Spinners

1. 81

   Mark Ewbieposted 12 years ago

   I have just done a bit of hub hopping.  Encountered several individual spinner accounts where they have created dozens of hubs within a very short space of time.  All spun, and obviously so - so flagged of course.
   
   But this is tedious and pointless.  How can we hold back the tide of this garbage?  By constantly hopping and flagging?  It's a full time job.
   
   My suggestion is that HP introduce better measures for reducing the amount of new hubs that can be published.  There is no earthly reason why someone genuine needs to publish dozens of hubs in their first burst of activity.
   
   Some way of slowing down this tide of garbage needs to be introduced.
   
   Quite a few of these accounts were created months ago and never publish anything until they are suddenly activated - like sleeper cells.
   
   The benefit of doing something about these mass spinners would be that people who hub hop feel they are achieving something, rather than swimming against the tide.

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   1. 84

      LearnFromMeposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I agree with Mark. I was Hub Hopping the other day and I couldn't believe how many low quality hubs, spinners I guess, hit me all at once! There really should be something done about it.

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   2. 61

      CASE1WORKERposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I agree, the problem is that  "if" the site has recovered the spinners and spammers will be back and as of yesterday I thought they were back with a vengeance

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   3. 88

      SimeyCposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      There are some interesting Hubs being published aren't there! I accidently voted one up last night just before I flagged it!
      
      However, won't the 'sub-domain' simply solve everything  - if the sub-domain is full of 'crap' then won't Google simply mark it down? Or is that wishful thinking on my part?

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2. 89

   RedElfposted 12 years ago

   I had a few good days of hub-hopping, then the last week has been one day good and three of total trash, on day of mixed trash - can get a bit depressing
   Oh well!

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3. 90

   Rochelle Frankposted 12 years ago

   My head is spinning. Gotta stop reading these.

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4. 74

   brakel2posted 12 years ago

   I found a new person with a spam link in comment on my Hub and spam on own hubs  I hoped these people were gone. Another person said only on Hp to get links to a business  These people ruin the site.

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5. 87

   IzzyMposted 12 years ago

   "If you reason rummy virtuous conversation into a mike and transcription it, you can hump a quaker serve you out by interviewing you. Arrive up with ten to banknote questions near your matter (depending on how durable you require your recording to be), coiffure them in a dianoetic advancement and then hit your somebody ask you the questions."
   
   Love it - especially the humping a quaker bit!! Flagged of course

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   1. 79

      Uninvited Writerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      "Hump a quaker"?

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      1. 90

         Rochelle Frankposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I wonder if it's by the same person who wrote this:
         
         "Pauperization to be much originative? We all do. But it is sometimes marmoreal to be solon successful if you don't hump enough life to do it."

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         1. 87

            IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Almost certainly was. I saw the word 'hump' in a few of his hubs. I wonder what word he meant? The translator obviously had other ideas.

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            1. 90

               Rochelle Frankposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               These were some the weirdest sentences I have ever read. I couldn't even guess at a near approximation of meaning; I do feel sorry for the quakers.

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               1. 80

                  snakeslaneposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  I accidently came across the "hub hopping" option in my travels awhile back, but cannot find it now. Is this a hidden feature reserved for only a few? Or can anyone be a Hub Hopper?

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               2. 62

                  Lisa HWposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  Well....   I don't know...  It's a problem - that's for sure.   The only thing I can think of to suggest is apple pie bubble water baptize appendage duck birdbath.

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6. 74

   WriteAngledposted 12 years ago

   I must remember "coiffure them in a dianoetic advancement" 
   
   People will think I'm really clever when I drop it casually into conversation...

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   1. 87

      IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      ROFL!!
      
      This guy has 23 hubs up and they are all of the same kind of stuff - this is a lot of unnecessary work for the staff!

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7. 59

   Jason Menayanposted 12 years ago

   We've had the problem with spinners for years. This is not a new problem, although it might feel that way to Hubbers who are new or who have only recently begun Hopping or looking at the latest Hubs.
   
   Hopefully the subdomain move will reduce the attractiveness among spinners to spin their garbage onto HubPages.
   
   Otherwise, it's a difficult thing to combat because it's hard to determine the intelligibility of content unless a human reads it. A lot of spun stuff is grammatically correct, and all the words are correctly spelled. We do have an engineer working on this, but there is no simple, scalable solution to this. If you do have one, please share it!
   
   I know there are regular calls for us to review each Hub before it's published, or for us to quarantine new Hubbers unless they pass some sort of quality criteria. This is enormously staff-intensive (actually prohibitively expensive), and would stop us from being an open publishing platform. Keep in mind there were several closed sites that were "Pandalized," so it's no preventative against punitive measures from Google.
   
   All that said, if you don't like Hopping, then don't do it!

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   1. 93

      viryaboposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I know it's a lot of work, and it may require additional staff, but Suite101 and Infobarrel do it.
      
      Editors check articles on Suite101 before they go live, and you have to write a number of articles that have to be pre-approved, on Infobarrel, before they can go live.
      
      Sub-domain apart, it may erode HP's reputation all over again.

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      1. 88

         Cardisaposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         @Jason, Why is it when I  hub hop, vote down or flag content I lose points from my author score?
         
         When I joined HP, I liked hoping because I get to read a lot of stuff that way, then I noticed that my score would drop. I had stopped hopping for a while then I heard others saying when they hopped they would get a better score so I started hopping again and viola......my score takes a dive.
         
         Since the other day I flagged a couple of hubs and left comments on how to improve them and in that same day my score dived down 6 points.
         
         It seem no matter what I do my score just won't go back up.

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         1. 59

            Jason Menayanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Really, I don't know. I doubt very much that Hopping, voting, or flagging content affects your score at all. It might be a coincidence more than anything else.

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8. 80

   Aficionadaposted 12 years ago

   Today I found and used a quick and easy method to flag every Hub in a specific (small - under 20 Hubs) account.  I wish I had timed myself, because it seemed like it took very little time.
   
   I too wish there were some way to prevent the spun articles in the first place.  Here's hoping the great HP engineer(s) will figure out a way! 
   
   One possible tip to assist in the development of the program:  many spun Hubs include some vocabulary that is distinctly out-of-the-ordinary.  Could a program be developed that would catch Hubs written by new Hubbers that also contained "unknown" words?  Those caught Hubs could be double-checked by humans to see whether they actually were spun or well-written by someone with an amazing vocabulary.
   
   Obviously this would not catch the spun Hubs that use ordinary vocabulary incorrectly or nonsensically; but it could or might filter out one subset of the spun Hubs.

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9. 61

   Fiction Tellerposted 12 years ago

   I know virtually nothing about programming, but what about running a program that took random sentences out of new hubs and listed them in an easy, skimmable way.  One person could skim a whole bunch of hubs simply by skimming sentences that would jump out at them as "nonsense" without needing to go into individual hubs or read long passages. Once a spun sentence was manually found, the data could be re-sorted to exclude and sequester all those from the same account and flag the account for review.  Then onto the next at the skimmer's placeholder.
   
   It wouldn't catch everything, but it would catch some.
   
   Two loopholes I could see right away:
   
   1) Some poetry could seem random and get flagged - but this maybe could be prevented by a special markup for poetry - though this could then be gamed. But you know what? Maybe poetry and fiction could get their own new hubdomain (vs. subdomain). I've often thought something like this would be great, because poetry and fiction are so wildly different from other hubs in the way they're read and monetized (read by browsing and a fan base, monetized who knows how). But the key thing is that spinners who put their items in poetry/fiction to avoid being flagged would then get their items categorized as poetry by Google - which, really, they are, in a sense...
   
   2) It could still get pretty time intensive if people created multiple accounts, each with only one hub.
   
   But it might improve things just the same.  Dunno. Could also be a very stupid idea.  Just woke up from nap.

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   1. 90

      Rochelle Frankposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I am very non- technical, but I think this sounds like a good idea. I hope someone takes it as a starting point for improving the current situation.  Good for you for having a thought while being sleepy.

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