November 17, 2010
[defrag] Scott Porad on how we fileter 0,000 user submisses per day
Scott Porad from the Cheezburger Network, a network of humor and entertainment Web sites, including I can Has Cheezburger. Memebase, The Daily What, and Failblog.
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NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other people’s ideas and words. You are warned, people. |
It’s mainly user-moderated. As an example, Scott takes us through the steps for the Cheezburger site.
First, the home tab where you can submit content. The LOL builder makes it easy for users to add captions to images. They get 300,000-500,000 submissions to their network every month, but they only publish 1-2 percent. How do they cull? There’s no secret sauce, no magic algorithms. It’s a four-step human process.
Step 1: All submissions are screened by an editor, looking for image quality (not taken on a cellphone at night, etc.), appropriateness (no nudity, violence, racism), germaneness (a dog photo submitted to the cat site?), and keeping photos of humans out. Most of what gets submitted is junk, and gets screened out.
Step 2: Using the second tab, users vote or add a submission to their favorites. They also look at which content has been shared on social networks.
Step 3: User screening for offensiveness and copyright violations.
Step 4: Editorial curation.
They tried outsourcing it, but there’s too much specific to our culture, and requires too much editorial judgment.
Scott shows us his the favorite photos in his own account profile. ([Some very funny ones.]
