Aggregator sites like Digg, Reddit, N4G and Stumbleupon are community-driven sites intended to help whittle out the chaff and provide the busy people of today a place to be exposed to the best writing and most comprehensive news coverage newest, most popular or most controversial topics in the games industry. Each of these sites has their own methods of determination of worthiness, some more democratic while some are oligarchic. Regardless of the methods, the question is whether or not these aggregator sites are effective in their approach to delivering quality content to their readers. Even in describing themselves, Reddit only “hopes” to have interesting information presented:

What is astounding and possibly alarming about this approach is the sheer number of people that visit and/or participate in these sites on a daily basis with each link on the pages as possible targets for their precious viewing time. This means that if your link is on the page, connected to your article or blog, hundreds, possibly thousands of page views may be heading your way if even only a tiny percentage of the site’s total viewership clicks on you. With that incentive, it is easy to see why people are interested in contributing to these aggregator site communities.

With a community-based system like reddit that has submissions living or dying by the individuals in that group, it’s not surprising to find moderators and other rules in place. Outside the moderators, there is a detailed list called reddiquette. This list has dos and don’ts, guidelines per se of how the community should police itself. Unfortunately, this is not followed that closely, unless it can be used to a person’s advantage. An excellent example from reddiquette is “(don’t) down vote opinions just because you disagree with them.” In a thread discussing the gaming subreddit’s break from Destructoid, I made a comment stating that I have yet to see value in sites like reddit, which is obviously a very unpopular opinion at the site. Much like this paragraph, I state “It's all clique driven. I've read the reddiquette and see it being ignored when it's convenient. I finished high school a long time ago.” That comment has never seen a positive score and the time spent at zero or neutral was probably measured in microseconds. I will admit that in the two weeks since making the comment, the score has fluctuated a bit, even increasing, meaning that some individuals agree that the system is flawed.

This leads to another gaping hole in the systems of these sites: the concept of spam. To these sites, spam is the concept of one user who only submits his/her own writing to the aggregator site in order to drive readers to their own site. Now, in the reddiquette, it states that you can submit your own stuff as long as it’s within reason. Now, we begin to delve into the grey area that is a plague upon the aggregator sites. What is the definition of ‘within reason?’ Is there some kind of magical balance between posting your own work and that of others? I find it preposterous that there is some unspoken, unwritten line you are not allowed to cross, but you cannot see. I completely understand the desire to not have the site turn into Attention Whore Central, but what you’re saying is that it’s okay to do that, as long as I pepper in some other sites to cover it up; essentially telling me how to game the system. This leads to another conundrum. If I’m writing and working on my own site, then my time to research and find other links is severely diminished, meaning that individuals without those responsibilities gobble up the sites and stories I find interesting – leaving me with two options. In order to stay on the mystical balance beam, I can either submit garbage or duplicate submit; neither option is a boon to the site. So, instead I submit almost only my site’s articles that I find interesting (seven of my nine submissions have been from our site), which by their porous definition makes me a spammer.

There are many defenders of aggregator sites and frankly, I don’t blame them. These sites provide a service in giving people a lot of information quickly in small, bite-size chunks. It’s a good idea in theory, but it has yet to play out fairly in practice. In no way am I saying these sites are bad or evil, I just believe that with human nature as it is, the ease and temptation to take advantage of the system is too great. Surely we can find some middle ground between protecting the community from self-serving attention whores and vindictive self-important elitists. I just hope it happens before more writers give up on these sites and all we’re left with is the same recycled articles and sites everyone is already perusing.