I see you over there being crazy like a fox, HubPages!

1. 98

   Kylyssaposted 9 years ago

   I'm sure this was obvious to everyone else, but I'm slow on the uptake when it comes to some things.
   
   We've been complaining a bit more lately about the severe and many foibles of the QAP and hubbers have done so for years. QAP is still very weak and there's an awful lot of junk content on HP. So we're being motivated to report it by the prominent positioning of new hubs on the new homepage! HP has also placed the newest content on our hubs, again, motivating us to report the garbage hubs.
   
   The addition of the high trash content hub section to hubs was actually brilliant. People can choose to go straight to their feed but they have no choice but to see the junk hubs prominently displayed on their own hubs, making them look trashy. What people won't be motivated to do out of community pride, they'll do out of pride in their own work.
   
   It's actually pretty clever, but it would be more clever if only signed in users saw the newest hubs on the homepage and on hubs. I think it's a good idea to make hubbers see the lousy stuff, spam, and spun content QAP passes so they can report it, but it's a terrible idea to let the general public see the trash QAP lets through.

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      Jodahposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I agree Kylyssa, the New Hubs Page is full of Hubs with glaring spelling errors and bad English. Earlier I chose the forums page instead and was amazed by the badly worded titles and even found forums that were pure spam. As you say having poor quality hubs listed on our own hubs will make us report them more frequently though. It is embarrassing to think the general public can see this. HP have said they are gradually working to improve the quality of the new hubs shown etc.

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2. 68

   relacheposted 9 years ago

   HubPages actually used to show new Hubs this prominently up until just a couple years ago, and the reason we have so many crappy Hubs now is because having users self-report the garbage has never been an effective method.
   
   Back when this site was booming with users, content and revenue (2010-2011) there were a whole bunch of us who decided we would try and give HubPages a solid hour a day flagging the worst crap.  By the way, the CPMs on the site were $40-50 then, and I think they are about $2 now.  We had strong motivation to help the site and protect our earnings.
   
   We never even managed to make a dent in the garbage.  For every Hub you read and flagged, ten more had been published in that same time.
   
   The core of hardcore USA writers who drove this site pretty much departed in 2012-2013 when the bulk of the money vanished and with them went the majority of this site's best content.  I think admin hoped to get some good core content with the Squidoo acquisition but obviously the best content was also already gone from there too.

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      You're certainly right; it's nowhere near enough to put a dent in the problem and the motivation is too slim for hubbers to really get into reporting the junk. However, I think if more people realized why it was being done, they'd be moved to report the trash they see rather than just getting upset by seeing it.
      
      QAP needs to be fixed. There's no avoiding that reality. Maybe if we report the heck out of the trash HP has chosen to prominently display on our hubs and on the homepage, HP will see just how severe the problem with QAP is? I don't have high hopes for it, but it couldn't really hurt, in my opinion.

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         sallybeaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Perhaps the money which is currently offered for asking a question would be better spent on giving people who flag poor writing a cash incentive.  Some of the questions asked don't merit a reward.
         
         I have never flagged an item, not sure how one does it, perhaps someone can enlighten me.  I have reported spam but never anything for poor copy.

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            Jodahposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Sally, do you get money for asking questions? I never knew that.

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               Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               I believe you get some money for page views on questions although not as much as for page views on hubs.

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               sallybeaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Yes you do but not for answering them.  It is all on the learning centre.

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               Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               You don't get money for asking a question, you earn money from ads which are shown on the question, when people visit the page.  However you will never earn much, if anything, from questions because they are marked "no follow" after a short while, which means they won't show up on Google for very long.

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                  sallybeaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  Really, I thought it was a 60/40 split on a question.  Apologies if I got it wrong.

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         2. 98

            Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Look at the upper right edge of the hub. There's a little flag icon next to the word 'report' in the upper right edge of the white space. Click the report button and decide in which way the hub violates quality or ethical standards and select it from the options given. You can add an explanation if the problem isn't glaringly obvious.

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               sallybeaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks, amazing how unobservant can one be!  Thanks very much for that.  I might even join the ranks of people trying to make this site a better place now that I know that.

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   SmartAndFunposted 9 years ago

   What home page?

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      http://hubpages.com/

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         theraggededgeposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Crikey, I never see that page as I log straight into my account. You are right - there is a load of absolute garbage there! How embarrassing - what's the point of QAP?

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            relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            None of that material has been through QAP. 
            
            See that little button highlighted at the top that says "latest?"  When you see the homepage, you are literally looking at the most recent content someone has submitted to the site.
            
            HubPages used to show new content like this, minus the Q&A and discussions, and some people used to flag weak content for them all day.  However, when that last worked, the site was making $50 CPMs and users had motivation to do so.
            
            Showing the weakest content to everyone now is just demoralizing all of us and has revived the very valid arguments that a lot of oversight tasks that admin wants users to do, the users are not interested in doing for low to no pay.

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            1. 98

               Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Holy crap!
               
               Let me get this straight, the HubPages homepage, as seen by people who are not signed in, shows brand new hubs that haven't been through QAP?
               
               Who the frack advised them to do such a thing?
               
               Thanks for the information.

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                  relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  Don't you just love how engineers problem solve when it's not a mechanical issue?  Me too!

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                     Millionaire Tipsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     No, that is not true.  Readers who are not signed in do not see the forum threads or the non-QAP hubs.

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                        Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                        That's a relief. To show the non-QAP hubs to visitors would be nuts. As faulty as the QAP is, it at least filters out most of the blatant spam and topic violations.

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               SmartAndFunposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Relache, are you referring to the feed, or the homepage, or both?

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      2. 71

         SmartAndFunposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Oh. I never go to that page.
         
         Do we know for certain that hubs on that page have passed the QAP? Or do they show up on that page as soon as the author clicks on the "publish" button? Poor quality hubs caused a quite a bit of ranting and raving on the forums when people thought the hubs shown on the feed had passed QAP -- however, it turned out many had not. The feed was simply an automatic destination for anything that had just been published for the first time.
         
         Would be good to know.

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   SmartAndFunposted 9 years ago

   I am not willing to flag for hours a day, but I would flag occasionally and would be likely to flag more often if the stuff showing up in my feed or on the homepage had already gone through QAP. It feels useless and redundant to flag work that has not yet been through QAP; I'd like to assume QAP will take care of the bad stuff.
   
   For flagging purposes, I only want to look through stuff that has already passed QAP and been featured. I'm really lazy though, and also sometimes pressed for time, and don't want to have want to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to find featured content. Then there's the question of whether or not anything is actually done about poor quality yet featured articles that are flagged...

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      Millionaire Tipsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I agree with this.  We should only be looking at things that have already gone through QAP and passed.  That way, we aren't duplicating efforts, and are getting to see higher quality hubs.
      
      It isn't just a waste of our time.  Someone new to HubPages might think that the stuff they see on the feed is the quality of stuff they should be writing, which means that more and more lower quality writing will be written and published.  Even people who aren't new will think they don't have to go through as much effort as they thought they did.

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