Mar19
Stop making “lazy list” posts or I’ll kill you (with Greasemonkey script)
I really was going to let this slide. But something pushed me over the edge today.
I’m not the first to complain about this; Matt Haughey said it a year ago. But since then things have only gotten worse.
Blogging is a trade far more respectable than its silly name would suggest, folks. I understand that traffic equals money. I don’t mind that you’re using a gimmick to get people to click on your link. I mind that you’ve been using the same gimmick for a year and a half. Find something different! Hell, fall back on the old “CLICK HERE FOR GIRLS MAKING OUT” ruse! You’ve only begun to explore ways to manipulate your readers!
“Protest programming,” as a form of agitprop, is at least a generation old. Its earliest recorded practitioner was the anonymous soul who uploaded a simple GW-BASIC program to a BBS in 1986:
10 PRINT "REAGAN SUCKS"
20 GOTO 10Profound commentary for its time.
My contribution to the art form is a Greasemonkey script that will “redact,” CIA-style, those posts that are deemed to use the “list format” crutch. It does this by checking for a numeral at the beginning of the link. It also jumps through a few hoops to catch edge cases like a preceding article (“The 9 Best Ways to Blog Your Meals”), spelled-out words (“Thirteen Productivity Habits of Insomniacs (Tip 1: Sleep Less)”), and preceding blog titles (“WorkflowSynergies » Blog Archive » 4 Ways to Synergize Your Workflows”).
To illustrate, here’s a before/after screenshot of del.icio.us’s popular links tagged with “lists.” (Fish in a barrel, I know. But I needed something to test against.)
Download it. Observe how much it obscures del.icio.us/popular, your network’s links, or even your own links. Gaze into your own souls, Internet users. Like what you see?
Here’s the script. Should also work with Safari 3 and GreaseKit.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:58 pm (Quote ↓)
Beautiful. Brilliant.
Expand to Digg, please.
March 19th, 2008 at 10:15 pm (Quote ↓)
Pretty sad that several of the few ones that made it through are just lists formatted in a screwier way.
March 28th, 2008 at 5:05 am (Quote ↓)
Not all lists are bad though. Of the 6 ‘lists’-tagged items I have on Delicious, only 1 could be called “lazy”. And one is just awesome: http://mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/30MaryamAkbariandSeanMichaels.html, but that might make it through as it spells out the number in full.
I’d also argue that coming up with 6-word reviews for over 700 tracks is far from lazy (4th one down on the screenshot…)
March 28th, 2008 at 5:23 pm (Quote ↓)
@Greg: Sure, I’ll grant that. I think most, but not all, list posts are lazy.
The one-in-six figure you offer reflects those posts that you’ve already considered to be the cream of the crop. The fact that you have only six suggests you’re a bit more selective than the average del.icio.us user.