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A social news site enables its users to submit news articles and vote on which are the best.  The most popular articles percolate to the top of the list and are rewarded with a huge surge in Web traffic.  A candid discussion of each article often ensues on the social news site.  The most popular social news sites are Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon.

DotNetKicks (DNK) is a social news site focused on software development with Microsoft .NET.  It’s one of the best sites on the Web to stay current with .NET news, information and tips.  If you are a .NET developer, you should make a practice of visiting DNK every day.  But this valuable site apparently has a hidden loophole that unscrupulous visitors can use to delete their competition.

You’ve Been Kicked

My adventure started recently when I submitted an article to DNK.  This is known as “kicking,” and the owner of the site receives a message saying, “You’ve been kicked (and that’s a good thing).”  A few hours later I received what appeared to be an automated email from DNK:

Your post:
‘e lorem ipsum’
was deleted by a moderator.
Please let us know if you think this was in error.

Well, of course I think this was an error.  I’m not going to waste my time submitting an article that I expect to be rejected.  It would be nice if they’d actually tell me why the article was rejected.

What you see is what you get

Like most web businesses these days, DotNetKicks puts all its energy into the front end of its website.  Pretty much what you see is what you get. 

But what you get is tremendously valuable.  In the case of DNK, viewers receive — for free — a steady stream of the latest .NET news and tips, filtered by the world so that you only see the wheat and not the chaff. 

Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to be.  There’s some argument that social news groupthink results in a myopia that celebrates mediocrity at the expense of true genius.  Or that a few powerful users actually control the entire site. 

But with DNK at least, you can typically be sure that the front page of DNK represents the day’s best articles on .NET news.

And this is where it gets interesting

So I was sharing my story with a programmer friend who’s also an active blogger.  He listened carefully then said, “Oh, you probably got kicked out.”  I asked him to explain. 

“DotNetKicks, like most social news sites, has loopholes and vulnerabilities that allow you to game the system.  With DotNetKicks, you can easily kill an article just by marking it as spam.  Somebody — probably one of your competitors or haters — marked your article as spam, and so you got kicked out.”

“Here, let me show you how it’s done,” he continued.  So he logged into DNK and started browsing around.  “Oh, here’s one.  This guy is a real a**hole.  Let’s kick him out.”  He then clicked the “report as spam” link three times, and viola, the article disappeared from the list.  “You’ve been kicked out, mother*****!” my friend exclaimed with a malevolent glee that scared me a little.

Once I got over the initial shock of how easy that was, I asked my friend if he was worried his DNK account would be suspended for falsely kicking out other articles.  “No, I just use one of my dummy accounts.”  Huh?

“Dude, you need to get with the times!” he said.  “If you are serious about getting your blog on social news sites, you need a bunch of fake accounts to pump up your ratings and attack your enemies.  I have at least a dozen accounts on each of the major sites.”

Now I know why I enjoy talking to this guy… he’s always teaching me something, even if it’s something I need to avoid.

But don’t let this stop you

I share this cautionary tale simply to expose some of the seedy underbelly of social news sites.  And to explain why perhaps your DNK submission was rejected.

But in spite of this loophole, DotNetKicks is still one of the best .NET news and information sites around.  It’s a must-read for any serious .NET developer.  Just don’t kick this article.

(Update: Section on AdSense removed.  Your AdSense code is displayed when you are logged out.  Hopefully DNK will soon support AdSense channels so we can track this.  Thanks for the info, Gavin.  Keep up the good work!  We .NET developers appreciate it.)

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