I originally sent an e-mail to feedback@comicne.ws but that bounced back to me. So, I’m going to post this here and hope that someone with some clout there will read this and do something - plus, I’m sure a lot of people on there will agree with me. I’m sure this might anger some people, put others in the defensive, but I really don’t want to see a good thing go to waste.
I was an early adopter of the site ComicNe.ws and I loved using it early on. If you’ve never used the site I’ll let the site explain itself to you:
The Comics News Tracker (CNT) is all about you, the user. In today’s Web 2.0 terms, CNT is a user driven, social content Web site. What that means is you, the community, decide what makes it onto this Web site. Everything on the CNT Web site is submitted by the CNT community. After you submit your content, it’s held in a queue and other members of the CNT community will read your story and vote on it if they like it. If your story receives enough votes, it’ll be catapulted to the front page of the Web site where everyone will see it.
Yes, it is another Digg knockoff that seems to be running Pligg but it has the right idea: target a niche - in this scenario the comic book industry. It used to be a great site: interesting stories, you could promote your own site through there by selectively posting things, and people were generally friendly. In short, I loved it.
Unfortunately, the site doesn’t feel the same anymore. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment this happened, but lately it feels like the site is dying and being deluged by spammers. There are a few problems with the site right now:
- The community is dwindling. Augie (while you are at it, add his personal site to your bookmarks) and other CBR writers stopped submitting things to the site and made a large portion of quality threads - mostly because as CBR writers/editors, they were “in the know”. Plus, other members that always added to the site aren’t submitting much either. The front page is ancient right now. And why is starting to become pretty clear…
- You see, spam has taken the site over. The main abuser right now is robbo, who has managed to clog up the site’s que with nothing but giveaways and practically every link to his site Comics2Film. Just how bad is it? Check out the que, try counting how many stories aren’t from Comics2Film. I bet you won’t hit double digits until you are deep into the que. And the thing is, C2F isn’t a bad site - it is interesting and you can find a lot of current news on there. But if I wanted to read everything on the site I’d add the RSS feed or I’d just visit it. As someone who operates a site, I feel there is a certain ethic when it comes to promoting on a social networking site: you submit things that other people will find interesting and don’t overdo it. There isn’t anything wrong with self-promotion, it just needs to be done in moderation.
- Downvoting something doesn’t seem to do anything. How many times do the users have to vote down some random webcomic before it is removed from the que? I’ve tried just downvoting all the crap away, but it doesn’t disappear to the end of the que… it just stays there. Even after people have been voting it into oblivion it is still there.
The main page is a month old, all the “action” is in the que. And the que is full of crap. I can’t get rid of the crap. Where do I go? Away. I stop coming back. I reappear every once in a while only to find even more crap. I don’t spend as much time as I used to spend on the site, and that is unfortunate. But like they said in their own about page, the site is about me. The user.
Boiling Point Internet/CBR/someone, please do something about the site. You had a great idea, and it was clearly working, all it needs is a little love.
4 responses so far ↓
Robbo // Aug 9, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Heya,
Noticed your post on comicne.ws and then this one here. I thought I’d chime in here since you call me out by name as an “abuser”.
I don’t quite get posting links from my site constitutes abuse of comicne.ws
Jonah invited me to beta test the thing and expressly stated that I certainly self-promote by posting links to my site.
And, contrary to what you state above, I’m hardly posting links to “everything on the site”. I’ve only posted links to articles that are written primarily and specifically by C2F staffers.
In fact, Ive rarely been posting more than one link per day. This past week, the usage has been much heavier as we’ve just returned from Comic-Con and have several exclusive news items to offer readers. But even then, I’ve been posting no more than five links. But, of course, the site usually publishes 10-20 new stories a day.
So, all I’m doing is calling attention to stories I think are interesting to people.
This seems to be the very purpose of comicne.ws or digg…to call attention to stories of POTENTIAL interest to the community.
Then THE COMMUNITY decides whether or not it’s interesting.
The only reason the queued area seems C2F-heavy is because nobody else is posting news items.
My presumption is, that once Comicne.ws attains a brisk level of traffic there will be plenty of news items posted on a daily basis, and my 1-5 items won’t offend you so.
And there will be an actual community to decide what’s cool, fun, newsworthy or whatever.
Sami // Aug 9, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I have no qualm with your site or your site’s content, I read most of the news entries. I just think that you need to slow your roll about constantly linking to everything and be selective. It makes the site feel spammed when it is overloaded with one site. As a submitter you need to look at how the community responds to your submissions - do they like it, do they hate it, or are they apathetic towards it? If they hate it or are apathetic about it, stop linking to those types of stories. People clearly aren’t voting on everything you are submitting - especially the giveaways - and yet you still keep posting links to it? If you want a good example of a submitter, look at the types of stories augiedb submitted. I used to submit things from everywhere into the que, but now I don’t see the point when it is going to be bumped down a few pages because theres another 7 entries this week about some DVD being given away.
Great White Snark // Aug 9, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Aside from singling out one person who can’t really be blamed for trying to promote his site (even if he is going a bit overboard), you make some interesting points.
I’ve done some freelancing work for Jonah, and I sent him a link to your article since you had trouble getting through to Feedback.
Sami // Aug 10, 2007 at 6:15 am
I just used robbo as an example because he was the most high profile example. There is plenty of crap in the que and CBR isn’t doing much to cull it. They haven’t fixed the code so the community can cull it either.
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