The pattern in democratic news communities
I have noticed an increased number of articles with the only aim of being featured at a big site and getting traffic to them (and thus people clicking in their banners). Usually the titles match one of the following patterns:
- Top (number) (things | for doing something). Examples: top 10 tips for becoming a better programmer, top 15 things you should do before 30, top 5 programming languages… etc.
These pages are usually poor in actual content, mainly being a rushed compilation of some items for the selected theme. Most of the times, the recommendations are outdated, like for example, tips for object oriented php using php4 syntax (when php5 is way better and that's what everybody willing to do OOP with php should learn). - (Apple | Microsoft | whatever big company) + (DRM's | Sueing each other | Open source | Market shares). Examples: Apple wins 10% market share, Microsoft creates open source license…
Usually these articles are simple copy & paste from slashdot or theregister and do not add any depth to the topic. Also they tend to appear in a page bloated with ads, where 10% of the page is the actual content and the rest is pure useless crap (specially when the crap is targeted at customers from an specific country). - (PHP / Python / Ruby On Rails / CSS / etc) tutorial for beginners. Examples are obvious. These articles are just a rewriting of the first chapter of the official documentation, sometimes they go further and simply copy and paste it. No added value. Crap.
- Let's talk about (something). Examples: What is Ubuntu? The real history of Ubuntu. The GPL. What is the cathedral and the bazaar?
These are usually taken from wikipedia, making use of the open license it has, but without giving any credit back. Anyone which just happens to read the article, might attribute the authorship of it to the blog owner, and not to whoever wrote it at wikipedia. Apart from being stupid, this is a shame. People who do this should be condemned to public disconnection from internet for life!
Basically this brings me to one conclusion: when you become very specialized in one field, these communities become useless. They might be interesting for casual internet users, but not for "professional" ones. I personally find more useful content in del.icio.us than in digg & co, as it's easier to filter with the tags and all that.
jon
20060920
Omg, sole you should stop analyzing all these things or you'll end absolutely mad.
In my small experience I use to tag every information on the internet as crap and then I try to find the root of that information. In programing languages, I use to go to the "official" site, but with every other theme, I prefer libraries. Everything is in the books, says and old saying.
humphr3y
20060922
Es que delicious mola…
blackpawn
20060923
haha i made my first visit to digg last night so reading this post cracked me up. you totally nailed it.
sole
20060923
@jon: obviously going to the official site is the best idea, but sometimes with very new topics (for example with ruby on rails) there's quite a lot of information scattered in blogs, etc, and not in the official site (unless you feel like browsing the usual wiki).
Books… yeah they are cool but not practical for programming - I don't feel like copying and pasting pieces of code anymore :D
@humphrey: yeah I added your account to my delicious network - I'll send you a link one day ;)
@blackpawn: glad it wasn't just me who had that impression :D But you didn't experience the USA Ads experience, which is what I get when seeing ads of north-american companies, marketed to north-american customers only. Seems that they don't use any IP2Country script - it would be more profitable for them (if I clicked on the banners, of course).
The perversion of popularity ranks - soledad penadés
20070717
[...] Some time after, lots of people discovered about the site, it got popular, and people began to submit lots of content only for the sake of increasing traffic to their websites. It was when we began to get bombarded with the advice of so-called experts advising on how to title a blog post with the only purpose of inducing people to click it, bookmark it and all that, and so we ended with these symptoms. [...]