Seems I’ve had two love affairs ending this week. Earlier it was my passion for the iPhone and now I’ve got an issue with Muti.co.za.
Muti is basically a South African version of Digg. If you don’t know what Digg is basically a user submits a website and other user users on the site vote by “Digging” the post and this sends it higher up on the list of submissions. If and article is really good it makes the front page which usually sends hundreds of thousands of users to a site. The site then promptly crashes under the weight of a million visitors at which point the link dies an obscure death and never gets seen or heard of again. In a very broad sense it’s a method of marketing your work online or exposing other people to articles/websites you found interesting.
Muti does the same thing at a basic level but on with a more South African context. The reason I say South African context is because it seems to be used primarily by South African users.
There are however fundamental differences between international competitors and Muti. With Digg you can only “Digg” (add a vote) an article rather than Muti’s option of being able to positively and negatively influence the amount of votes a post has. Often you’ll see a lot of the posts with negative scores.
At first I thought this wasn’t really a problem but then something horrible (this might be a slight melodrama) occurred. I posted a link to an article somewhere and when I came back I found it had a zero rating. Then it hit me like a ten-ton brick; anyone can vote my article down as often as he or she want. Basically all you need to log in to the site is a username and a password. Most sites require you to enter personal details and then send you a confirmation email, making the whole process rather trialing. I could have six different brands of internet browsers open each with different login, vote and then repeat the process as many times as I want.
So here’s the rub. Anyone with some time and some desire could make sure their article is at the top. When it comes to people who make money off their blog it wouldn’t strike me as odd for someone to do a dastardly act such as this. Hopefully the founders/managers of Muti get to read this and understand the problem. It’s a simple solution to fix and will make the site a thousand times better
Enjoy this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.
Hi Saulk. These issues have cropped up before on muti. I understand Neville does keep an eye out to see that there aren’t multiple entries coming from the same IP address, but the process should be formalised. Mike Stopforth raised the issue of there being up and down votes allowed – I prefer there only being up votes allowed (encourages a more positive vibe), but I was in the minority.
Hey SAfrican
I reckon the site has so much potential to show off South African websites but there are definitely some ruining the site.
I’m not sure someone checks for multiple IP’s. I submitted the post on my laptop then used my phones wifi to add another vote and there weren’t any repercussions. Even if they were, how do you enforce them? I could easily create a new account within seconds.
I don’t mind posts being voted down, maybe an explanation should be required and some form of moderator accepts or denies the vote.
All in all I think the easiest way to stop the problem is to make it harder to register for the site. Those few people letting the site down would probably think twice.
you know what i just noticed that muti was one of the only sites that let you do the negative votes. at first i thought this was a good away to quickly remove spam posts from the front page, but then i noticed my own posts were getting negatives as well even though they were informative posts. I guess thats’ someones right to not agree wit it, but i think it robs other people chance to see it. Hmmm.
I’m a complete Muti nut, I think I read every single article which ever hits the HOT page on Muti
Hey Saul,
Thanks for the feedback. I am a partner in Muti.
The issue of email verification is one that we have been debating (between myself, Eric Edelstein, and Charl Van Niekerk), and it has been contentious even among us! We were tending towards the side of email verification but we had a bit of a backlash from the community (perhaps multiple porfiule holders among them!). Of course, a post like this will open up discussions about it again.
Regarding the down-voting, I think when we deal with the verification of users it will reduce the problem substantially. I personally enjoy the ability to down-vote occasionally when I disagree of view is being put across though:) (and yes, I only vote once per article!)
Hope you keep using and enjoying Muti. We’ll keep up our side to the best of our ability by making it as fair and user-friendly as possible .
Hey Dave
Thanks so much for commenting on my site, really appreciated that the people behind Muti are willing to listen.
Basically it’s either a case of make it more painful to register or remove the vote down option in my opinion.
Would it be possible to create some kind of cool down period for an IP so you could only register on a single IP once ever 24 hours and could only vote for a link once every 24 hours per IP?
You’re wrong, on Digg you can bury stories, effectively voting them down.
As for Muti needing email verification, yeah I agree with that!
@ capdog: Didn’t realise you could do that on Digg. I still think there needs to be some sort of protection!
Can someone correct me here… Surely someone could create a bot that registers an account, votes and then repeats the process. It’s clearly not been done before but it would be interesting to know if possible.
Dig as a down vote option called “bury”. Reddit and Mixx also have down vote options…
Muti is much more useful than Digg, because it lets you use tags. Digg has categories, but they are quite useless. Most of the things I want to “digg” don’t fit into any of the preselected categories, so I never use Digg at all.
just to throw something else in here. Saul I see that 9 out of 10 of your submissions are your own content. i haven’t read them so I can’t say myself, but perhaps your submissions are just not that “vote-up” worthy?
just a thought..
Mmmm. The issue of submitting your own content is a tricky one. I fear the community won’t let you tread the fine, grey ethical line. I see nothing wrong with submitting your own content (occasionally and if it’s REALLY good). Surely this would only make Muti a richer content repository.
The problem, of course, is the same wanky blogger submitting 2 wanky posts a day.
Betwixt a rock and a hard muti I guess…
I will suggest the IP cooling idea to Neville:)
Yes if you self submit you get voted down no matter what the quality of your article. I also find most of the articles way too technical for me.
@ thescott: Just using Muti as a way to promote my site. Didn’t realise that was bad.
@ Andy Hadfield: I totally agree with you. Since I’m new to Muti I’m currently using it to promote my own content but I’ll slowly get in to the whole using it to promote other stuff. That way I hope to get a better balance.
@Dave : Hope this post can help
@Wade : As I said to Andy, busy getting into it and will post less of my own stuff and more other interesting content. I’m not complaining about my content being voted down, actually I’ve had a pretty decent response to most content I’ve posted on Muti. All I’m saying is the system is flawed.
Also, what do you mean too technical? I’m hoping you can help me improve on that.
Saul – must say that I agree. I reckon the disabling of the down vote on Muti is in essence a form of control or censorship. Basically people can manipulate the system and you now have no say over that because the down vote has been disabled.
If the registration was more jacked up it would be a lot less easy to manipulate the up or down vote. Taking away the down vote isn’t a solution.
Saul… dude. Why’ve you got comment moderation on?
Unfortunately I still get a lot of spam that Akismet lets through so I need to keep comment moderation on.