The problem of downvoting was pretty bad when they only had one item on the front page; now they have two, and it got a bit better, but at the same time, it became more popular.

If the goal is to foster a community, then they’re completely failing. The goal, I think, is to give more reasons for people to go to oregonlive so they can see local self-published content.

The traffic boost from a front page oregonlive link is huge, and so of course the system is going to be gamed, and of course it’s not large enough to actually work with the reddit system.

And I’ll agree - there is some gaming involved (particularly with the presidential stories magically having a lot of votes and others down to 0 or even in the negative realm). I’ll vote down stories I find not interesting but also NOT OREGON / SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON related. If I want something other than Pacific Northwest news… I’ll go somewhere else, thank you very much.

That being said, it’s an active community… though a small one. If they keep on incorporating into the site and getting the name out there, I think it’ll just keep on steadily growing little by little.

so in a shameless bit of self promotion, if someone wants to help clean up the look a bit we can use http://portland.goboz.com/news which is all ready set up in a similar way.

That audience is not the astute, intelligent, and well-groomed audience that regularly visits Silicon Florist.

But I still want those folks—en masse—to hear about all of the cool stuff happening with Web-startups here in the Silicon Forest. What’s more, myopic or not, I think what many of the startups here are doing are, in fact, newsworthy.

I think it’s the sheer girth of the audience I find so attractive for being rife with wasted potential. And that’s the one thing that a new site, without voracious, expensive, and continued promotion, may never have the hope of attracting.

That said, I’m totally willing to give that try if others are game. I’d much rather be promoting a resource (like I currently promote Oregon Reddit) that was more beneficial for the greater social media good.

P.S. Love seeing all of the OpenID comments. Wahoo!

This is the actual problem. Unlike Digg, Reddit, and other social linking communities, the point of Oregon reddit is not to be in (and participate in) the reddit section; the point is to make it to that front page of Oregonlive.

When the post is put on the front page, it is just a link to a website. So, the main goal(s) of this social network is to leave the social network.
People who are participating are mostly there to make it to the un-social front-page and then have the OregonLive readers leave the (small) connection that link has to the reddit page and Oregonlive completely.

This will obviously only change if the number of users greatly increases and adds more functions of a social networking platform (groups, interests, etc). This might happen, but I think it is highly unlikely.

It may seem natural for those of us is the twitter/digg/slashdot/reddit/friendfeed, etc echo-chamber to embrace such a place. But, I think the vast, vast majority of people on OregonLive want their traditional Oregonian articles and have no want of participating in that network. Those of us who do participate in such networks have so many other and better avenues and little need to participate in that one.

I already subscribe to a good percentage of the people who post there, so I am seeing mostly the same titles/posts I have already seen with added newstainment from the traditional media. I think that this is true of a lot of “participants”. Therefore, without strong community features–which are likely to not be used anyway since we are all talking/viewing/reading on other ones already–it will continue to be exactly what it is, a traffic generator plus broadened exposure for those that make it to the front page of Oregonlive.

Quite the opposite of Reddit itself, which is fantastically content-centric.

I’ll go through phases where I look at it daily, then I’ll hit a dry spell. I guess I should go submit this post, eh?