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The Web Is A Mess

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Re: The Web Is A Mess

#11

Post by TeMPOraL »

Detrus wrote: post #8

Why would banning content farms draw the eye of regulators when the content farms are gaming the search engines? Because search engines fell asleep at the wheel and now content farms are a sizable chunk of the economy? And they can always release some features like curated/customized search to weasel around any regulation dangers. Maybe search engines just don't care about the health of the web.

> Why would banning content farms draw the eye of regulators when the content farms are gaming the search engines?

I don't think OP meant content farms. I think he meant half of the sites that have articles repeatedly appearing on HN. All those smaller and bigger "news" services that write a lot of poor, shallow, lying or just plain wrong, controversial articles. The problem is with incentives - they do it for ad money, not to inform/educate people.

Re: The Web Is A Mess

#12

Post by klibertp »

zalew wrote: post #7

true blogs are dead (yes, scotsman). I sometimes miss the old internet. now get off my lawn. ironically, OP's blog's purpose is also to sell ads and ebooks. In the early 00s he's talking about, people blogged just because they felt like it and didn't complain about monetizing strategies. techcrunch? what techcrunch? 2005 is not 2000.

I think the author is concerned exactly because his blog purpose is to sell ads. He even wrote it at the end of his post. I guess he just would like to sell ads using quality content - his own content - and not by aggregating tons of crap and producing even more of it. Maybe he even tries - I don't know, I didn't read anything besides this post. But the fact is that this doesn't work anymore - and that's just sad.

Re: The Web Is A Mess

#13

Post by klibertp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #11
Detrus wrote: post #8

Why would banning content farms draw the eye of regulators when the content farms are gaming the search engines? Because search engines fell asleep at the wheel and now content farms are a sizable chunk of the economy? And they can always release some features like curated/customized search to weasel around any regulation dangers. Maybe search engines just don't care about the health of the web.

> Why would banning content farms draw the eye of regulators when the content farms are gaming the search engines? I don't think OP meant content farms. I think he meant half of the sites that have articles repeatedly appearing on HN. All those smaller and bigger "news" services that write a lot of poor, shallow, lying or just plain wrong, controversial articles. The problem is with incentives - they do it for ad mon…

Is it impossible to give people incentive to inform/educate people? I think this even worked for a short while, but I'm no expert on this matter.

Re: The Web Is A Mess

#15

Post by TeMPOraL »

klibertp wrote: post #13
TeMPOraL wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would banning content farms draw the eye of regulators when the content farms are gaming the search engines? I don't think OP meant content farms. I think he meant half of the sites that have articles repeatedly appearing on HN. All those smaller and bigger "news" services that write a lot of poor, shallow, lying or just plain wrong, controversial articles. The problem is with incentives - they do it for ad mon…

Is it impossible to give people incentive to inform/educate people? I think this even worked for a short while, but I'm no expert on this matter.

I'm not sure. For what I can tell, it's a difficult and delicate topic, as intrinsic incentives tend to be overrided by extrinsic ones (e.g. pay someone for doing what he loves, he might soon start doing a worse job at it). See the RSA Animate talk about motivation[0].

But hey, we're a clever species, I do believe that someone will figure out how to structure reality so that we get more of the things we really want without using proxy incentives that backfire when overdone.

[0] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Re: The Web Is A Mess

#16

Post by zalew »

klibertp wrote: post #12
zalew wrote: post #7

true blogs are dead (yes, scotsman). I sometimes miss the old internet. now get off my lawn. ironically, OP's blog's purpose is also to sell ads and ebooks. In the early 00s he's talking about, people blogged just because they felt like it and didn't complain about monetizing strategies. techcrunch? what techcrunch? 2005 is not 2000.

I think the author is concerned exactly because his blog purpose is to sell ads. He even wrote it at the end of his post. I guess he just would like to sell ads using quality content - his own content - and not by aggregating tons of crap and producing even more of it. Maybe he even tries - I don't know, I didn't read anything besides this post. But the fact is that this doesn't work anymore - and that's just sad.

the whole premise of his post is completely flawed. he talks like he misses 'the old days', but in the old days nobody gave a crap about ads. he's complaining that he's too weak to make a living of blogging while back then nobody even thought of that. 'the blogosphere' meant linked blogs of friends and foafs, not cross-posting every piece of turd to 10 social networks and upvote sites so you get more likes and clicks.

Re: The Web Is A Mess

#17

Post by derleth »

unimpressive wrote: post #2

One innovative "solution" is millionshort: http://millionshort.com/ Basically the idea is that you take sites that perform too well on search metrics and remove them. Of course, that only works as long as a majority uses services like google.

> Basically the idea is that you take sites that perform too well on search metrics and remove them.

Some of the results remind me of the Web from the late 1990s: Definitely more than just the original group of geeks writing pages, but the mega-popular sites (Wikipedia, about.com, etc.) aren't there, like they weren't there back 15 or so years ago. It's almost homey again.

Re: The Web Is A Mess

#18

Post by danboarder »

Who uses google to find current news articles though? I think this is mostly a non-issue as people use aggregators like HN here or Subreddits or other news reader apps to filter top stories.

Google is used for what I would call "archive search" and research these days (how to do X, etc) in my experience, not current news.

Re: The Web Is A Mess

#19

Post by ChrisLTD »

danboarder wrote: post #18

Who uses google to find current news articles though? I think this is mostly a non-issue as people use aggregators like HN here or Subreddits or other news reader apps to filter top stories. Google is used for what I would call "archive search" and research these days (how to do X, etc) in my experience, not current news.

I only use Google to find news I've heard about from in-person conversations.

I know quite a few people that visit the Verge and similar sites on a daily basis, and they have no intention of reading all their content.

I think it's better to think of those high volume sites as newspapers rather than blogs. Most people do not have the time to read an entire newspaper, but that doesn't make it any less valuable.

Re: The Web Is A Mess

#20

Post by bunderbunder »

Detrus wrote: post #8

Why would banning content farms draw the eye of regulators when the content farms are gaming the search engines? Because search engines fell asleep at the wheel and now content farms are a sizable chunk of the economy? And they can always release some features like curated/customized search to weasel around any regulation dangers. Maybe search engines just don't care about the health of the web.

> Because search engines fell asleep at the wheel and now content farms are a sizable chunk of the economy?

Fell asleep at the wheel? The major search engines run their own ad networks. They're content farms' key customers, and content farms are a core element in their business strategy.

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