For those of you who don’t know, there’s a new social news site for WordPress, called WPVote. I’ve been using the site for a couple of days and while the concept is great, the quality of entries are poor at this early stage.
I’m a big believer in the idea of a social news site for WordPress. It’s a great way of pooling together all of the WordPress related posts out there, making it easy for people to find quality information about WordPress.
The Published News section should be the most valuable list of WordPress related articles around. Unfortunately however, to be quite frank, there’s a lot of crap in the Published News section at the moment.
There are the obligitory Top WordPress Plugins Lists that don’t add anything new (and seem to miss many of the essential plugins to boot), generic How To Blog posts with only a tenuous link to WordPress, and posts that don’t really help. For example, one post includes the point:
If you have added a new feature to your WP blog by writing some PHP code that executes SQL queries; make sure that you minimize the load on the server.
If you know what that means, you probably don’t need to be told. If you don’t know what that means, this doesn’t help you at all! If it had a link to a site that told you how to minimise the load on the server, then it would add value. Without such a link, it’s useless.
I won’t link to these entries here, as I’m not having a go at individuals and don’t want to single anyone out, but posts such as this don’t belong in the Published News section.
Now, I’m not saying that these articles are all bad (or that mine are better), or that there aren’t top quality posts there as well (see Perishable Press’ excellent and original article on .htaccess rules for permalinks), or that this doesn’t happen on other social news sites.
I’m not even saying that the poor quality entries shouldn’t be on WPVote. Of course they’re entitled to be! I just want to see better quality in the Published News section. How do we get that?
We all need to get behind WPVote. Submit quality WordPress articles when you find them. Vote on entries in the Upcoming News section. Add comments. Spread the word about WPVote, so the community grows.
I know this post sounds harsh, but it’s a call to action. I believe WPVote can be truly great – but the only way that will come to pass is if we all get behind it. Let’s make WPVote great!
hey Stephen,
Thanks for this article and for giving out your point of view about the very young WpVote.com.
Sadly, I have to agree to agree with you on most points you pointed out on your article. The main problem is that a link just have to obtain 5 votes to be promoted on the published posts section. I thought about asking 8 or 10 votes, but for now the site is still very young, so if 10 votes are necessary to be promoted, only 3 or 4 links will be on the published posts section for now.
You’re totally when you say that we all need to get behind WPVote. As the site will grow, I’ll increase the number of vote required for a link to be published, and only the best links will rise.
Thanks again for this article and for your interest on WpVote.com. Feel free to contact me at any time if you have any comments/advices/suggestions.
jbj
Hi Jean-Baptiste,
Thanks for the comment and THANKS for WPVote. It is a great idea and I hope it reaches it’s full potential.
As I said in the post, I know I’m being a little harsh. At this stage of the WPVote’s life it’s only to be expected, as are the problems you mention. I’ll admit that I made it a little provocative to try to draw more attention, to try to spread the word further. 🙂
Anyway, best of luck and I’ll help spread the word where I can!
No problem Stephen, thanks for spreading the word 🙂
I love this concept of a social media site specific to a product. Back when I used to use Movable Type there were a couple of sites that were like that, but not really purely social like WPVote. Bookmarked!
Interesting concept of WPVote, but actually I’d prefer to use something like google to find something on WordPress sites 🙂
I don’t know, to me it just looks like another pligg-clone-.
Hi Stephen, thanks for the heads up on WPVote. I had never heard of it before but it certainly looks like it has a lot of potential. I will do my best to actively participate by voting for and submitting quality articles. Cheers, Jeff
WPVOTE is excellent, I searched for a long time to find something like this! I hope it gains in popularity, it is very useful!
If you like the idea of WPvote you should check out WPscoop.com which has many more features like friend connections, groups, forums and more.
WPscoop – WordPress Social News And Networking
Wow, I didn’t thought that my idea of a WP social bookmarking site was so good…Already a clone site 🙂
Stephen, it would be great if you’d review WPscoop as well.
Thanks for pointing it out Stephen, I hadn’t seen it before. Like Ashkael, I tend to just Google when I need to know something, but it’s worth watching to see if it gains traction. From Jean-Baptiste’s reactions, it looks like he is on the case, which is a good sign!
Cheers, Jon
I am going to agree with most commenters here. I tend to just go to google to find something on the sites.
Perhaps if big improvements are made I might be more inclined to glance at it every once in a while. They need to make a bulletin section for notes like that, and not do it in Published news.
I didn’t heard about it earlier, but now after checking the site I totally agree with you. Anyway, good luck to WPVote.com
That’s a great idea for a site. I just need to remember to look there when I have a WP problem or something I want to tweak. But I agree with the other replies that probably google is the way, except if I subscribe to their feed (maybe I just should do that, runs of to subscribe …)
Good luck to WPVote.com, they are still young. i agree with the most of commenter here that probably google is the way.
I’m behind the idea in principle, however with all UGC it’s quality that defines its value. Maybe if you could edit other people entries in a sort of Wiki style then the quality posts will stay and the rest get discarded. Saying that I haven’t checked it out yet – but I will.
Very interesting. I surprise if one have known such a thing before this article has appeared. But I would not say this easy to come with, because nowadays each human has his own opinion but there is no a strict social views. I wonder this would have good consequences.
Hey Stephen. Any thoughts on the new WPVote.com?
Hi Jeffro,
I like the idea of it, but it needs some polish. For example:
in Submit, it gives an error if you have less than 140 characters for the description, but it doesn’t tell you how many you’ve typed.
You need to be able to see who has submitted posts. Someone submitted one of mine, but I don’t know who. It’s supposed to be social.
There need to be dates for when the articles were submitted. When I look at the home page, I can’t tell if eveything is new in the last 10 minutes or has been there a month
etc…
Also, I totally agree with your idea that it won’t be adopted properly until there are easier ways to submit (ie bookmarklet).
But I’m willing to give it time and see if it can grow into a smooth experience.