CAT | sL Features
As promised we have an excellent new feature to debut on soLinkable. In an effort to further our goal of world domination creating a great user experience, we would like to announce that from this moment on, link submissions will no longer be using the websnapr thumbnail service. We have integrated a new user chosen thumbnail service into our existing framework, which will allow for an even more “personal” feel to the submissions. We want you to feel like you’re in control of exactly what goes into your submission.
The websnapr phase-out will not be immediate. All previous submissions made before the new user submitted thumbnail service will continue to show websnapr images with their story content. However, all new submissions made from this point on will now show either the selected thumbnail or no thumbnail at all (if ”No Thumbnail” is chosen/available).
We made sure that using the new feature would be very easy as we did this without adding any new complicated steps and with minimal change to the overall time it takes to submit a story. This was the most important part of our goal – to keep the site friendly. To not only make it seem like the users are truly contributing, but to make it easy to contribute.
Adding a custom thumbnail to your link is very simple – you may not even notice the new thumbnail option your first time through. Most of the work in the new feature is done behind the scenes. When you first submit a URL to be added, our servers read through the html source and pick out all the images they find. Next, they choose what are determined to be the most appropriate for the story (though this is still a work in progress) and meet a predetermined size constraint. The method will choose up to 4 possible images to include with your submission.
On step 2 (called “Submit – Step 2 of 3″) of the submission process below the description, you will be asked to “Choose a Story Picture”. You will be given the option of choosing from up to 4 images or sticking with no image at all. Selecting an image will cause the story to appear almost exactly as it was before, but instead of the websnapr thumbnail, the image shown will be the one you selected. By choosing “No Thumbnail”, the story will appear without any associated image – perfect for news articles.
The resulting soLinkable main page, with a mixture of real images and no images, really makes for a better user experience overall. The previous thumbnail images were much too cramped and in turn made the overall feel of the website seem small. The thumbnails make the site look nice and emphasize its user generated nature.
On a lesser note, you may also notice the new text area styles. This will (again, hopefully) allow for a better user experience and make it easier to submit content to soLinkable.
Thanks again for your continued support of the community. It has been so much fun building onto the site, and even more fun contributing to it. Keep it up!
We are taking numerous measures in an attempt to slow spam on SoLinkable. One of which is the submit anti-spam tool. The idea is that almost all spam comes from brand new members. By limiting their submissions, we hope that this will greatly reduce the total amount of submissions by one user group.
All new users are limited to one submission each 24 hours period. Once 24 hours have past, the ban is lifted and they are able to submit another new link. After their first link has been added, any user attempting to submit again will be met with the following screen.
The majority of spam to SoLinkable is submitted by users who sign up, post numerous links, offer nothing of valuable to the community, and then return a few days/weeks later only to submit another group of spammy links. A users submission limit is only lifted once they have reached a certain level of community involvement, determined by their “karma”. As you may already know, karma is a mathematical number generated by taking into account posts, comments, and votes. The more a user participates, the more their karma will increase.
Previous SoLinkable users who have not participated in a few weeks will notice they also have submission limits. This is because the submit anti-spam tool is dependent upon karma. If the user has not been to SoLinkable in recent weeks, then their karma will be low, causing the tool to restrict their ability to submit multiple links per day. This restriction will be lifted once they begin to participate at SoLinkable again.
In the end, this tool is only meant to hinder those out there who spam and move on. Any regular users will rarely see this tool after their first day. The karma limits are set low enough that only little participation on day one is required to have the submit limit lifted by day two.
Happy linking, and as usual, thank you for all your support. Take care,
-SoLinkable Staff
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Top Karma added to the sidebar… Now its even easier to promote your site
0 Comments | Posted by Jesse in sL Features
I have gone and added a little website promotion to the sidebar. It goes by the name of “Top Karma”. I feel as though I should be giving back to those who take their time to contribute to SoLinkable. Its the community that keeps us going, so this is very important.
It works in the following way (a more thorough explanation is available in the faq): An algorithm is used to determine a single users participation on SoLinkable – this number is refered to as a users Karma. The sidebar is then a list of users Karma in decending order. The usernames found on the list will link back to the homepage specified in their profile.
This is very similar to the “Top Contributer” plugin that can be used with Wordpress. It is my hope that webmasters will see the numerous ways to promote their site through SoLinkable, creating a larger user base and more active community.
The plan in the future is to also use this Karma value to determine the amount of submissions per unit time that a specific user can make. Treat Karma as a sort of “user trust”. But that still needs to be coded…