We are ALL guilty of it. I won’t get on the soapbox until I admit to it as well. Blind voting. I’m Brian, and I’m a blind voter, but I’m cutting back. *** HI BRIAN!! ***

We just don’t have enough time in the day to read EVERYTHING everyone , even our friends, have submitted so we just give them a courtesy up vote and move along. If only one or two people did it the problem wouldn’t be so bad, but one or two people don’t do it.

Scenario One goes something like this:

A new submission is posted with the title “Watch out for Explosions!” and a description that goes something like

“Since 9/11, airport security has been tightened and regulated with iron fists all over the world. I have given up many a dangerous item before I boarded a plane, hair gel and nail clippers both. I don’t know if I feel any safer, …’

So you go by the title and description alone and think that this is something people should see, but you didn’t bother looking at the actual article. Had you looked at the article you may have traded that up vote for a down one. Why? The “article” you just up voted was in fact a crappy blog with a single paragraph copy-n-pasted from the original source with a small link to the original source. And lets not forget the rest of the blog has the traditional wallpaper of google ads. Oh and look over to the sidebar, they didn’t even bother categorizing the post or the 512 other ones.

Scenario Two goes something like this:

One of your friends, submits an article and you know his/her reputation and “BAM!” you tag it with an up vote. Cool right? Not exactly. Even if your friends have an awesome track record of submitting great content, they aren’t perfect. Given the proliferation of dupes, your friend may have submitted something that another user submitted hours ago and you’ve up voted both. Not quite fair to either party.

Another consequence is your friend my have submitted content that violates the TOS or is overall offensive, but by not bothering to look at it you give it your seal of approval.

If you’re dishing out up votes in hopes someone will repay the favor, you are not living up to the social media concept. The concept isn’t scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours even though that’s how the game is played. Social Media is about US choosing what is great content and showing that the collective can beat out an editor.

This isn’t to say up not to vote up a lot of material or don’t “blind vote” at all, but please be aware of several factors when doing so.

• If you’re not going to read the article, at least look at the source. If its a reputable source or a website you frequent often, you may be in the clear.
• If the submitter is a new account (at least one you don’t recognize), quickly check out their account to see if they’re simply submission bombing. That’s a good indicator that they may not have quality content and are just trying to beg for a little traffic.
• Is the title a little sensational? If so, you may want to scan the article, because it may not live up to the hype.
• If it seems like story that has been posted or should have been posted before, check with the search engine. There is a good possibility its a duplicate article and give credit to the original guy. You would want the same done to you.

Keep doing what you’re doing, but be more aware of what you’re doing.

The topic of down votes will not be covered do to the lack of database space on this server.