StirrdUp: New Site Wants to Legitimize ‘Social Bookmarking’
October 14, 2007 | 2:10 pm | by t-blender |Rate It:
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Digg. Fuck off, scumbag.
Okay, that’s not quite the message that Stirrdup.com is pushing, but the recent entrant into the ‘Social Bookmarking’ medium does have a message, passive voting, and it’s a message that rings loud and clear. Why? Because it’s fair.
What is passive voting? For starters, it’s nothing new and it’s not some technological wonder of the 2.0 world. Technical bullshit aside, passive voting is a simple philosophy and one that Stirrdup.com proudly displays:
Passive voting is our solution to promoting the juicy stories that make you feel some kind of emotion rather than just those that a lot of people agree with.
How does it work?
The basic premise is that when articles are submitted, they start out at the top of the Stirring section. Once it reaches a certain point threshold it moves to the hot/main page section.
Every time someone clicks through to an article a small amount of points are awarded. The same happens when a comment is posted about a story. There are a few other places and ways that points are given to a story, but these are the most important ones.
Why is this important?
Because, unlike many of the popular social bookmarking sites, actually reading the article is part of the popularity process - - whether you liked it or not it the story moved you enough to read it and/or comment on it. Ah, the brilliance of simplicity.
Furthermore, and the beauty of the process, there is no “BURY” button - - What this means to you: There is no gang of goons that can quickly bury the fantastic article you just submitted, only to have it resurface moments later by a “chosen one” which will, undoubtedly, ensure the article makes it to the front page.
Now, I’m not saying that Stirrdup has a flawless system here, no process is perfect, but I am confident that the fine folks behind the site “get it” and that’s a great place to start if you want to claim that your social bookmarking site is truly guided by its users, instead of pretending it is.
C. James Post
We really want to create a place where different ideas can get attention even though a lot of people don’t agree with them. That’s the part that’s always bugged us about Digg/Reddit - the group censorship that’s inherent in the systems.
So we’re trying something new. So far so good. Thanks a lot for the plug!