The 'Nang It!' problem.

Nuffnang has recently launched a new blog-sharing function, Innit. Innit's basically a place for you to list your blogpost for others to read and 'nang it!' if they like it. It's really just like a popularity contest for blogposts.

Now now, don't get me wrong, I am quite optimistic about this new feature, and I have already written a post for that. But let's face it, there are some problems with such a feature, some that might require some attention before innit becomes one of those messy marketplaces with blogposts strewn all over the floor, leaving both good and bad ones to rot away in the blogosphere without the attention and praise they deserve.

You realise that hardly anyone sifts through a mountain-worth of trash in search of a gem. They just ignore the trash.

Innit is definitely a good way to drive extra traffic to blogs who get listed, but that itself is it's inherent flaw. It is like setting a noticeboard in public for people to post their own advertisments to sell/rent apartments, look for dogs, etc. And when left alone, people start to paste notices all over the place, overlapping previous notices. Similarly, without a guideline or a filter system on innit, blogposts are constantly added on, and sooner or later, you find yourself sieving through hundreds of meaningless blogposts hoping to drive a single reader or two to their own blogs. Not that my innit post was anything near a success-story, but I believe that posts on innit should at least hold some decent content.

Like how people like to blog with 'laxxxxx' and 'lozzzz' or 'hewoozzzzz', the blogs on innit are gettin a tad disturbing to my eyes and mind. Telling us how emo you got over the weekend does not help us in any way. Nor should it interest us.

One more thing, innit isn't a porn website. Stop selling sex. Moderators should stop bloggers who list their blogs on innit with titles like 'Sexy Pictures of Myself. Come view and Nang it!' or 'Hottest blah blah blah'. From my own experiece, people who try to fit themselves in the definition of 'hot' usually don't, and 'hot' is just one of those words that people term 'subjective' for a reason - usually in self-defence of their own taste.

Like in all groups and societies, there are bound to be a few who should not belong. I guess it's the same here in the blogosphere - people who simply hope to boost site traffic with sex. The blogosphere is still growing and there are already alot of debates over whether or not our children will benefit from it. The last thing I would like to hear from such blog-related discussions is that our children will benefit by learning about puberty at the age of 7.

Oh, did I mention that some shameless people actually have the audacity to ask others to 'Nang' their posts just so that they can score a few more points? It is understandable that 'Nang'-ing the post would give it a higher score and thus giving it a chance to be on the most-popular list, but that should be for people whose posts are well recieved by readers based on blog content, not on such requests.

Need I say more?

My friends, please, do something right. And as for innit, keep it going, but perhaps set a minimum standard for blogs to get listed. Let's not make innit users sift through hundreds of meaningless and five-liner posts that just happen to have slightly catchy titles. Till then, I guess I'll have to put innit on a lower-priority status.