Here at Gather, we are on the lookout for the things that make Gather a great experience. That also means keeping an eye on what needs our attention. I think that it is important to talk about the ways in which people misuse Gather, so that you, the community, can monitor and report issues back to us. So let me highlight the types of spam we think you should be aware of and might have experienced, as well as some ideas for how to help us control it. On Gather, we are not (yet) exposed to many outside influences, and we have set up the site to handle a lot of the potential spam that could come your way.
Email overload: For years, you've received email in your traditional email box containing advertising, account warnings, and random solicitations. Your email provider or administrator does what they can to manage that spam, using scoring and other details to flag offenders and bulk mail senders. But we do seem to have an issue with people who send bulk messages, either to their group, to their entire network of contacts, or to people they do not yet know on the Gather site. Tom Gerace, our CEO, wrote about the problem a few weeks ago. The solution: If you have a message to send, send it to those who you expect will be receptive to the note. If you see email from someone you don't know, expect the email to be less useful.
Commercial publishing: There are a lot of writers out there who don't have much to say – on Gather anyway, which diminishes the quality of your time spent here. They post a link their personal website with maybe a sentence of information about the site. What they don't realize is that they are not generating good will, or interest, in their site. And with only one impression, poorly targeted, this version of advertising doesn't gain them much visibility. Two solutions: the writers themselves should market to the audience using the Gather Advertising engine, and readers should flag articles that add little value to let us know we've got a commercial spammer in the wings.
Over-eager publishing: Groups have arrived on Gather. Woohoo! They are a great way to communicate with large and small audiences on the site about everything from politics to sports to random funny stuff. Oddly we've seen a lot of people publish their thoughts on one subject to a group on a completely unrelated topic, sans explanation. I think of it as over-eager clicking, but some people might see is as shameless self-promotion, which we think is OK if it is on topic. Solving this one: if you own a group, you can remove content that has been published to the group even if you don't normally moderate the content. If you are a reader, send a private message the group owner. They'll be glad to get the "heads-up" on this.
Tags Gone Wild: Granted, tags are a new way to navigate, and not everyone knows how to use them. The reason for tags, and the best way to use them, is to make things more clear and simple, not more complicated. You know a tag spammer when the keywords they use have nothing to do with the content of the article (such as listing "arts" and "music' in an article that debates the reasons why Florida won the NCAA men's basketball title. How to fix this? Let us know by flagging the article, and we will contact the author. Or send the author a private message. For greater impact, you can copy Gather on the message to make sure they get the hint.
These issues have not plagued Gather much, but we want to make sure we keep the community informed and engaged about making Gather a consistently great experience. Let us know what experiences you have had with spam, on or off of Gather, and how it has affected your online behavior.
David Cooperstein is Editor in Chief of Gather.com. His other comments can be found at david.gather.com. Earlier editions of The Editor's Desktop can be found at editors.gather.com.
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Comments: 20
I always try to approach Gather as professionaly as possible. At this point in time Gather is still defining itself, so it stands to reason that a fair amount of self-governing is going to be required. All the subjects you address are going to require a degree of self-governing and professional attitude on the part of everyone who posts here. I for one deeply appreciate any heads-up article that gives me the opportunity to do things a little bit better. The more clutter we all help get out of the way the smoother the path will be for all of us.
My goal as a writer here at Gather is to get the most exposure and most feedback I can. The increasing spectrum of groups is resulting in the ability to publish one piece to five, six or more qualified groups.
Example: A poem written cinquain style dealing with impressions on the topic of a place can be posted to four poem groups, a travel group or two, and justifiably I assume to random musing - slice of life groups, etc. The number of applicable tags could be dozens.
How do I guess which groups and tags I should be limiting myself to?
How many is enough?
How many is too many?
George, watch how you use that word "clutter!"
I think it would help if the "publish only to group" requirement was included in capital letters at the top of the group page. Lots of writers breeze through the about sections and some things don't stick in their minds.
Do multiple groups and tags cheapin my piece's appearance?
This place has grown by leaps and bounds. If points are awarded for replies, comments, and ratings, where is the line drawn between those who use this place as an informal chat forum loosely based on "article publishing" and those who want to write and read quality pieces?
Maybe I have the wrong impression, but how is it fair if those who are featured as top members and have hundreds of Gather points have them because many of their replies are "good job!" or "me too!" along with personal chit chat and conversation when there are many amazing writers within who are never seen because no one reads them, comments on, or rates them? I'm not saying those featured don't deserve to be, I'm just suggesting the system might be predisposed to bias and nepotism now that it has grown so large. Maybe a larger editorial staff would help to read through more of the things published to highlight more authors?
I personally don't want to go soliciting feedback on my stories. I belong to the groups I wish to and put my pieces there. My colleagues can choose to read and comment. I don't need a community, I came here to give and get constructive feedback, and although my time is limited I do my best to search my groups home page for things to read and comment on. This place has just gotten too huge.
...and put in a hot tub.
It could be said that I was guilty over being over eager to publish when I first was finding my feet on navigating Gather. But therein lies both a problem and answer. I simple tutorial for new members would have saved me much angst, and you (and possibly others) from receiving one of my postings.
The issue of tags going wild has another context as well. As I use more and differing tags, the tag box of my tags continues to grow - but I can't get rid of any of the unwanted tags, and thus have to keep navigating through more and more of the useless ones. A fix would be appreciated by everyone, I'm sure. Hopefully, I'm not out of line raising the tag problem in this group.
Magi
As for the list of tags, Magi, I will look into that. Would you want them to "expire" or just kept to the most recent 20 or so? Or would you want to click to a list you can edit? Let me know, so I can inform the tech folks.
Thanks,
David
Please (and on my knees facing east), please - a list that I CAN EDIT! Thank you, thank you - Oh, God, thank you!
Magi
I see a lot of the over-eager publishing in many of the groups, and I have quit several of my groups for this reason.