Hub hopping without the Hub Hopper, and I am simply appalled

1. 81

   Shades-of-truthposted 9 years ago

   I just wanted to share the experience I had, in the last 30 minutes. I am at one of my businesses, so I can only look at a few hubs a day. Today, I decided to do my own Hub hopping, without using the official Hub Hopper.
   
   One of the Hubbers who happens to have a lot more hubs published than I do, has articles that are replete with typos, grammatical errors, and overall low quality information.
   
   According to what the Hubber writes, Hub Pages is viewed as their own personal blog. The term is used frequently to describe their activity here.
   
   I was simply appalled, as the Hubber has many, many published hubs. The majority of them should not be published here at all, simply due to the quality of them. I did send some reports, so someone can view them.
   
   Is there no way to stop hubs that are full of "fluff", from ever being published in the first place? They are featured hubs, too.

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      calculus-geometryposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      It's amazing what passes the QAP, that's all I can say.

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      1. 93

         SmartAndFunposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Yeah, I thought QAP was doing a decent job until that hub about Wild Tigers in the Wild came along. I know the QAP is not perfect, but yikes!

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            colorfuloneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            I do think you were right about that being a troll's hub.

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               SmartAndFunposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Maybe so, but troll or not, that article should never have passed QAP.

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   2. 83

      Marcy Goodfleischposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Shades - I agree with you.  I spent quite a few days reporting some very spammy hubs and accounts, and nothing came of it. I am not clear why hubs with 50 or more ads and very little text doesn't get moderated, but those hubs are still published.
      
      Either the standards here are indeed standards (and are objective), or they're vague goals that are subjectively applied based on something else. I've sometimes wondered if crappy content is retained simply because it gets traffic. If so, then the site will never truly move forward.
      
      And, as Calculus Geometry says, too many hubs filled with errors or spam still get by the QAP.

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   3. 82

      peachpurpleposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, why are these hubs in the hub hopping in the first place?

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      1. 81

         Shades-of-truthposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         peachpurple,
         
         They were not in the Hub Hopper. I was hub hopping independent of that tool. So often, I have found horrendously written articles here on HP, by simply browsing through the categories. Sometimes I put a few words into the search option at the top of our Hub Pages page, and find them in that manner.

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2. 81

   Shades-of-truthposted 9 years ago

   To calculus-geometry and Marcy,
   
   Unbelievable, isn't it? What astounds me, is that there are many articles published here that do not begin to attain the standards that I was taught in elementary school. However, other articles, written coherently with helpful content, have difficulty getting published or featured. I have read many posts on the forums, from competent Hubbers, asking why an article was unpublished. Often, when I peruse their work, it appears to be impeccable.
   
   We need the across-the-board standards. Until that happens, all I can think to do to help, is to offer to edit - which I do - and report low quality hubs.

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   1. 83

      Marcy Goodfleischposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Shades - I agree (again!) - I do think the site is working hard to develop a system that has consistent standards and reliable ways to measure them.  With hundreds of thousands of hubs posted, it's not an easy task.
      
      It's particularly discouraging when we try to flag bad content and nothing happens. Either my idea of basic, acceptable quality is way off target, or there are factors we don't know about being applied to the mix.  I don't expect college-level writing, but content should at least be original, legible and have had a brief trip through Spell Check.

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         Shades-of-truthposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         +1, Marcy. Unfortunately, the spell check option does not detect things like:
         
         "Wish there children would behave."
         "I seen a bird in the tree."
         "How you eat effects you're attitude."
         "Theirs something wrong with me."
         "I went too the store, two get some fishes."
         "The deers went threw the fence, because it was full of wholes that we don't have time two fix, because we are all to busy."
         
         All of the words are correct, but their usage is not. I read fast, and type fast, and will be glad to help anyone who sincerely wants help editing. It is something I enjoy, when I get the chance.
         
         It is simply beyond my comprehension, that so many hubs are afflicted by low quality content.

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            Marcy Goodfleischposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            You're very supportive to offer that help to others.  Sadly, I think many of those who could use the help don't even realize they have problems.

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            1. 81

               Shades-of-truthposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Marcy, I actually enjoy doing it. Often, it results in a writer starting to catch their own typos. Occasionally, whoever I am helping actually realizes that they have been using certain words incorrectly for years, and they make a "lifetime change". That, is gratifying.
               
               It seems to me that we have a large enough community here on HP, of writers who are experienced at handling the written word, to help others who are struggling. In the long run, it should help HP be recognized as a competent "go-to" place for excellent information.
               
               I tend to shrink away from sites that are full of "drivel", and can only assume others do the same.
               
               Agree with you, that some do not realize they need the help.

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                  Jackie Lynnleyposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  My experience here is it is not appreciated when I alert someone to a misspelled or misused word. I am very thankful myself and want it caught and changed as soon as possible if there is error in any of my writings but seems that is not the norm.

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                  1. 81

                     Shades-of-truthposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     Jackie,
                     My experience here, and elsewhere over the years, is that the authors greatly appreciate someone alerting them to an error. To date, no one has been ungrateful.
                     
                     Like you, I appreciate a "heads-up". We can all miss our own typos.

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3. 89

   NateB11posted 9 years ago

   That the articles are published is not too surprising, the surprising part is that they're featured; which means they're visible to the search engines; which means they can affect the site. I wonder how that happened; it occurs to me they are old Hubs that haven't even gone through QAP, I've seen some of those; at least, they looked like that to me, I don't know technically if it's true, but some Hubs appear to be pretty old and I've assumed they haven't gone through QAP, especially considering the quality of some of them.
   
   The feature/unfeature function is meant to keep low-quality work from affecting the site because the search engines don't even see them. For this reason, it seems to me, hypothetically, a person could publish personal blog-style posts (though, not technically supposed to because this site is meant for magazine-style articles) and still have them on their subdomain, I suppose for their own readership or just because they like it. That's what I assume when I see Hubs that don't look like articles but look like something put together for followers or they are blog-style posts.

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4. 49

   GiftsByDianaposted 9 years ago

   Sad, but too often true 
   This was/is one of the issues that upset so many of us that came over from Squidoo.  We were having a tough time in getting some of our pages featured while we saw so much "garbage" that was. 
   So often, when we asked why, we were berated about "quality" which certainly was true in some cases, but not in comparison to some of the featured non-ex-squidoo pages.  This made many feel unwanted here at H.P. so they left.

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