Brigade in action. Use the contact form at BZ as soon as you possibly can.

Unlike Kevin Rose and his cronies, I have faith in Victor Franqui and Courtney Tuttle being responsive and expedient in nipping the problem in the bud. Based on my past experience, the BloggingZoom Bury Brigade is definitely coming. It's only a question of when.

February 7th, 2008 By RT Cunningham | Categories: Internet | Tags: BloggingZoom, Digg, services, social websites, submissions |

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hari on February 7th, 2008 at 5:38 pm (Reply)

I have a great suggestion to BZ.

Remove the "bury"/negative voting feature.

Let the admins deal with obvious spam. This works well on regular online discussion forums and communities. I don't see a problem such a setup.

hari's last blog post..The Make Money Offline Seminar

RT Cunningham on February 7th, 2008 at 7:07 pm (Reply)

I almost agree. They don't have the staff to do that right now. The "bury" feature helps at this point. Perhaps if BZ starts bringing in the dough, it won't be necessary.
2. hari on February 7th, 2008 at 9:31 pm (Reply)
  
  They can use volunteer moderators like they do in most forums. Of course, I'll be only too glad to offer my services. er… no, just kidding.
  hari's last blog post..The Make Money Offline Seminar
3. RT Cunningham on February 7th, 2008 at 10:16 pm (Reply)
  
  Umm…Hari…umm… the bury feature IS a form of moderation. It's just easier to abuse than other forms.
  2. hari on February 8th, 2008 at 12:41 am (Reply)
    
    Moderation is best left to moderators. Not to the general members of a community. Community moderation usually never works.
    
    harishankar's last blog post..The Make Money Offline Seminar

Mike Olbinski on February 7th, 2008 at 10:11 pm (Reply)

That bury button was there before the new design was installed, so it hasn't been a problem yet, but I guess I can see your point.

I think Vic and Court will be monitoring the number of bury's a post gets and certainly determine if people are being snakes.

On a side note, I've never much cared about hitting the frontpage of BZ, although it does seem like a good place to be…the main point should be trying to use it to bring you more traffic through keyword descriptions, etc.

Mike Olbinski's last blog post..31 Days of Oscar on TCM

RT Cunningham on February 7th, 2008 at 10:19 pm (Reply)

Really? I didn't see it before the change and I actually looked for it.

You're right. Hitting the front page isn't really important. The problem is that buried posts won't do you any good at all, and I'm sure it's designed that way to stop the search engine spamming before it makes a difference.

Frank C on February 7th, 2008 at 10:33 pm (Reply)

The bury button was there before. I used it to mark a few obvious spam entries.

But, like they're getting fond of saying around here as they lay entire departments off, "It isn't personal, it's just business".
Frank C's last blog post..Site Review: Credit Karma

RT Cunningham on February 7th, 2008 at 11:10 pm (Reply)

And big business it is.

You know, I watched a manual comment spammer post two comments today (via the spy feature of Clicky). He/she actually clicked the button to push it through the spam filter. Dirty rotten scoundrel… I hope he likes having Akismet munching on those URLs.

Home Insurance - Hometown Quotes on February 7th, 2008 at 11:19 pm (Reply)

Just because a network is "social" does not mean a small group of participants can dictate the actions of another for personal gain. I no longer Digg because of the rigged system and do not participate on any social website where there is a possibility of being manipulated by a group with other intentions.

The obvious failures of the largest successes in this space will only cause better more efficient social sites to spring forth. Hopefully, BZ will be one of those.

RT Cunningham on February 7th, 2008 at 11:34 pm (Reply)

I can't add anything to that, really I can't. I plan to stay involved in BZ as much as possible because I see it as the best thing going for bloggers right now.

Tia R. on February 8th, 2008 at 4:03 am (Reply)

I think Digg is almost useless due to the bury brigade. What they did was turn a potentially great community into an elitist high school closed group. I dont even hang out there anymore.

RT Cunningham on February 8th, 2008 at 4:13 am (Reply)

Hi Tia,

I still have an account because I digg for other people. I don't care what they do with submissions for my site.

Don't get me started on their auto-bury list.

Comedy Plus on February 8th, 2008 at 5:18 am (Reply)

For the most part I'm sorry I've signed up for so many different things. This being one of them. It seems some of these places and communities are rife with those up to no good. I can just do without them and have vowed to pass on all the new trends that hit the web. They have just worn me down. Have a great day RT.
Comedy Plus's last blog post..Thursday Thirteen - 131st Edition

Vic on February 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am (Reply)

I really think we will be able to manage this from not happening mostly because of you folks. BZ users are mostly mature people vs Digg which is a kid playground. Since day one we have never really had a problem with the Bury feature and it helps us as to report a spam post the problem is I will not know that the post is spam until it gets fully buried and then the system marks it for us. Blogging Zoom right now to my opinion is way to relax I think even a few spam post have gotten by because BZ users are so cool they really do not like to bury anybodies post instead they will just not Zoom is.

I can assure you folks if we ever start having non controllable issues with the bury feature we would remove it completely all it is right now is an advance warning system for spam post.

I so much appreciate this type of post because it keeps the community on there toes trying to make sure we have quality control.

Vic's last blog post..5 Steps To Make Your Blog Attractive To Advertisers : Blogging For The Money

hari on February 8th, 2008 at 10:18 am (Reply)

It is good to have faith in your users, but as an experienced online forum user, I know that once a board becomes popular, members tend to form cliques.

I think you have the right idea about removing the negative vote feature if the issue gets out of hand because I am really not a fan of any negative voting system.

I think a simple "report spam" feature which just alerts the admins to potential spam while not affecting anything else is a good compromise.

hari's last blog post..The Make Money Offline Seminar

Ray on February 9th, 2008 at 8:10 pm (Reply)

I believe that things like "bury" or "karma" have long since gone past their sell-by date. They are very old school and always assumes the best of your users. When a site had a small core of users who all came to know each other, it worked fine. Now that it's all global and everyone is a stranger, it is useless.

If Digg, BZ, Technorati, whoever want to be big businesses (and I wish them luck if they do) they have to think like a business and hire people to do the dirty work. Yes, it isn't perfect, but at least you have someone to go to if you feel slighted.

hari on February 9th, 2008 at 9:07 pm (Reply)

That's why I prefer the "report" spam button on forums, because only the admins and the mods know what is marked as spam and what is not.

You see, give the users the power to report potential spam, but not to judge what is spam and what is not.

The ultimate decision should be by responsible staff, not by a clique of immature community members.

hari's last blog post..The problem with Political Correctness in language