sphinn

This is a difficult post to write because I feel that people will already take offense to it before reading what I want to offer. First, the full disclosure: I am a moderator at Sphinn.

Many of you, whether close friends online or folks I’ve met at conferences, ask me to Sphinn your stories. Sometimes you’ll be very discreet and throw in a subtle request every so often. Others are a little more forceful and excessive. With all due respect to my friends in the industry, compared to the amount of Digg requests I get (and you’d think I get a lot of those) and the amount of stories submitted to Sphinn in a given day, Sphinn has spiraled out of control.

Let me say that I don’t like rejecting Sphinn requests. But we all may have to start doing that sometime. After all, if stories that hit the front page are not voted because people like them but rather because people want to do favors for their friends in the industry, Sphinn becomes a popularity contest, but not for reasons previously stated. It’s no longer a “the familiar faces dominate the front page” mentality. Instead, it’s the “please Sphinn me” requests that are overflowing on other communication mediums, particularly Facebook and StumbleUpon, that is causing this to happen. You ask me on IM/Facebook, I appear to be active, and I am not the type of person to ignore your request so I feel obligated to comply. However, it’s not fair to other people who may not know me or other community members so well and don’t solicit votes like you do.