(5)
Earlier this month, Sphinn (disclosure, I am extremely involved with the company behind Sphinn) dropped user voting on stories and the industry revolted. It was a big deal for a couple days and now you don't hear much about it. So I felt it was a good time to start up the controversy, especially since I am offline right now (scheduled post).
Back then, I posted a poll asking if removing voting from Sphinn essentially kills the site? I'll tell you that I responded, "not sure," but most people are confident. 70% said either Sphinn is dead without voting or they don't care either way, which may be the same thing - Sphinn is dead.
Personally, I don't know. Here are the 150 or so responses:
- 40% said Sphinn Is Dead
- 30% said Don't Care
- 15% said Sphinn Is NOT Dead
- 8% said they are Not Sure
- Rest said "Other answer..."
Most the other comments said that Sphinn "was already dead." But my favorite comment, although it makes me sad, was "I bet this gets more voted than the best Sphinn today."
Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.
Note: This post was written September 21st and scheduled to go live today.
Update: On September 22nd, Sphinn announced the Sphinn 3.0 changes, which make non-voting official, amongst other things.
Comments:
Danny Sullivan
09/24/2010 03:26 pm
We're not dead. I'm going to respectfully disagree with the 60 people who voted that way in your poll, versus the 2,400 people who came to the site yesterday, our first full day of the new format :)
Rob Woods
09/24/2010 07:44 pm
I don't think it's dead but I certainly look at it differently. Now it's a content aggregator like many other SEO blogs, but since I know and trust many of the editors I'll still watch what gets published. I'll likely visit the actual site less often however. Before I felt that if I saw a good article that was worth voting on I should do that in order to help good stuff get to the top and to give the author some positive feedback. Now I'll be more likely just to scan the article headlines in Google Reader and mark any that look interesting for reading later.
mugshot
09/24/2010 08:02 pm
Sphinn is only "dead" to those who can no longer abuse the voting system :)
LauraC
09/27/2010 03:18 am
I get both sides. The fact that many in the industry voted on certain posts helped me sort the grain from the chaff so to speak. Can the Sphinn editorial team not maintain the site content integrity and editorial placement rights but retain voting regardless?
LauraC
09/27/2010 03:30 am
Just had a thought to substantiate - like SEOmoz does on YOUmoz... they retain full rights and push to front page if it warrants. Clearly not the same, but the editorial and placement functionality is available similarily with a little work, no?