That's right. N4G is flooded with spam. And I'm not talking about spambots, fake users or N4G advertising, I'm talking about the kind of articles that the community has been approving lately.
This kind:
http://gamecriticism.com/xb...
Now, there is an unspoken rule on N4G that whatever you do before approving an article YOU DO NOT READ IT. You simply read the title, and if it's appealing, you approve. Especially if it's related to the console war.
Lately however, we've been seeing some consequences of that rule. Articles like "X reasons to pre-order Y game" and "X reasons why Y console has something something" have been popping up all over the place.
Could we please stop approving those? Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about top 10 lists or other ways for lazy journalism to manifest itself. I'm talking about spam.
If you look at the examples I provided, you'll probably see that they aren't about video games at all. They're about ads. Why else, would the articles be spread over several pages (in spite of being extremely short) and why else would the advertisements physically cover the text (at least in my browser)? Why else would they be full of spelling errors and give us nothing we haven't already read a million times?
It's one thing that long, thoughtful articles about video games don't get the credit they deserve because they don't have eye-catching titles. But couldn't we at least help the good journalists out a little bit, by not having them compete with spam?
My solution: Approve of articles less liberally.
You don't even have to read the entire text (although, that is the ideal). Just take twenty seconds to check the spelling, see if advertisements are flooding the site or if the article is spread over unnecessarily many pages.
If the text is lousy, please report it, but also downvote the article along with site. The way I see it, that's the best way to keep the barbarians at the right side of our walls.
And lastly, I have no idea how the N4G moderators work, but I would assume that if you have time to look into the comments section on N4G, you could every now and then take a quick glance at the actual articles that are being approved. There has been trouble with spambots before, but right now I feel like these articles are a bigger problem. That's my impression, anyway.
It's entirely possible that I'm underestimating the work that is being done to fight off these articles. Maybe the hopeless articles I see pop up on the front page every now and then are simply the few that made it past the gates, but let's do our best to shut the gates for these guys entirely!
So let's go out there and get this N4G spring cleaning on the road (even though it's still winter where I live), and let's treat these articles for what they are, namely:
Spam.
Wasbir from NoobFeed writes: Relooted is a unique type of independent game because it puts as much emphasis on ideas and points of view as on gameplay. The ways you plan heists are creative, the teaching parts are well thought out, and the Afrofuturist setting gives it a unique personality.
Console Creatures writes, "There's a lot of variety and some cool new approaches to the beat'em up throughout Scott Pilgrim EX. The roster of heroes and enemies is amazing, and the adventure they go on is one only the Scott Pilgrim universe can truly provide."
Joy from NoobFeed writes: Crimson Capes is a big, complicated 2D action-adventure game that combines the structure of Souls with the energy of shooting games. The game's semi-open world, numerous playable characters, and complex battle systems make it a great sandbox for players who enjoy mastering it.
I have to disagree with something. Top 10 lists need to be buried too. Sick of sites like whatculture.com coming out with 30 page lists for 30 games that have 1 game and a couple of sentences per page just to mount up the clicks. Those are spam too in my opinion.
We should be able to "bubble Down" submitters. If you submit crap, we lower your contributor rank (CRank). I think that would be interesting.
Perhaps the "low quality" report option from the blog section needs to make its way over to general news submissions. Not because a blogger has a website means it gives him a pass from quality control.
To avoid spending all my bubbles, I'll address most of you here:
@DragonKnight
There are some good Top 10 lists. Gamesradar put a lot of work into theirs. However, I absolutely agree that the crappier ones are generally not worth approving.
@thorstein
I saw that text. The tendency is that articles that are critical of games the community favor tend to get harder punishments. The text your linking to isn't the worst I've ever seen, as I think it kind of makes a point, put there is some intrusive advertising.
@annoyedgamer
100% agree! While I favor labeling some of these ad-heavy articles as "spam", there are plenty of articles that deserve being slapped with a "low quality" label.
More Driveclub , Destiny and The order articles please there just is not enough of them for my liking.