That Pesky FRESH (vote) Section

I Admit It: I Have A Love/Hate Relationship With The FRESH Section

The original purpose of the FRESH/VOTE section was to give the community the ability to weed out reposts and downright shitty/not funny posts. But over 96% of posts are making it through the voting process and showing up on the FRONT PAGE. Maybe the bar is too low. Maybe our posts are that good (Haha! Okay, that’s not true). And, maybe people have become accustomed to seeing reposts and know they are not the end of the world.

Here’s My Beef

I think the biggest problem with the FRESH/VOTE section is that it only serves to delay whatever timeliness there is to some posts. Posts can languish in the FRESH/VOTE section for up to 12 hours. Less than 1% of visitors to this site ever visit the section. I really don’t think the FRESH/VOTE section accomplishes much these days.

Here’s Our Plan

So, we’d like use the month of February to test how things go without the FRESH/VOTE section. If, after the month ends and we’re convinced we can do without it… then we’ll kiss it goodbye. If it becomes clear that there is a noticeable benefit to keeping the FRESH/VOTE section, we’ll reinstate it. We’d love to hear your input in the Disqus comments below.

How Will User Posting Work Without A FRESH Section?

We have several ‘trusted’ users who have shown a history of posting solidly funny snaps. When they post, it hits the site immediately without moderation. We’ll continue to upgrade users who show this same posting capability. It generally takes 5-10 successful posts to earn this status. Curated posts and user posts requiring moderation will hit the site every 20 minutes as in the past. By the way, getting rid of the FRESH section ensures that the FRONT PAGE will see new content at least every 20 minutes.

StupidSnaps.com

If we (or you) post a StupidSnap, it should be downvoted to hell. In fact, I kind of miss the days when the community could come together and to pummel a post someone on the LolSnaps staff thought was funny, but clearly was not.

So, here’s what else we’re working on:

  • Daily LolDumps. We’ve begun to upload daily meme collections (LolDumps) for those who want a little more funny in their day. As soon as we have a couple of weeks behind us, we’ll make it so the LolDumps can be navigated more easily. Why not integrate these into the normal LolSnaps feed? Because dumps are a different animal: they don’t have titles and contain reposts (more than usual), and they generally contain 20-40 memes in one post.
  • Photoshop Contests. We’re going to tiptoe back into the Photoshop contest arena. We’ll award Fake Internet Points to the winner. Thanks to everyone who gave us the nudge to do that. The Photoshop contests will have their own section and will be promoted site wide.
  • Additional Sections. We’ve got more plans for new sections in the future, but would love to hear from you about your ideas for new sections. Keep in mind, it needs to include humor (it is LOLsnaps, after all).
  • Site Speed. As has always been the case, advertising is our worst enemy and best friend. Enemy because it is BY FAR the biggest challenge to site speed and friend, because it keeps the lights on. We’d like to shave the page load time by 25%, but some restructuring and behind-the-scenes work is needed to accomplish that goal. For those of you who continue to support us by viewing ads, thanks. If you’ve turned off ads because it really hinders the experience, we completely understand.
Your input is really helpful.

Experiencing bugs or problems with the site? Got questions or have ideas for new features we should explore? Please leave your comments below. As always, a big thanks to everyone!

Published on: Jan 15, 2018
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