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Nanotech Musings

critical-path-forward-pass-start-zero-one-2

Nothing is worse for systems like
Digg
and
Reddit
than repetitive, mediocre content. These networks are designed to magnify
the efficiency of the Internet by taking excellent content — regardless of
source — and promoting it through impartial democracy.

Ultimately, the goal is to minimize the time it takes someone to get up to
speed on the most original/interesting content within a given area of focus,
be it technology, politics, or whatever. When done correctly, the concept is
quite beautiful.

Spamming vs. Contributing

The system breaks down horribly, however, when these communities fail to
understand the difference between submitting original content and
blogspamming. Many are confused about what blogspamming actually is:
it’s not posting a link to something on your own blog or website (if
it’s decent and original, that’s called “contributing”). Blogspamming is
actually very specific (I had the Digg staff spell it out for me) — here are
the requirements:

  1. Find interesting content somewhere on the Internet

  2. Post that content on your own website

  3. Post the link to your website rather than the original source

This is blogspamming, and it’s every bit as evil as people make it out to
be. But it should not be confused with people posting
their own original content. That practice, i.e. sharing ideas, is
what makes the Internet so wonderful.

The Idea Bazaar

When it comes to sharing ideas, the Internet should be viewed much like a
traditional, open marketplace — where people bring the artwork, pottery,
clothing, woodwork, etc. for public review. It’s like open-mic night in
front of billions of people.

This is what the Internet is about, and I think Digg, Reddit, and
their successors should be more open to this philosophy. We shouldn’t
penalize people for offering their own original content to the world just
because they submitted it themselves. It’s far more genuine to do that,
after all, than to artificially manufacture a third-party submission (which
so many people do).

Communities that rely on a constant flow of quality content need to adopt a
mantra of judging offerings based on only two things:
originality and merit. Any would-be resource that fails to grasp this
concept (or later forgets it) is doing its users a disservice by
discouraging would-be contributors from participating.:

May 23, 2025

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