a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment

    Also, they banned entire blogging platforms.

Here's a great comment from years ago that is a lovely definition of "blogspam": http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/cb5qg/a_personal_lette...

    Blogspam is linking to a re-post or copy-pasta of the original content on some secondary site that adds little or nothing to the interesting content.
(from above link)

For example, my little blog could take an announcement from Google, copy the text of the announcement, add "That is cool!" and then link back to it at the end and post it on reddit or hubski or digg or whereever. This would be blogspam because I'm not adding anything of value and riding the wave of a big news story for my own personal benefit. Now if I analyzed the motivations of said hypothetical Google announcement, gave related facts or compared it to past announcements, that wouldn't be blogspam because it is adding an entire new level of value to the announcement.

Even 3+ years ago people were struggling to understand what sites should be linked to, etc. It's a pity that the above definition never stuck. It's an even greater pity that the mods of /r/politics have taken it into their own hands to decide what sites are reputable. This goes against the core of what reddit (used to?) be all about. It was a democracy where users voted on the best content. Now it's a patriarchy where mods decide what should be seen or not seen. Users are less and less powerful each day.

    The BEST internet is one where every single blog, website, forum, image gallery, e-commerce site, news aggregator, etc is trying to post dense, high-quality, original content. The WORST internet is one where every site is instead trying to hijack page views by re-posting content that is already available elsewhere. The PURPOSE of sites like reddit is to drill down to the interesting, original, dense content. The HOPE is that this kind of approach will spur more and better content creation and a less-cluttered internet.

Nailed it.