Here Comes The Neighborhood...

That was exactly the quote I'd cut and my reaction as well. Nicely done Calvin and frineds, those were the two biggies. It sounds like a heck of a plan, just kidding, it sounds perfect, thanks!

I'm happy about this. This will make a few things a bit easier.

Sounds like exactly some of the things that I have been hoping for would happen and a excellent move to make Newsvine more of a community again. Sounds like all the right stuff. Thank you !

Just about to say that myself.

Sorry Andrew, I guess my OS runs faster then yours ☺

::ducks and covers as REAL religious war hits newsvine::

Thanks for this Calvin. Just while we are here this might sound like silly question but is there a way to stop people posting articles or seeds to your groupwhich have absolutely nothing to do with the group. Other than monitoring it several times a day & deleting them ?

Tell the people to stop. If they continue, boot them from the group.

Tell the people to stop. If they continue, boot them from the group.

Tee hee, quick and effective. You'll have no future in our politics with those policies!

Thank you for that, Pamela! Best compliment I've had in quite some time.

So you want US to for example have a look at the front page and see a MSNBC grabbed thread with 7 votes and 150+ comments and one non anon avatar and just go in there and educate the masses as to how the game is played?

No thank you, that was my first newsvine experience this morning and each one of those is another reason to simply write it off as a failed experiment, the admins of want us to actively manage against a tide they initiated.

My experience is that more and more is being asked of less and less.

But you know, I spent time yesterday preparing to write about the greenhouse and what it subtly did in creating the first of many tiered graduations, greenhouse, vinacity, leaderboard, votes, comments, all that.

But after 6 hours with hard core pic swinging and then 2 surfing with the turtles I recognised that really, it doesn't matter. you own it, it's your baby.

It doesn't matter.

Having the front page front center filled with gibbering monodimensional first timers, some pro some not. Hardly my problem really.

You spoke of looking more closely at the cultural aspect, I suggest you do that.

This site used to be very well designed in that respect and you may well survive this force feeding that is happening now.

I'll be the first to congratulate you if your efforts to supercharge the immune system for no extra cost works out.

and the last to say I told you so because I simply won't be here.

I trawl through many RSS feeds, Newsvine gave me an audience and a place to collate some of them.

and a culture.

Which has changed to the degree that is would be customary at this point to go into a long political scree using language that designated my reading age at 11 or 12 about now.

I already did but I CARE about my freinds....

so start trawling their actual emails rather than the inhouse version. get their details in your address book and you have the best that newsvine has provided.

"protect" foundational integrity

There will have to be a whole NV article explaining that in detail so that it gets through to the general masses! poor misguided masses...

If you visit the welcome and help groups you'll find user tools. We self police and spotting something out of bounds is best remedied by using the ! beside the comment vote. It registers a complaint against a specific comment so staff can go look. Welcome to Newsvine and enjoy. :~)

You missed my point, Pamela, but thanks for the welcome. i guess you didn't fully read what i wrote, or maybe i was unclear. i've been here for a while and have enjoyed many aspects of it. I've used the ! til i damn near wore it out. Thanks for listening. :-(

Oh, my bad, i thought that this was the discussion at hand! Carry on with your discussion and group, Calvin Tang!

Lets presume Cheryl used specific example's to illustrate a general point. Lets also recognise that she has admitted to using the tools given us to report racism as she's come across it. Lets also admit that the concerns she has about those tools not being adequate are not possibly what you want to hear.

My question would be, what pre-emptively can be done to combat the ugly side effects of throwing the greenhouse from it's past position as a conduit to it's present position where experimentally we are collectively the greenhouse.

I no longer have politics as a module on my front page, the gaming was getting too overt for my liking.

We are heading towards the peak of political high stakes junkyard dog ugliness fueled by legitimate human beings but also fueled undeniably by vested interests whose divide and conquer rancorous baying is designed in part to exhaust legitimate conversation.

There are newsvine members who transparently have multiple seeds and articles towards very specific political ends. presumably their pageviews are equal to everyone elses.

I don't envy the problems you have regarding maintaining the culture, I do see that increasingly the newsvine participants are being asked to shoulder more of the load in that regard which, for me, an admitted reactionary, is quite hard to digest.

It seems to me that you are substituting the already acknowledged 'mynameis-567392' label with something else equally formal but prettier. And asking us nicely to deal with it. Or keep dealing with it.

I know I'm hardly the best example of "diplomacy and patience" but I do ask myself sometimes before I waste moments of my life lancing the boils of premeditated nuanced stupidity why I bother.

My answer would be that it's evidence that I care about the unique culture that seems constantly being gamed. And your solution is a symbol and advice to be nice.

Which I can be.

It's evident that since the buyout many of the 'niceness' and 'fairness' pillars have got exhausted and left or at least recognised it's not in their interests to donate their time as they did.

There has to be some righteously cynical algorithmic evidence available to you that shows the arc of participation here. Those of us at the front end of the bellcurve are I would suspect slowly declining while the responsibility for the ethos increases.

It's interesting.

Calvin,

Newbies are great. Even a lot of newbies can be great, but when those Newbies are flooding into a thread where the column owner is himself a newbie, all hell breaks loose. Take a look at the five threads I linked below in comment #7. You'll see mayhem, because no one is moderating them.

If you chose to separate those seeds away from Newsvine-at-large as I suggested in comment 7.2, that might not be too bad. But if not, it might now be time for community moderators.

sorry, I know the way I express some things are vague to everyone but me, the side effect is sometimes it works well.
By pillars i mean specific newsvine unofficial regulators, people who enjoyed cooling things down, mediating, offering olive leaves, educating. I've noticed some of these folk's presence waning is what I was trying to say. My point is that bellcurve of tentative then intense then waning participation , I suspect, is a given quantifiable variable. Killfile's #2 at present because #1 has done what many of us have and submerged themselves to a degree that cannot be maintained without some attrition somewhere.

I do try to avoid conflict, as hard as that may be to believe, I try, successfully sometimes to simply not invest myself in conflict that will remain a constant in any social amalgam.

But sometimes i do engage, I return in kind. I'm constantly working on that because for all my gnarlyness I'm here because it's civil.

As you might remember I spent a few days a week or so back trawling through the archives [and would still like access to the post aug 07 content that has been unavailable if poss]

I compiled various categories, 'insults' and 'argy-bargy' being two that I found some spectacular examples of. I'm working at not needing to do the written cagefighting so much. Just so you know. :)

I hesitate to segregate people based on how long they've been here.

They're already segregated. That's what the Greenhouse is, after all.

Yes, I do see some disorganized threads on new users' pages. But then again, I see some very disorganized threads on veteran users' pages too!

Calvin, we're talking about these gigantic threads that happen when a flood of new people come in through MSNBC. Pretty much every one is a train wreck, including the 5 I linked to below, which are all current. If you want to see one that isn't, though, just look in my column. A couple of weeks ago I seeded the story about that California Supreme Court overturning the ban on gay marriage. It became the largest seed in Newsvine history with almost 1500 comments.

And it wasn't a train wreck. No flame wars, only a few deleted comments (deleted by Emily), the conversation stayed organized, in threads. Why? Because I stayed there and moderated it. I told people how to use the 'reply' button. I linked to the CoH. I warned against personal attacks.

These instantly generated accounts that come from MSNBC are a problem because no one is moderating them.

Calvin, you cannot be serious. Equating even todays transparently political new gaming with the whole, 'he's from africa' talking point repeated at nauseam by newbs who all follow the same MO with ramshackle threads of the past is frankly simply politics on your part IMO.

You are denying that there is undeniable evidence of deceit and abuse by political operatives here for whatever reasons. One short term one i can think of as i mentioned earlier is that their pageviews are worth as much to you as anyones.

It's already got to the stage where the promotion of derisive political white noise is such that there is Absolutely no difference between this site and any other similarily infected vehicle.

which is sad and would never had happened if you hadn't for economic reasons, done away with the greenhouse and effectively turned the political section of newsvine into MSNBC's @!$%#.

Which is harshly put and I apologise, [went for a drive]

Fact is though what i find hardest to digest about all this is that although I agree that constructive criticism and suggestions give you practical options to consider and perhaps implement what you are in fact asking for is solutions to problems that You created. So you keep to the high ground and encourage the positive without ever really acknowledging that You created these problems, You changed the basic premise by which people learnt to participate here and now you want suggestions?

Here's a real easy self evident solution, bring the greenhouse back to front and center. Preserve the culture and have that the primary marketing focus of the site. Make the site unique, far calmer and worth the effort of the initial hurdles. You cannot herd cats using fancy signposts cleverly rendered, can't be done, you need a corral. You have discarded yours for whatever reasons.
The results are all too obviously negatively evident.

You would know far better than I the collective manhour tally involved in participants on this site.

With the new added numbers that's undoubtedly grown. But equally evident is that the quality has plummeted. I had no real fear of the NYT influx because there seemed to me to be an equal force in operation actively engaging. What's happening now is that newsvine's been fundamentally structurally changed and the concept of "hey guys, we changed this thing and now are looking for ideas to replace the thing we changed because, well, um, hey stay positive." I personally find disengenuos , but that's my problem.

you can blame the political season, you can blame whatever pleases you but, again with longevity as my prime concern here, you've made some fantastic decisions but there have been the occasional bad one. facing that instead of looking for code solutions instead of sociological solutions [which was always the most impressive thing about this site to me, You guys were just so sociologically hip and canny] would seem to me to be more constructive.

sadly you don't work under self imposed pressures any more. I think it's wise to allow the cognitive surplice of the membership to mull over your difficulties but at the end of the day I feel that in this instance you are looking for bandaids to apply to a self inflicted wound.

Once again, you deserve better than me getting ugly because I'm upset and I apologise.

On the subject of the Greenhouse, one thing to understand is that the Greenhouse has *never* been used as a way to separate "good writers" from "bad writers". It's simply a sieve for spammers, advertisers, and other people who have no interest in using the site for anything close to its intended purpose.

Yes. Like a great number of the people coming in these days through MSNBC, who have no intention of using Newsvine for it's intended purpose. They don't even know it's intended purpose. Instead, they simply leave racist comments like this, or worse, because after all, they couldn't care less about Newsvine.

So why not start them in the Greenhouse? Give them a week or two to get used the place, see how it works. If they stick around, and they're not spammers, trolls, etc., let them out.

Being in the Greenhouse doesn't prevent you from commenting on Newsvine. It never did. It prevents you from putting links in your comments, but that's it.

Then one could ask, should there be a few more restrictions on new users? You can't seed links until you have commented X amount of times for example? ( Reasoning for that is hopefully by then, new users will have a better understanding of Newsvine )

I have work to do, Thanks Mike for your time, I will address the greenhouse after work as I think you glossed over it bigtime, it's not simply a linkage denied sub category, I'm frankly surprised you'd try to pass it off as such. I'll get back to this in 8/12 hours or so, should give me time to get my ducks in order . I have already spent a bit of time marveling at what the greenhouse represents in sociological terms.

Your first paragraph, yes people are instinctively adverse to change. Got it.

your third point, well you'll have to excuse me but I think that's directed at your superiors rather than me. My point about self imposed pressures was peripheral at best. You worry that bone just as vigorously as you need to. You yourself admit to the earlier days being less pressured so your adversarial point is kinda lost on me.

Then one could ask, should there be a few more restrictions on new users? You can't seed links until you have commented X amount of times for example? ( Reasoning for that is hopefully by then, new users will have a better understanding of Newsvine )

Problem is that flies in the face of the point of this integration. What the "discuss on Newsvine" button is supposed to do is allow an MSNBC user to discuss the article... even if no one here is doing that yet.

And more problematically.... should it be barred from the front page (and all the discussion from MSNBC.com go to an unmoderated column) just because an MSNBC user found it first?

And what if the link on MSNBC.com only becomes available when the seed/article is available on Newsvine?

I'm not saying it is the perfect solution. Just tossing the idea out there. :) Like with anything of course, we need to look at what would be most important. Do we want to try and keep the Newsvine community from being bogged down by floods of new users where some won't fully utilize Newsvine? Or is it more important to make it easier for new users to discover Newsvine with the hope that it will grow bigger and faster? Will this integration really threaten the diversity here on Newsvine?

There is a lot to think about.

Dennis pointed it out earlier in this thread: Breaking: Gay Marriage Ban Overturned in California This is an excellent example of an MSNBC.com article that received a rush of new users. ( Myself being one of those new users! )

And as he pointed out:

And it wasn't a train wreck. No flame wars, only a few deleted comments (deleted by Emily), the conversation stayed organized, in threads. Why? Because I stayed there and moderated it. I told people how to use the 'reply' button. I linked to the CoH. I warned against personal attacks.

I mean, we can hope that any and every thread that gets a lot of activity, regardless of who the original author or the person who seeded the article, that there will be Viners who step up and help keep the conversations under control and to help new users know how to use the site. With a news site and stories that can stir up emotions in people, there will always be flame wars and heated arguments. You can't stop those.

The ultimate question: What would be best for the majority of Viners and Newsvine's environment?

I personally like the idea of having MSNBC.com have its own category on Newsvine. It wouldn't limit or stop good seeds from the home page necessarily.

Moderation is the key. Give me the tools to moderate in one of these new users columns and I'll show you how to solve the problem.

Either that or segregate the MSNBC stuff like I suggested earlier.

With the addition of all of the new users coming from MSNBC, Newsvine really needs to hire at least a couple of part time moderators, maybe pay them a few hundred bucks a months to help Emily and Calvin maintain order, and guide the new users to become productive members of Newsvine.

There are several well qualified, experienced Newsvine users who really know this community, care about this community, and have already been volunteering a lot of time in this type of effort - people like Viki, Tedd, lauhal, and Red Wolf, for example. Give them the tools to do the job effectively, and these problems could be brought under control in no time.

I don't really agree, Frank. Again, even (what?) 20 moderators -- let alone 5 or 6 -- aren't going to be as effective as making people care enough about he community that everyone does the little things they need to do to keep things tidy.

I forget who I was talking to, but I remember someone mentioning that in New York, a big part of fighting crime in poor communities was simply replacing windows that were broken. That made people feel proud of their environment, and they worked harder to take care of it. I feel that the same process could work here.

There's just too many people who don't know that this is a community of people who want the vibe to be distinct from Digg, whereas before, we had a really dedicated early group who was able to keep up with the smaller influxes.

I say: Down with moderators, up with community event organizers, and the sort of encouragement that will breed return visits, content, and all the sort of things that we need in order to make as many new people as possible WANT to be on their best behavior, and encourage it in others.

But, I do agree that it's time to either pay people, or stop expecting help on the level that it's really needed.

I forget who I was talking to, but I remember someone mentioning that in New York, a big part of fighting crime in poor communities was simply replacing windows that were broken.

The "broken window" theory. If a person sees a place treated like garbage, then they are fare more likely to treat it as so themselves.

Brian, I think I agree with you more or less. Part of the problem is moderation, but it won't be fixed by more moderators. There's just too much that needs moderating when you open the floodgates in from MSNBC. We need to present ourselves as a community that doesn't stand for "broken windows", trolling behavior, name calling, etc...

I'm not sure if community event organizers really help all that much, as that focuses more on the community we already have than turning the one-time MSNBC comments into regular users, but maybe I'm not seeing your idea clearly yet.

winsome...but also fueled undeniably by vested interests whose divide and conquer rancorous baying is designed in part to exhaust legitimate conversation....undeniable evidence of deceit and abuse by political operatives

This is an ugly reality; it is part of the statistical distribution of PR and marketing operatives in cyberspace. We know they are here. I don't have a clue how to keep them out, but we ought to to find a way to let them brand themselves once they get here if banning isn't viable in the short term. They are firestarters and if we had an expanded leaf value for the positive and associated privileges or way to accumulate thorns for the destructive interests.

A flood of 13573-newbie remarks, lining up like a ticker tape message board is overwhelming but not inherently destructive, One good Berman style, PR crew, looking to pump life or death into the agenda is what bites. Stunts like that, the fire starters, seething venomous opinions are the ones that run ragged the most patient and sage voices.

Hat's off to you Dennis, take a bow for the moderation miracle, pray it doesn't hit me, wow! Maybe there's a RAV in there, certainly some pats on the back, 'This brings up another point in my mind about the line between MSNBC content and columns vs. Viners and the philosophy of earned status and volume advantages.

Mike D... it's not exactly fair to point to a time in Newsvine's history when everything was perfect or near perfect and then all of a sudden someone took a baseball bat out.

Tee hee, been there and done that, probably with every upgrade along the way. Remember we had the conspiracy of voting privacy? The tracker in the beta was showing all our names and folks got caught voting for themselves, tee hee. Why spoil tradition? Who else will ask?

Much of what makes this place special is the effort put forth by the members to raise the bar. While we like to welcome both the corporate folks on the one side and the newcomers on the other, mostly we like to do that, it seems that there's an inequality of volume that has strained the quality.

It may be some of what winsome was feeling. t's not as though there was a perfect time, well maybe and hopefully the changes will fix some of the imbalance, but it sometimes feels like the best of the Vine is being swallowed by too high a dilution on both sides and the only thing that has no status is the folks with the sweat equity.

Not to make this an old timer issue, because it's not meant to be all about time on the Vine, but let's talk time. The people who found the traffic to come to the site and helped the growth that would repay the Angel investors by shaping this into something that GE could snatch up, all have invested a lot. If nothing else. the interest should be seen more like stake holders in the equation and sometimes it seems more like being demoted to the unpaid interns.

Is that the conspiracy this time, MSNBC plans to drain all the smarter out of us? *smirk*

That's all well and good...if we're talking about the community and it's users. I was talking more about, for example, RacistUser-3826438 who comes in and says he'd never vote for Obama because he's black, or that all 'Mooselims' should be killed...but says it in highly offensive terms (to go with the offensive sentiment).

When it comes to those guys, I want that stick.

Funny I was thinking of the "greenhouse" tag like a kick-me sign....

Er....by which I mean, a friendly reminder to be curious and patient with them....

I'll try not to scare off the n00bs.

Please don't...they're delicious!

...but not always easy to digest.

....too many at a time can also cause gas

I wouldn't put anything as toxic as some anywhere near my mouth.

I'm not sure, but I could see this as being very detrimental to the quality of discourse we have here on Newsvine. If there were some sort of remote discussion modules floating around wherever a Newsvine seed or article is re-seeded, then you have anonymous commentators with no vested interest in the quality of the discussion going on. Then, to prevent this, you'd have to get into pre-registration before posting, which then generates a bunch of one-time user accounts, and...

I don't know. I haven't given it a thorough analysis, but at first glance it seems like a bad idea. I suppose if it were merely cross-posted content it would be additional exposure for 'Viners, but... It would all depend on the implementation.

You want suggestions? Ok.

Limit the number of seeds that can be generated from MSNBC per day. A few would be no big deal but as it's set up...every top story is now owned by MSNBC. It's virtually automatic.

*or*

Feed all the MSNBC articles/seeds into their own section. I suggested this to Mike D. a while back, and he liked the idea, but then I never heard anything more about it. All the stories go into an MSNBC category that has it's own module on the front page...Newsviners can choose to keep it or lose it, but it's on by default, very much the same as there is a Newsvine module on the MSNBC community page.

Once all the MSNBC stuff is consolidated there, take it all out of top writers, top seeds, most active, etc. MSNBC has a permanent front page home for everything and it doesn't compete with Newsviners.

How does that sound?

I think the problem is that we are responsible for moderating our own column, but if you are doing this commenting via MSNBC, then the story is being seed to the first commenter's column (I think?), but in no way are they moderating the ensuing thread, or should they be expected to.

So maybe instead of treating it as a seed, basically make MSNBC stories function like AP stories and live on their own sans-column, and Emily can just get tons more moderating to do!

Dear Mr. Assistant Blog,

If I can comment jack one thought. While you are ranting over want Dennis was thinking about, for example on that first seed that http://poet1951.newsvine.com/ had, it had 149 comments, but only two regular newsvine visitors and only one of those on my friends list. On going thru that one. I would guess 25% COH violations and 0% column moderation. Sometimes that same happens with MSNBC columns. As a Anti-Spam team member and a Community Moderator, some kind of "heads-up" on this would be super helpful in keeping some of the talks on a little more even keel.

Any thoughts on that one ? Does not need to be here, just food for thought, in all of your spare time of course....

Feed all the MSNBC articles/seeds into their own section. I suggested this to Mike D. a while back, and he liked the idea, but then I never heard anything more about it. All the stories go into an MSNBC category that has it's own module on the front page...Newsviners can choose to keep it or lose it, but it's on by default, very much the same as there is a Newsvine module on the MSNBC community page.

Once all the MSNBC stuff is consolidated there, take it all out of top writers, top seeds, most active, etc. MSNBC has a permanent front page home for everything and it doesn't compete with Newsviners.

I support this idea. Earlier (#5):

Paul William Tenny

Is there any chance Newsvine content will find its way onto msnbc.com in some form other than an off-site link?

I see it as being the opposite of this idea. I don't see big downside to MSNBC.com having it's own section here. Newsvine would still be able to keep its diversity.

I love your solution, Dennis - I'll have to think that one over. Oh wait, there was no solution, only a rant!

While I understand the sentiment here, Calvin, of late, I'm not sure I agree with this.

Dennis, me, everyone who isn't employed by MSNBC/Newsvine -- it's not really our job to provide you guys with solutions. It's our job to use the hell out of the solutions you provide us, and to rant when the community doesn't live up to the expectations you guys set up when you were a small outlet. Providing solutions to OUR rants (which should be viewed constructively, and given as constructively as possible) is the way the community improves. You guys get paid a lot more than most of us, and part of that means it's YOUR job to provide solutions. Our only job really ought to be using those solutions, which provides content, and builds community, and when your solutions balance out properly, I think you'll find the community striving harder to offer suggestions. My thinking is that if you're seeing more rants than suggestions, it's not OUR problem, it's something you guys aren't doing quite right.

I realize that when the community was smaller, it was fun for a lot of us to come up with new ideas, and sometimes those ideas would get implemented, but -- of late -- I suspect a lot of people feel that our role is far more minimal, because the relationship HAS changed, whether the ambience in the Newsvine office has changed, or not. For example, there's a difference in what is considered to be acceptable front page behavior, community-based efforts such as Newsvine Survivor wouldn't work today, like they worked then. (Partly based on restrictions, etc.) But again, my contributions then were based on my knowledge that you guys were a startup working on startup money, kind of figuring things out as you went along. I can't shake the feeling that accepting MSNBC's offer means a lot of people who were part of the community prior to the buyout feel like giving a little less towards the solutions.

Now, my issue isn't with an influx of new users, I'd LOVE it if that translated to a larger community. But, that's not what's happening at all. We're seeing an influx of ONE TIME commenters. In the vast majority of the articles I read these days (even some in the traditionally "less formal" sections, I don't see a point in responding or engaging someone, because chances are pretty great that they're never going to respond to or read my comment.

And, that's okay if they're just here to say "I love the new Indiana Jones movie" but sort of maddening if they're here to say: "You Obama/Clinton/McCain supporters are full of crap, and you're driving this country straight to hell, and (insert blatant idiocy here) blah blah blah!"

The challenge for your staff, is to find a way to promote community features, the sort of activities that people WANT to return for. I always felt like more moderation was pointless, and you'd be better off to hire community organizers, people who moderated short, fun activities that got people writing, etc. And, whenever someone comes over from an MSNBC article, and posts a comment, they see a message which says:

"Thanks for posting your first comment! Here are three great reasons to come back more often:

1,2,3."

Etc.

Why leave people with the impression that commenting on content is what Newsvine is all about, when it's always been just the tip of the iceberg for why I used to want to come back all the time and interact with a community.

As it stands, the way things have gone, and the way the new MSNBC content is handled, I don't feel that there's much different from Newsvine than any other news site, and I honestly don't know if I'd still check it semi-regularly if I didn't have a history here.

And, as it stands, I had a comment deleted the other day, not unfairly, but I just laughed: The sheer number of ridiculous comments that are popping through and sticking are beyond the abilities of two moderators, and I say more community features would do more than ten Calvin's and Emily's could ever hope to do.

When people care about the community, they try harder to keep it looking nice. The problem is, most of this influx doesn't have an expectation for the community, or know that it exists.

I was under the impression that MSNBC bought Newsvine because they liked what we had going here and wanted to incorporate the best of it into their site. But that's not what's happening. Instead, we're getting the worst of what they already had. A flood of drive-by commenters using the place as a message board.

I love your solution, Dennis - I'll have to think that one over. Oh wait, there was no solution, only a rant!

What happened, Calvin? You used to give and therefore get a lot of respect.

Surely understanding the problem is the first step to a solution?

I've been testing the new ability to start a discussion on Newsvine through msnbc.com. If more Viners take advantage of it, we won't have newbies seeding the articles, though it is harder to guide the discussion. I haven't done too well with that, but I like the ability to draw msnbc.com users to Newsvine, and don't see the reason to limit the numbers of their seeds in our top seeds. Why can't we take advantage of them as well as them taking advantage of us, so to speak.

I've gotten to see how nice their site is, which I wouldn't have before. I like the design overall of their home page and article pages. I find their AP articles much easier to read and like seeding them here. I would also like to see our content go in their direction and like the new groups to aid that.

The challenge for your staff, is to find a way to promote community features, the sort of activities that people WANT to return for. I always felt like more moderation was pointless, and you'd be better off to hire community organizers, people who moderated short, fun activities that got people writing, etc.

I think Brian hits the nail squarely on the head here. At this point with the dumping of comments, the MSNBC/newsvine relationship is a little to close to the SI.com/fannation.com relationship for my tastes. We get thrown all of the "social" stuff that's not good enough for MSNBC proper.

You guys obviously have different needs and wants than we do, but I'd guess that most active newsvine users just don't care about a ton of traffic coming into newsvine on same random seed that isn't even from an active member. That's all one time traffic that just isn't going to affect us in the positive, but can get annoying in its quality. The key is to convert even just a small part of that traffic into contributing community members, or even just respectful lurkers. At this point I haven't seen anything that looks to be actively trying to convert the one-time traffic into regular users. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.

New traffic, MSNBC and suggestions aside, what I'd really recommend is more communication. I know that newsvine is one of the better sites at communicating from you guys to us users, but communication is one area where more is always better. I also understand that you are all busy, but I think more blog posts like this will go along to assuage our fears over change. Give us a blog update a week and keep asking for more feedback. We're Internet users and we're needy! ;-)

While we're at it, one thing we really need more and more is a Doppleganger that really works, especially for New York Times articles, but for all. It's very annoying to find that four people have seeded the same NYT article.

one thing we really need more and more is a Doppleganger that really works

Well coming from a programming background the Doppleganger does work, it's just that damn sites like the NYTs have eight different URLs that all lead to the same damn article. Some of those links aren't exactly the easiest to compare either.

How about a title comparison and maybe first para, then. That would show the similarity, and send people to the first article seeded. If it's not the same, you can seed it.

And since we're also discussing AP, we could get rid of it on Newsvine, but allow us to seed it from msnbc.com. There are lots of people who'd like more real estate on the front page. This would give us that. Just a thought.

I've been for de-emphasizing the AP for a while now. I can see the use of posting the AP feed automatically, but I've never liked that it gets the lead position on the front page. Every news site has an AP feed, what separates newsvine is the original content. Why not emphasize that content in the lead position?

Though posting user articles front and center does pose some other problems ... deciding which article to show, making sure it has a picture, making sure the article has rights to use the picture ...

If I may offer my own thoughts on this problem:

What we're seeing is a huge volume of MSNBC seeds pushing out the other content on the top seeds section. Limiting seeds from MSNBC is one way to approach this, but it realistically means that the more... ahem... obsessed... members of the community are just going to shy away from MSNBC when they want to seed an AP story.

Which kind of defeats some of the purpose of Newsvine being there for MSNBC.

So while "being from MSNBC" is a characteristic that all of these seeds have in common, let's look at the characteristics that set them apart from the MSNBC seeds that aren't just a frenzy of one-shot comments.

What I'm seeing are a lot of MSNBC stories with astronomical comment counts and very low vote counts. We're talking like... 30 votes to 150 comments.

What if we just make votes more important or perhaps something more sophisticated than that. We could not count comments by "greenhouse" accounts towards a seed or story's popularity.

This would have the added benefit of making gaming the Newsvine system a little harder which, as we continue to grow, will become a bigger and bigger problem anyway.

These are just ideas I'm throwing out. I'm not really saying any of them are the solution but they might be worth modeling to see what kind of results we get.

You guys do have the ability to model new ranking algorithms against live data? Right? Guys?

Killfile, I don't even think it needs to be that complicated, no need to change ranking algorithms.

The problem is that we are treating things as seeds that are not seeds. I don't understand the rational behind treating the first comment of an MSNBC article as the seeder, when all they are trying to do is comment. Instead of seeding that article to this random user's column who will likely never user their column again, let's instead "seed" the article straight to newsvine like AP wire stories, or even a msnbc "column". That way it is very easy to determine normal MSNBC seeds from active users from MSNBC seeds that are just MSNBC users commenting.

And since we're also discussing AP, we could get rid of it on Newsvine, but allow us to seed it from msnbc.com. There are lots of people who'd like more real estate on the front page. This would give us that. Just a thought.

Marilyn, I think I've got to agree. I tried subscribing to some of the MSNBC RSS feeds, but intermixed with their own news is the AP feed that MSNBC.com itself carries. That makes wading through the AP stuff that I don't really want to seed because it's probably already on the site a lot harder to find original content.

I wish MSNBC.com would specify in their feeds which are original content and which are "top stories" with mixed AP and NBC content.

I must report few, if any, problems with articles I publish at Newsvine. Comments are generally within the COH, and Link Love shows up a couple of times a week at least. Ignored users=1 Deleted comments=3 (in 160 original articles)

Something positive, that's all...

One more thought: I like the organization of msnbc.com's sections, especially since they have a full tab for Environment. Please take this opportunity to consider expanding or reordering our main news tabs. I wouldn't mind following their lead.

BTW, I never set foot on msnbc.com before the past few days. I am a fan of NBC news, but always went to my local affiliate news site. I like what msnbc.com is doing, especially with AP feeds, but it is a surprise to me that I do. They often have more photos, sometimes photo galleries, links to relevant stories, etc. Much more interesting than our AP feeds pages. Let's not be too grumpy if they have something to offer that would make Newsvine better. Same goes with their tabs, etc. Could make us better.

And I've recently had very fine discussions including new folks from msnbc.com. Not in politics, but that's where we have perennial problems, anyway. Does need to be looked at, since we don't want more problems there. Just pointing out that there's some good things happening. After all, if we want more pageviews, we've gotta have more people looking at our pages.

Oops, wishful thinking re Environment, though I'd still like to have it as a tab.

Why don't we just get rid of the AP completely and REPLACE IT with MSNBC? I don't like MSNBC very much as far as news is concerned, but it would sure cut down on dupes.

Or, include both. I'd like this better, since the AP does sometimes come up with good content.

Oh come on, Calvin ;-)

Everyone is happy here. Or at least we would be if we weren't being overrun by barbarians.

Hey Calvin, I just took a glance at the Most Active on the Front Page...

• Obama seals historic nomination
  121 Votes | 1076 Comments
• NYT: Clinton to end campaign
  66 Votes | 786 Comments
• What does Clinton want? Respect and more
  30 Votes | 297 Comments
• Calif. court won't delay gay weddings until vote
  32 Votes | 362 Comments
• NBC Live Vote on Obama's VP
  29 Votes | 178 Comments
• Obama expects GOP to attack his patriotism
  4 Votes | 151 Comments
• Priest who mocked Clinton told to take a leave
  11 Votes | 60 Comments
• Arabs hurt over Rachael Ray scarf backlash
  7 Votes | 52 Comments
• Obama exhibits calm in the swirl of history
  15 Votes | 95 Comments
• AP: Obama has delegates to clinch nomination
  2 Votes | 35 Comments

All 10 are from MSNBC. Nine of them are from new users...it's their first seed (the other one is Freed).

Please tell me you'll take my suggestion, at least in some form.

Good to hear that someone is happy here.

Happy and totally satisfied are two different things, sweetie. If we weren't happy at some level we WOULD leave.

Maybe if there could be some way for users to filter out NBC stories or something themselves. I used to enjoy browsing over the stories in the Most Active section, but as of late its been painful reading through the inane comments that make up 90 percent of those huge threads.

Yes. I think I said something like that at one point. I was against Groups in the beginning but as we evolve I'm seeing more uses for them. Especially Snarf Off! :D

I assume you mean Snark OFF!

I started to reply to this but it got too long (and I haven't finished it yet).

I hope you guys fully read three page emails. You got one coming...

The degraded discourse happens every time we have an influx of users. Remember the 'New York Times refugees'? It's happened several times since then (though in lower doses). Most of them ended up leaving, but we did managed to maintain a handful of new users who fit the mold, so to speak. MSNBC is much bigger than the refugees so we're going to have to wade out the bull@!$%#.

I found it helpful to use the visualization feature to scan who's been commenting, though it looks like I wont need to do that anymore soon.

Calvin, other users can correct me if I'm wrong, but as Brian said previously, we aren't worried about new community members so much. What we are worried about are the drive by users who comment on one article linked to from MSNBC, break the COH and cause problems and never return again and thus never become part of the community. Yea, we can ignore those seeds that come from MSNBC users, but then how does that help newsvine in the long run besides one-time traffic? It would be like we are two sites, newsvine and MSNBC comment board.

I think Brian had a great suggestion, on the page where they leave comments, give them suggestions and nudges to use more of the site. Have a list of related articles, and a suggestion to contribute their opinion there. Give them a link to the COH. Give them links for the Seed Newsvine bookmarklets and a nudge to look for more content to submit. That page that comes from an MSNBC article to comment on newsvine is big and a lot can be done with it.

Calvin:

Thanks!

Dude, I love that idea. I would suggest that the trial be limited only to MSNBC.com members (not just anonymous visitors).

My thought on this, and I could be completely off base, is that it seems that a large portion of the "Discuss on Newsvine" users are not coming to Newsvine to join the community, but to say their piece and move on.

I imagine that giving new users an introduction to the site and then asking if they'd like to join the community will encourage those who want to become a part of the community to do so and those who just want to express their feelings on [insert key issue here] to realize this may not be the best forum to "post and run".

Encouraging those who choose to join the community should be a main focus, but letting users know that it is a community and they are welcome to join it if they so choose may at the very least, make people think.

If every story in the top seeds list is from MSNBC, suddenly I've lost that diversity. The site becomes MSNBC.com with discussion boards.

That's obviously a slight overstatement, but I think it's a legitimate concern.

It's exactly what the front page summary Dennis showed demonstrates and my comment aimed at.

Just stop the motorcades of clown cars pulling up to the drive-through window, bursting forth, yelling and screaming, loading up and driving away never to be seen again.

The top seeds are always MSNBC stories now. The moment one comes down, another goes up with 400 comments, CoH vilations all over the place and no siscussion going on. AND no moderation whatsoever.

MSNBC has no idea the havic they are recking to the community that our beloved Newsvine staff has worked so hard to create.

This needs to stop. Soon.

This is all very interesting to me, since I don't read the TOP NEWS, which I hear enough of on TV. I haven't found any noticeable difference on Newsvine, as a reader of, mmm, esoteric topics perhaps? I have come across some new people, but most have been civil and have joined the conversation. In my opinion, threads with too many comments right away (mobbing) do not encourage a real discussion, altho they do give people a good idea of what everyone is thinking about a topic. If I see a thread that is running amok, I intend to try clipping to get a smarter thread going.

It is too bad that those articles get pushed to the top immediately. I can't think of a way to remedy that, but I sure hope someone does.

Well, looks to me like whatever lines of code had to be added were added. Top Seeds is back to normal. My work here is done.

Thanks team! ;)

Nope.

There's less MSBNC in the top seeds, but that's only because other stories have replaced them with no new MSNBC coming in. Go look at Most Active...it's still all MSNBC. And as soon as a new story comes out on MSNBC it will jump to the lead of top seeds.

Nothing has changed.

As we mentioned, we're working on it.

Gee, you sure know how to kill a good conspiracy! :~)

Before slagging the newbie barbarians coming through the MSNBC.com gate everyone should keep in mind that except for Calvin, Mike D., Tom and the rest of the aboriginals we are all immigrants to this place. The wheat will eventually separate from the chaff. I've noticed a number of very good members in the last number of months who have joined us. While the overall noise to signal ratio may be high initially eventually it will simmer down if everyone does their job vis-a-vis the COH and reporting to Emily.

And while I'm at it I'm going to vent on a personal peeve that I know more than a few people of varying political persuasions share. Go light on the ! button. Far too many comments are being collapsed with green stars next to them that in no way are CofH violations. IMHO if a comment is worthy of "collapse" it's worthy of deletion and that's a call best left to Emily whose conduct as a moderator has been exemplary.

Far too many comments are being collapsed with green stars next to them that in no way are CofH violations.

Amen. ! doesn't mean "I don't agree with it." That said, I've been using the thing pretty heavily in the past few weeks. The level of outright trolling that's going on is getting pretty sickening.

... it takes time to build a readership, there isn't any quick ways to go about it.

You have to remember that comments and votes aren't necessarily the best way to calculate your readership, if you haven't already - start using Google Analytics.

I asked a fellow viner for some tips and the reply I got was to "invite as many friends as possible" and "Join as many groups as possible"

Also, that's bad advise.

What you're doing right now Bill, is exactly what you should be doing. Comment. Passionately.

If you can make cogent arguments and produce quality material the rest really will take care of itself. That's your problem.

Newsvine's problem is making sure the system is designed in such a way as to reward excellence.... which is why we're having this discussion in the first place.

Also, seed Ann Coulter, stories about evolution, atheism, or Israel/Palestine. You can additionally write articles about what's wrong with Newsvine. Surefire success strategy, but beware it's a crowded field. ;-)

Also, seed Ann Coulter, stories about evolution, atheism, or Israel/Palestine. You can additionally write articles about what's wrong with Newsvine. Surefire success strategy, but beware it's a crowded field. ;-)

Don't forget to seed articles about the presidential candidates, especially if the race angle is mentioned! The couple of articles I have seeded regarding Obama were far and away the most popular I've ever had. Sadly, I lost my will to live after reading some of the comments, but that's a small price to pay for the extra 5 bucks! ;-)

Hey Mr. Richie-Rich, that five bucks is more than most of us make in a year.

Have some sensitivity, will ya?

That's Ms. Richie Rich, thank you very much. :-)

What Killfile said, ... spiffie is kidding. Don't start publishing articles that you know will incite something negative. Seed/write what you know, what you care about, and express yourself professionally.

You're actually off to a good start. You've gotten more comments/votes than I did in my first few months in those four seeds/articles. Good job.

Oh...

Well...

Suppose that's what I get for not looking at handles closely enough. My B.

spiffie is kidding

Spoilsport.

Spoilsport.

Most probable. I'm not sure what compelled me to state the obvious.

Kill,
Ben,
Tracie, Thanks. You have restored hope in the process.

Spiffie, Keep the antagonism up. It keeps me on my toes.

Bill, there are also quite a few good articles out there written by Newsviners to demystify things. Two that immediately come to mind are one here by Brian Ford and one here by spiffie (this one has a lot of links to other good stuff). Here is a rather funny one by Stacy Malbon, too, regarding how to be successful. :-)

I don't know if these will address your specific concerns, but maybe they'll help a bit. If not, give a shout.

Tracie,

"How to be a newsvine superstar in 15 snarky steps" says it all. that should be required reading along with COH rules!

Thanks for the links.

::looks around anxiously:: Please don't stamp me out. :D

Not you GF, you count, way much:=P

Hi Mike. Good to hear it but that'd only cover it if Azsky's seed was also from MSNBC's right? Would you mind coming by Freed's discussion of some related concerns

There are some dupes happening just because we have the AP feed and then we get MSNBCs version of the AP feed on top of it. Losing the AP would fix that. Just use MSNBC.

Ah, thanks. Yes, I agree. It's time to drop AP>

MSNBC.com also republishes some NY Times content, so now not only do we have three seeds from the same NY Times story due to URL weirdness on the part of the Times, but we also have an MSNBC.com seed going, too. Heh. :-)

Yes I noticed that yesterday as I went from seeding something from the NY Times then saw the same story on MSNBC.