Sphinn Hates Nickycakes
So yesterday Nickycakes posted an article about Facebook ads. He researched it, wrote stuff down, put a lot of time and effort into it, etc. Since this blog started, it has been known as the spot for getting the lowdown on facebook ads because, let’s face it, the Cakes gets more clicks than a tribe of Bantu speaking Nigerians.
Yesterday, the post went up, and Nickycakes kindly asked his friends and fans on IRC to sphinn the article if they truly enjoyed it, which some of them did. Some of them already had sphinn accounts, some didn’t. Cakes explained how easy it was to register and how awesome sphinn was, and the merits of a digg style internet marketing site.
Anyway, over the period of an hour or two, the article was sphunn maybe…13 times. And then…it was gone. Vanished from the site. Wtf? Nickycakes knew what was probably going on. People on sphinn apparently hate affiliate marketing, and generally scoff at affiliate marketing posts. While this post wasn’t really about affiliate marketing, some others were, some maybe some mod didn’t like it and canned it or whatever.
So, a little bitter at the whole situation, the Cakes emails the support staff to try and figure out what the deal was. About 8 hours later this gem comes rolling into the inbox:
Hi Nick, Your story was discarded as you broke the member guidelines by vote rigging. All Sphinns for your story were by new user accounts, which can all be linked back to you. Sphinn uses a democratic system, where the community decides which stories are important. By asking people on different IP addresses to vote for the story, you are artificially inflating the stories popularity. Your account (and those of your friends/proxies) were marked for banning by the Sphinn team, however as I'm in a good mood today I'll give you another chance. Any future stories or comments that you submit however will be closely monitored, and any further breach of our guidelines will result in your accounts, websites and IP addresses being banned from Sphinn. In the mean time, please familiarise yourself with the following guidelines:
About Sphinn: http://sphinn.com/about.php News Submission Guidelines: http://sphinn.com/guidelines.php Discussion Submission Guidelines: http://sphinn.com/discussion.php Rob Kerry evilgreenmonkey Sphinn Editor
LOL. While Nickycakes does, from time to time, like to find ways to beat the system, some traffic from the sphinn front page certainly isn’t worth the effort. Not to mention, the service is actually pretty cool, and he’d have a problem with fucking with them. Never once has the Cakes set up a proxy’d account with sphinn (or anything on the web, since he hates using proxies).
Furthermore, nowhere in the linked guidelines could I find any rule that says you can’t ask your friends to sphinn your story. Hell, Nickycakes gets probably 5 pm’s a day from people with some story they want dugg/spunn/whatever’d.
Nickycakes would really love to see any evidence of these votes being “linked back to him.” What a joke.
The Cakes will leave the sphinn it button on his posts for now since he really does like their site and reads it often. He’s not one to let the douchebaggery of one dickhead mod ruin his entire experience. Hopefully others haven’t had the same problems, as he’s been recommending sphinn to friends for a while now as a good site and would hate to be proven wrong.
Anyway, rant over, sphinn it if you’re down. Keep it real.
Wow. Shouldn’t Sphinn be happy that he’s spreading the word and getting people to sign up for the account?
I like the comment about “being in a good mood,” so he got another chance.
Classic.
Rob’s only a young lad, bless him.
I love the: “Published in Retards”
Erm, they can see the IP’s for each user from registration to last login as its “pligg” so its not a case of them seeing new signups and being suspicious. I have to say “busted” on that one – nice read though!
Uh huh.. And only one of those ip’s was me. Not exactly “busted”.
What a lame response out of them.
So, the blueprint for getting somebody banned from Sphinn is:
1. Create proxified new user accounts
2. Indentify target
3. Sphinnity, Sphynn, Sphinn
4. Target banned
Somehow I don’t think they are as dumb as that email makes them look.
You’re right. They don’t like you. Fight the power, Cakes.
Pede
This Rob Kerry character sounds like a complete fool. I wouldn\’t ever let him do a guest post on my blog!
Time to make an auto Sphinner or Sphunner…who gives a fuck..the site is Gay.
@Ruck: Come on man. First off, it’s been done. And has a shelf life of MAYBE 3 minutes.
Also, doing that would HURT nickycakes’ angle.
I can see the points from both sides, although perhaps it’s important to examine the article quality itself, and the existance of proxy variables in what it sends to the webserver.(HTTP-VIA, HTTP-FORWARDED-FOR, etc)
Like I said before, I really generally hate social bookmarking web2.gay style sites like digg, but I do like sphinn because of the content.
My point was, my shit got canned for a bogus reason and the mod was a dickhole in the email, even though I’ve never done anything wrong on that website.
I like sphinn, really I do.
This is a ridiculous story. Sphinn is tiny; you would think it would WANT new members. Some of the people who joined just to Sphinn your story initially will actually become active Sphinn members. Does Sphinn want to grow or not?
Thanks for banning me Spinn I’m really gonna want to use ur service now
I really hope this gets enough sphinns to make onto Sphinn’s greatest hits page. I doubt it will, but that would be hilarious. And I’m sure they would have to censor it to prevent that from happening. The community obsessed with no manipulation would be forced to censor this story because they would never be able to cope with it being in the greatest hits section. If this got like 90 sphinns, which would be enough to hit the front page of the greatest hits, hilarity would ensue.
I think that it´s really nice that you get an explanation of why you are being banned. i am sure digg won´t explain anything
Nickycakes,
What a story! You really make an effort showing some form of interest in Sphinn, huh?
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