I think Greg and I are in agreement that this is spamming. I also think that those higher than him are using this as an excuse to ditch the whole digg-clone thing off of netscape.com.

http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2007/09/09/beauty-of-portugal/?url=http%3A%2F%2Famusingto.com%2Fcool%2Fportugal-pictures.htm&frame=true

If Greg D thinks that genuine users are voting this stuff up he needs to think again.

Yes your “users” voted for it… but a large percentage of your users are spammers after your PR 9 back-links.

Greg D says that it is the users who are voting crap to the front page and so he will not intervene…. that is not really true.

I only started using Netscape after I was asked to join a syndicate to spam it.

There were some very effective syndicates operating on NS who kept cheap articles ($5 E-Lance stuff) regularly on the front page.

In the comments some went as far as complimenting each other being a “great front page spammer”.

With high page rank, Ad click happy users and only 20 votes needed to make the front page NS became a spam fest.

Having looked on there today I cannot see any of the old faces that dominated the front page a month or two back… maybe they have been banned, but, there are still plenty of low grade posts on no-mark blogs completely splattered with adsense. It is safe to assume that these have been submitted by someone affiliated with the site and voted for by members of a syndicate….

Thanks for responding but I think you might have misinterpreted my words.

I see Netscape’s comment saying that the users want “editorialy controlled news” to be a slap in the face of the hard working scouts and navigators. If the policy in place kept you from getting the junk off of the front page than why is Netscape saying (effectively) that the editors were not doing their job?

I do stand by my assessment. Netscape was hoping to become the next digg and failed. They had some great ideas (public editors rather than diggs ‘private’ editors) and they made a lot of great moves but in the end it appears that they failed.

I used to spend a lot more time on Netscape but then, a few months back, it became infested with spammers. It’s no big secret that unlike digg, Netscape readers do not use adblock software and they DO click ads. I guess it became too tasty of a target and the spammers came in full force!

When I go to Netscape I cringe when I see stories on the homepage that are obviously spam and lead to a site with very little content covered in ads. Have you looked in the “male” section lately? That area is always full of links to porn sites! This is what I mean about Netscape’s good name being dragged through the mud.

Now they (AOL) look at some of the junk that is on Netscape and the vitriol in the comments and they don’t know what to do. In the end they decide to move the social news side of the business off to it’s own new domain and turn the Netscape portal site into a Yahoo clone!

I support the scouts and the navigators and I have always found them to act professionaly and to be responsive. What I did not know was that your hands were tied when it comes to getting crap off of the homepage.

I’m a bit disappointed in your assessment of not only the Scout program, but the move as well.

Netscape.com is transitioning back into a more traditional news portal (which the users wanted) and the social news site is moving to a new URL. This has nothing to do with the “Netscape brand dragged through the mud” as you say.

Having said that, I’m not any happier about some of the content that makes it to the front page than you are but my primary responsibility in getting hired, was to post quality submissions, which I do. I cannot control if my own posts make it to the front page or not. That’s controlled by votes. But we DO do everything in our power to control sock-puppeted stories, spam, duplicates and posts that violate the middle-man rule. I won’t go into specifics about the criteria but rest assured that if a story makes it to the front-page and remains there, it’s passed all of the criteria. We don’t just delete something we consider to be crap. Trust me when I say that I’ve personally cringed sometimes at the things on the home page, but it’s what the users have wanted to vote there…not me and therefore, it remains.

What you don’t make mention of and probably aren’t aware of, is the thousands of posts submitted by the Scouts per month AND the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of stories that are closed, redirected or otherwise, by us.

As an aside, the social news site that is netscape.com now, is moving. We’re going to be even better than we are now and I’m urging you to continue using that site when we move. I’ve considered you a friend on both netscape.com and I believe on digg as well so I’m personally asking you to come along for the ride!