DZone Astrosurfing
I was really happy when DZone came out. I was missing something like Digg but with more focus on technology and development from (mostly) that Java point of view. So, here I was hoping that content that many people find interesting will filter its way into my RSS reader.
Sadly, astrosurfing has found its way into DZone as well. What do I mean by Astrosurfing? I mean that content created by vendors will be pumped up by the vendor and be “regarded” as important news, even though the vendor did all the voting on the content.
The most obvious example is Nikita Ivanov blog, which its content is submitted to DZone. Lets take the following post (which I find pretty silly, but thats just me) which you can find here. If you look at the votes for the link you can find the following voters dsetrakyan, mvandoornik, skh, sbob, dkharlamov, magdenko_alex which strangely enough, always vote for GridGain, and somethings even just vote for GridGain. This can be validated by going to other posts made by Nikita and applying the same logic.
Personally, I view this type of voting as spam. Naturally, other people (I wonder who ;) ) will disagree, but for me, the fact that a company finds its content interesting is irrelevant to the rest of the community.
I guess that the main question is how to tackle this. Rick and Matt are doing a wonderful job, and it is not a simple problem to solve. One option, which they started recently, is creating specific zones such as Groovy Zone with expert people to moderate it.
Another simple solution can be ignoring people who seem to be voting for the same person all the time, as well as reducing the voting power of new users. This is simple mechanism, though obviously can be circumvented, that should reduce this spam posts.
I guess the main reason digg works well and dzone falls a bit short is the fact that there are so many people voting in digg. When you only display content that was voted a thousand times, then the fact that a company such as GridGain with its 5 developers won’t be able to make such an impact. In this sense, the responsibility falls on our shoulders to vote (which I personally have not been doing as much as I should have).
As for low voting sites it is a bit hard to spam out content (without moderation). For example, lets say we suggest voting on people and that will control the actual ranking of a certain story. You still get into the problem of who votes for this people. Other types of solution gets into this “chicken and the egg” problem.
What do you say? Do you have a better solution for this problem? Does this content bothers you or do you even consider it as not spam?
Rick, Matt and the rest of the DZone (and other) people. Thanks you for all your effort, and I hope we will manage to find a solution for this…
January 29th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Shay, first let me thank you for taking time to write this well-considered perspective. We genuinely appreciate the thoughtfulness and your clear interest in keeping things good or making them better.
I don’t know precisely how to address this, but I will definitely give it some thought. It could become a much worse problem than it already is, and you know “anything that CAN happen WILL happen!”
One benefit of our new suite of zones and forums is that we should be able to identify a proper place at DZone for this dialogue to become more fully engaged, with opportunity for the community to particpate as much as they wish. Would you like to post this into the forums, where we can begin a public discussion about the issue at DZone? That might be a positive step.
Thanks again for raising this issue, and let’s try to get the community’s input about how we may be able to address it.
Warm regards,
Rick
January 29th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Hey Shay,
First of all, when making these false accusation you should always point out that you are paid employee of GigaSpaces. That clarifies certain thing :)
I’ll bite though. I did addressed this like over dozens of time: our team members do vote for my (and other’s GridGain-related) posts, always - which is very good and I’m encouraging it. Many non team-member voting up too… DZone only benefits from this.
Google astrosurfing before using this word: it’s paying up bloggers. We don’t pay for voting - so either put up or shut up.
As far as the rest of the post - thank for the recognizing the impact the “5 people” company has made :)
Best,
Nikita Ivanov.
GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple
January 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Shay,
You should point out and make it absolutely clear to your blog readers that you are an employee of GigaSpaces, a commercial company that competes with GridGain Open Source Project.
If you look at the people who voted for the post you selected, you will see that there are other people, besides GridGain committers, who found the blog interesting. Also, take a look at the voting history of the people you point out. Nikita, myself, dkharlamov, sbob are constantly vote up and down for many other posts.
So, if you don’t find this blog interesting, you can go to TSS and read all the meaningless marketing blabber that comes out of GigaSpaces (and a lot of it from you directly).
In any case, noting your employer is enough to absolutely discredit your views here.
—
Dmitriy.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I forgot to mention that I am one of GridGain founders (just in case if it was not obvious)
GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple
January 29th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Well, just to make things clear, head over to my blog home page, and see (on the right side) that I state there that I am a GigaSpaces employee.
Regarding Astrosurfing, well, if people who work for your company don’t get paid, I pity them :). The term is being used also for cases where people log in under false identities and post comments, such was the case waaay back with JBoss on TSS.
Anyhow, this claim, as you both don’t invalidate, is still true. While I took your case as an example, which simply stands out (see the following comments here made on DZone by other people), the case is certainly valid for DZone to try and filter out people like yourself.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Shay,
Stop spreading FUD and be honest for just a small moment of your life. The reason you singled out GridGain is because of the competition factor with GigaSpaces (your employer).
I understand your envy. Here you have this huge GigaSpaces tractor chugging along, and all of a sudden you see a well-equipped GridGain sport car accelerating your way very fast. If I was a GigaSpace employee, I would get pissed too, just like you.
In any case, this just looks like a cheap and unmerited attempt to stifle competition and of course it won’t fly.
Again, if I were you I would concentrate more on the ridiculous “J2EE is Dead” and “GigaSpaces is the Next App Server” marketing campaign you are leading on TSS.
Grow up.
GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple
January 29th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Shay,
As far as “under false identities”. You better be prepared to show specifically where people mis-represent themselves and/or were using false identities. Can you show IPs correlated with different usernames on DZone for the people committing to GridGain proejct? Otherwise, people like Geva or Nati should smack you on the hand really hard for setting up their business so badly in the public eye…
As I mentioned to Nati once: it is one thing to have strong opinions with which you can agree or disagree - but it is another thing to purposely lie. Later can easily kill your project and you reputation in the community as well as stain the bystander company like GigaSpaces.
On a final note: regardless of where GridGain is relative to GigaSpaces, we are nowhere near at this point to take all your business away…. So, there is no reason for such knee jerk reactions. Let’s compete on technology and, please, stop spreading FUD.
Wise up,
Nikita Ivanov.
GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple
January 29th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
First, I would like you guys to show some respect. I have been around a long time, and I believe that I have earned my reputation and respect in the Java world (especially open source) way before you showed up. Let me set some things straight:
I never suggested that you posted under false identities. I simply gave the JBoss example to explain you what Astrosurfing means. Read my post again.
Regarding the GigaSpaces angle. I have wanted to blog about this phenomenon in DZone for quite some time, the recent flame war simply brought it up the blog chain. It is still a valid point though, no matter how much you try to take this discussion off it. Further more, Nikita is simply the one that stands out so much, regardless of GigaSpaces. See other people talking about it here for example (under the comments section). I for one very much respect Kirill Grouchnikov who said exactly what I stated.
Last, regarding my main problem with GridGain, I think that my post on TSS explains it (this is the only comment I made regarding GridGain, please read it). You guys can position GridGain however you like, and it will be up to your users to validate your claims. I simply found the parts where you downgrade products such as GigaSpaces or Coherence disrespectful. I am sure that the mentioned discussion (which I highly recommend reading) resulted in your blog post regarding Data Grids and Compute Grids which is something that we at GigaSpaces have been talking and doing for around 4 years. I wish you good luck at trying to implement this at GridGain 2.0 (any ETA on that?), as it simply validates what we have been saying for a long time. Also, I hope that all this compute grid is not a data grid nonsense will stop (since hopefully you won’t need to create a market for yourself), and we can start to compete on the technical level.