It's no secret I have been slipping on the Meet the Super Mixxers posts. I have been extremely busy. I was thrilled when Julie (Calinazaret) offered to help out.  I was also thrilled when she told me who this post was going to be about. Fellow Marine Corps brother Katmicjus. Thanks for doing this interview Julie, and Katmicjus, you rock brother! Semper Fi! Katmicjus is one of the most interesting people I've met on mixx. He can be found in the front lines of some heated debates, and I was glad to catch up with him to get to know him better. He is a very proud father, US Marine, son, brother and friend who believes the USA should be available for all people. Where are you from? I am originally from upstate New York, the land of Rip Van Winkle. Surrounded by Mountains and lakes. I left to study in Denmark when I was 17. I have been on the move every since. I have lived in several countries and many states. What do you do when not Mixxing? I like gardening, fishing and people watching (go to the mall and sit and watch how people behave. lol...some forget they are in ...

We all see the stop pages on our favorite websites. Most times they are the standard blah, blah, blah format. Mixx.com has taken things a step further. Zack is the son of Kerry Pierce Parkins, Vice President, Products and Marketing at Mixx.com. Zack is the cute widdle guy we see on all the Mixx.com stop pages. I thought it would be a great idea to dive deep and get the back story on these pages and the pictures. Since Zack is underage and couldn't be contacted for interview as his schedule consists of a lot of playing and nap times, I reached out to his mother for the information. Like any proud parent Kerry was happy to share. So Kerry let's talk about Nap time. We bring the Mixx site offline for two reasons:  a) to install new Mixxer-facing code and features and b) to do maintenance work that is only indirectly obvious to our users. We wanted to send the message for the maintenance upgrades that Mixx was only going to be down a little while.  That led to the concept that we were only napping and thus, of course I had a napping Zack picture :-) Of course, I have lots of pix ...

I thought I would take some time to basically put this out there. Mixx users, we are watching. When I say "we" I mean SuperMixxers. Now before I make this sound like some rant you would hear from the group "Anonymous" , I need everyone to understand something. SuperMixxers are upstanding community members who have been given special privileges at the hands of Mixx.com administration. That being said, we are not a bury brigade, nor do we troll for our own personal gain. We have busted our butts along with the good people at Mixx.com to make our community work. One of the most important tools we have been given is, unlimited reporting. Here is the reason why, Mixx.com administrator cannot be everywhere at once. Nor can they see 100% of the material being submitted to Mixx. SuperMixxers play a key roll here, if we see something off color, violates TOS or anything completely unacceptable, we report it. Here is where my anti bury brigade proof comes in, SuperMixxers do not select thier own kind. This is done via algorithm. Since we do not know the algo, and we have no say, we are not all aligned. I have had issues ...

So Mixx has launched the Sifter! Now some of the Power Mixxers and Super Mixxers might wonder what this feature is all about, or why they should even participate. Well I'll tell you why. Once again Chris and Company have given you the user, the power to control the site. I mean, seriously who wants to see some boring ads on the sight. With the Sifter, you get to choose what ads are put on Mixx. Not only does this give you more say-so, you can also when prizes through participation. You could win a gift certificate or even a computer. That's right! You get entered in a drawing to win Mac Book, how cool is that? This isn't the first time a Mixx user has won a Mac Book, user Tau Zero won a Mac Book during the Mixx Loyal User Sweepstakes.  So Mixx both encourages and rewards it's users for getting involved. So now that you have these chances to win, what are you waiting for? If you are a Super Mixxer or a Power Mixxer, get in there and use the Sifter, you could be the next winner! Now if you do not have Super Mixxer or Power Mixxer status ...

  The previous submission is like a month old. Fair game, I'll submit mine since the original died then. Anyone guilty of saying this? Go ahead. Raise your hands because we've all "thunk" from time to time when we find an awesome submission and after a brief search we find that its way older than a week. We've been trained by other sites that if its more than 24-48 hours, that the submission is DOA (Dead on Arrival) and its okay to submit your story to see if it stands up to the test of time. Well not so at Mixx. From a personal experience as well as one from a Mixx friend, I've found that no time limit exists for Mixx submissions. In one case the story was 8 days old and I shared it with all my friends. I was sharing it only because I thought it was a great story, not to make it popular. In addition, I didn't think it would become popular because it was more than a week old. You can imagine my surprise when the next day I found that submission on the Popular Page. ...

Ever have one of those mornings where you wake up, watch a show or two on the DVR, sip some coffee and an epiphany drops in your lap? I did. Well it wasn't so much of an epiphany as it was the glimmer of an idea I had this morning after seeing some comments posted on Digg, Mixx, and Newsvine while performing my customary morning slacking. These were your typical asshat, dumb, troll comments you see on a daily basis. The idea that popped in my head was in addition to a report this button for comments and users add a "troll alert" button as well. Not every trollish comment comes from a troll. Sometimes a particular topic strikes a nerve and a person decides to add, well not so much, to the conversation by dropping a troll bomb. If the comment wasn't very offensive or against the TOS, then it will probably remain. Click the "troll comment" next to the comment and move along. Once the comment passes a certain threshold in a given amount of time an icon appears (I'm thinking dunce hat with a troll) and people will know ...

For many of us Mixx has been a breath of fresh air, but over time a few, less than desirable, scents have made their way across many noses. These scents come in the form of blind voting, inappropriate submissions, disrespectful behavior, increased number of duplicate stories, or just plain ignorance on the part of new Mixxers and Old. A simple mistake by one person usually doesn't do much to harm the system, but multiply a few innocent mistakes by a few tens of thousands and you've got yourself more than a few problems. In the Mixxing Bowl as well as Mixx itself many people want to know what the "appropriate" behavior at Mixx is, but there's one problem. There are not hard and fast rules to being a good Mixxer, more like a lot of subtle guidelines. I decided to come up with a proposed, albeit draft, Code of Honor for those who are members of the Mixxing Bowl to follow to help insure that Mixx stays a fun, nice, and informative place. Code of Honor (Unofficial) Respect others, their opinion, and their right to free speech. If ...

A quick anouncement to say I took the liberty of creating a Mixx.com search bar for Firefox & IE 7 using the searchplugins.net generator. Later on I may tweak it further, but for now their code seems to work well. This plugin takes the search term entered in the browsers search box and automatically redirects that term to the Mixx search results page. This should help make searching Mixx more convenient. Install Mixx Search Let me know if you have any problems. Update I've been informed by the Mixx Team that while on the Mixx site, you'll have the option to add their Mixx search to you browser. Its been there all along. Now I feel stupid :(.

Of all the features that Mixx has, one of the more useful ones is that little "Report This" link. It has the power to create and destroy, well the power to destroy anyway. As I merrily navigated through the depths of Mixx today, I noticed a comment spam I remembered reporting several weeks ago. Without hesitation I reported this incident like all the ones prior. At first it looked as though this person created a new account and continued their campaign of spamming comments. I could not have been more wrong. The submission graveyard. The user in question was exMixxer. At first I thought the name was a prophetic choice of words by someone who knows he'll get caught sooner or later spamming. Nope. Apparently the Mixx guys created a submission graveyard where we can visit and deface the headstones of reported content. So when enough people use the "report this" for a submissions, that submission earns its wings. Keep in mind that not all reported content is bad, some are simply dupes or bad URLS. You cannot see the mixx submission details because its long been deleted. So if you see the ...

On November 24, 2007 Michael Arrington of Techcrunch posted a follow up article about Mixx. Michael highlights how Mixx is possibly becoming a "Refugee" camp for Digg users with laundry lists of complaints including, but not limited to: The heavy hand of Digg (in particular banning) Hate based comments and submissions Kevin Rose's hypocrisy (Dupe submissions and Digging of supposed banned material) Comment censoring The Bury Brigade. Auto Bury (Although this is officially a myth) Since the publishing of that article, this Mixxer (Bdog2g2) has noticed a huge surge in registered accounts on Mixx. The MixxingBowl forums also gained about a dozen new members. Based on some of the comments in the article it would appear as though some of the die-hard diggers aren't entirely impressed with Mixx. “no site will ever kill digg. not possible. brand is too strong and all over the web.” Many Digg users are leaving Digg to join Mixx? Get your facts straight! Digg has 15M+ users, Mixx has 45K users or .003% of the Digg numbers. Why the heck does Mixx even matter? They’re just another Digg rip-off headed for the deadpool. Is there any concrete (facts, stats, traffic) to illustrate this story? From what I can tell, it’s purely anecdotal based on a ...