Dave was as giddy as school-girl when he got a sneak-peak at the new TechMeme Leaderboard. Later that day he was already talking about what sort of improvements should be made.
The next day he proudly proclaimed that he was #1 in his own little demographic.
It’s all different today, though, as he calls the Leaderboard a “cesspool”:
It was intriguing for a day or two, but now it’s clear that the Leaderboard was the dumbest idea ever, because now more than ever, people are gaming Techmeme so they can climb the list.
Winer-to-English translation: I dropped a bunch of spots, and it can’t be because people were more interesting than me today, so it must be because they’re cheating and the leaderboard sucks.
He also tosses some nice little insults (Dave would call them ‘ad hominems’, but they’re not) at Jason Calacanis. Mike Arrington calls Dave on his hypocritical TechMeme Spam and also notes that Dave’s been using TinyURL instead of real URLs in a petty attempt to avoid giving link-power to sites he doesn’t like. He’s already grown old, but maybe one day Dave will grow up.
To those of you who are in Dave’s good graces, who think this site is cruel and hateful, who are sure that he’s not a bad guy, he’s just misunderstood: ever wonder how long it takes to go from a “good guy” to an “idiot” in Dave’s eyes?
I like Jason, a lot
Friday, June 01, 2007 by Dave Winer.
Jason Calacanis is a good man.
He’s been berry berry good to me.
Always a kind word. NYer. Doesn’t mind direct advice.
Apparently the amount of time it takes to go from “good guy” to “idiot” is, at the very most, 3 months… though if you ask Jason, the transformation more likely seems instantaneous.
I will never understand the morally ambiguous, the mind set just perplexes me. How Mike Arrington can watch Winer tar and feather his friend over and over again and then say he “loves Dave” baffles me. If Dave’s attacks had been issue based I could understand but they weren’t. It’s just complete moral bankruptcy on Arrington’s part and it’s that type of moral bankruptcy that keeps Winer in business.
As for Dave, the irony is that he’s probably right this time around. Techmeme is a cesspool though not for the reasons he thinks.
The problem with Techmeme is that it rates stuff based on how many people linked to it which means that the idiotic stuff gets pushed to the top. The best part of the blogosphere is the part where experts talk about things they know. But a knowledgeable person talking about a serious topic isn’t going to get a lot of links because, to be honest, most bloggers are the type of people who like to “talk” and not “do”. So you get three days of posts about Google choosing to do business in China by ignorant people who can’t begin to understand the complicated business and political issues behind the move while an expert in XML talking about the Semantic Web never makes it on the site at all because those same idiots don’t even understand what the Semantic Web is.
let’s see how long it takes before winer turns on his bunk buddy arrington. he’s manic
Wow. Is there anyone that Dave hasn’t thrown under a bus? I guess he has a different definition of friendship. What did Gabe do to deserve this “calling it like I see it?”
And Arrington loving Winer? One thinks maybe Arrington is reaping some sort of reward for saying that. It’s just a matter of time before Dave gets around to doing this to Arrington again.
Whatever happened to Winer stopping blogging?
Any popularity contest in a clusterfuck like the tech blogosphere is going to reward combative and inflammatory dolts like Dave Winer and Robert Scoble over thoughtful and fair people.
Michael Arrington justifies his criticism of Winer with this comment on his personal blog: “No, I love Dave. But he always says he calls stuff like he sees it publicly, and has trashed me many a time. So I’m calling this like I see it.”
Does Arrington really think he lives in a world where he can criticize Winer in public like this and still remain on good terms with him? I have trouble believing he’s that stupid.
Didn’t winer ask Gabe to remove him from techmeme bots in the past?
Winer doesn’t want his blog links to be used by TechMeme… becuase he finds things and TechMeme get credit for finding it. So, Dave said stop searching my site. But it’s OK for TechMeme to point TO Dave’s work. OK?
It is true that one inherent problem with ranking algorithms is that they often surface the “most popular” (i.e. most linked to) stories. That can result in a lot of gaming and a lot of bad stories surfacing.
We tried to take this into consideration in our latest SocialRank (www.SocialRank.com) algorithm by establishing profiles of blogs to see what is truly interesting. You can take a look here at one of our sites at http://www.StartupSignal.com.
Would love to hear your thoughts.