Does Amatomu need a content policy?

What's happening on our favourite aggregator?


Was taking a quick browse yesterday and saw the following?

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From :Â MSW LOTTERY FIRMÂ Replyto : agentjamesmartins@yahoo.co.uk REF NO: MSW-L/200-26937 BATCH: 2007MJL-01 Dear Winner, We are pleased to inform you of the announce... in 419Blogger
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CONGRATULATIONS…(YOU HAVE WON)

From :Â AWARD WINNERS EXCHANGE ONLINE LOTTERY INTERNATIONALÂ Â THE BRITISH EXCHANGE ONLINE LOTTERY AWARD NOTIFICATION Â FROM THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER, INTE... in 419Blogger
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CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA CONFIDENTIAL

from : usuman shamsudeen FROM THE DESK OF THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA 1A AKINTOLA WAY GARRKI ABUJA. E-mail.dr.usuman_deputygovernor@hotmail.com RE:PAY... in 419Blogger
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Congratulations!!! Your Email Emerged As A Winner

from : "australianlottery_net@aol.in"Â Date: 23rd of Septermber 2007 Ref: 575061725 Batch: 8056490902/188 Ticket Number: GB8701/LPRC CONGRATULATIONS!!! Dear Winner, W... in 419Blogger
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Has spam slipped in? I'd be interested to see Vincent or Mat's response to this. How do you set up guidelines for which blogs can belong to Amatomu and which can't? (Besides the obvious - don't be a Google Adwords Money Whore Blog). I would think Mail & Guardian have a vested interest in keeping it clean.

Hmm. That raises other questions. I don't want to stick my foot in it - but I have noticed the quality of content on Amatomu going down recently. Of course, that's got nothing to do with them - more to do with the proliferation of crappy blogs. A media type gets featured on Morning Live and look what happens!? Everyone wants to be heard... and therefore aggregated.

Where does the point come when you'd rather have quality content on an aggregator as opposed to full representation. Or, is the fact that you have statistics on the majority of SA blogs more commercially tempting?

Look at 419blogger (no link out of respect to myself) - the offender in point. What rubbish.



Sniff sniff... I smell a content policy.

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Comments

  1. Hi Andy, thanks for this post, here are my thoughts on the issue:

    I hate having my time taken up removing spam, non-blogs, non-SA-blogs and all other concoctions people can cook up. As a result, anything that I am made aware of that looks dubious gets deleted with no questions asked and no notifications and negotiations.

    A content policy is probably a good idea but there hasn't been much a problem so far because almost every blog that has been removed is spam, or incorrectly inserted - for instance people adding their delicious RSS as their blog RSS. In general what happens here is that I delete a feed and if the person queries it I help them sort out the problem or explain why. So far this has worked well.

    In order to move from this feudal style of law enforcement we're going to need a lot of other structures in place - appeals, warnings etc and we're not at that point yet.

    On the point of quality, I agree that there is a lot of crap edging its way in and this is natural. I don't delete based on quality though - the min requirements are that:

    1. the site is not spam, so even Bolton gets the green light here
    2. the site is operated by a south african or in south africa or is about south africa
    3. the feeds are not used as a pretext to provide network advertising banners and links
    4. the feed and the blog correspond - so the feed must be the blog's feed

    That's it really. Not hard to make decisions on that basis and my feeling is that if the SA blogosphere gets filled with rubbish then Amatomu must reflect that. We're working on better filtering mechanisms though, like the new Buzz feature on the right sidebar - those kind of things are going to become more and more important as the noise levels increase.

    Hope that helps. Vincent

    ReplyDelete
  2. Now, that is pretty feudal. But understandable I guess.

    Only point I don't agree with is "if the SA Blogosphere gets filled with rubbish then Amatomu must reflect that".

    Shooting yourself in both feet, then in the head?

    Noise / rubbish is going to DESTROY this whole social media movement. Shallow personal interpretation of shallow impersonal topics - creates a perfectly indexed wank.

    That's why Thought Leader is cool.

    Surely you don't want Amatomu to reflect rubbish?

    Your feudal "off with its head" approach might not be the best approach - but in the hands of a couple of community elected administrators? Might spread the work load.

    Quality of content, I think, is more important than your total users or stats penetration.

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