Back in January, I posted a short update about JapanSoc, the new social bookmarking site and latest project of Nick Ramsey. That was back in January, not long after it had first kicked off. Now it’s been running for over half a year, I thought I’d give it a review – say what I do and don’t like about it and where I’d like it to go in the future.
As far as popularity goes, the site is doing amazingly. Actually, at the time of writing I don’t have anything to do with JapanSoc on this blog, but now it’s really taken off I’m going to do something about that. It’s pretty much essential for people wanting to read blogs about Japan, and for us bloggers to see what other people are writing about. I’ve discovered some really cool sites through JapanSoc, and as the community is relatively small there’s not too much content, so I do read quite a lot of stuff I never would.
Furthermore, the site is nice and clean, and easy to navigate. If I had to be picky, and I do, I’d have to ask why the theme is orange and not red. I mean, Japan’s official colours are red and white, so it doesn’t make sense really. But that’s not really a huge issue. The JapanSoc ’soc this!’ buttons are really cool but I wish they came in other colours other than orange, or were offered in different sizes and designs. I know you guys are probably wondering why I don’t shut up and make some myself, but the truth is I have absolutely no idea how to. At all.
The new sumo (most successful members) and Genki (most active members) charts are pretty cool, if only to see who’s contributing a lot to the site. It often reminds me that I need to contribute more myself, but I do worry it encourages people to put too much stuff on the site.
That leads me to my one biggest worry about the site. Whilst most of the content that makes it onto the front page is good, I fear some people, especially when the site gets bigger, will simply post every blog post they do onto the site. I’d hate to have a Digg situation with thousands of stories getting submitted and only three or four being interesting. (Although I’ll be submitting this story, and it’s probably not that interesting….) Perhaps a ‘one/two stories per day’ limit would be good.
Ultimately though, it’s a great site. I mean, it had some teething problems but look – I’ve tried to be pretty harsh here and I’ve come up with a few points, and most of them aren’t even very good. I strongly suggest anyone, blogger or not, to get signed up and involved with JapanSoc.
If you have any suggestions or whatever for JapanSoc, comment here with them and I’ll try to get them across to Nick as soon as I can. Oh, and he totally didn’t pay me to write this post. What? This new car? Oh no, I just found it..
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Thanks Mike, this came as a welcome surprise! You’ve raised some fair points which I’d like to comment on.
Firstly, I agree it’s possible for people to abuse the site by submitting all their blog posts. I can always raise the number of votes needed to get on the front page, but that won’t stop the Upcoming section getting filled with sub-par posts that make finding anything good quite a chore. Another option is to lower the bury limit to discourage over-submission. Currently a submission is deleted if there are three times more “buries” than votes, but if people call for it, I could change this. I’d prefer to see a community-driven solution like burying, but I’ll keep the possibility of imposing limits in mind should it become a big problem. Let me just add that a few months ago I asked people to only bury something that was off-topic, treating the “bury” button as a “report spam” button. However, these days I leave it for the users to decide how they use the button.
Having said all that, I wouldn’t want to discourage people from submitting their own blog posts. It’s the community of bloggers doing just that which has helped kick-start JapanSoc. Use your best judgment is all I can say.
Secondly, you’ve got me with the colors! I have no excuses. The orange just happened to be part of the original template I used for the site, and it made me feel all warm and tingly inside. The size of the WordPress “Soc it!” button, too, was just the standard size and I didn’t give much thought to alternatives.
Finally, thanks for your support. It’s fun seeing new faces on JapanSoc, and reading all the posts. There’s a good mix of content and a great community of like-minded bloggers. The next six months should be very interesting! :)
Hmm, I’ve posted some of my better articles and gotten exactly zero attention on the site. Kind of disappointing and not something to make me keep posting articles baka mitai ni…
I think JapanSoc is a great tool for Japan-based bloggers/webmasters as well as people who have an interest in Japan and Japan-related stuff.
However, as the site grows, so will it’s post count. Among those posts, there will be lots of stuff that has been posted about elsewhere countless times, as well as good stuff that gets buried. I think Nick has done a good job so far of trying to develop a system that will separate the wheat from the chaff. I’ve seen some good posts get buried at JapanSoc (not referring to my own excellent posts ;) ) by posts containing the same old stuff written about on 10 or 12 other blogs, including Japan Probe, that week. I mean, if someone wants to write about the latest maid cafe, I wish he/she would add something original to that story, or just link up the Mainichi Shinbun article that he/she is rehashing, instead.
Anyway, I try to limit my posts at JapanSoc to one every two days.
I’ve had good luck with most of the submissions. The trick is to get something that is actually interesting or actually useful to most of the people on the site. The folks using it are not necessarily totally new to Japan. So sometimes those articles geared towards newbies flounder to the bottom of the stack. Then again, sometimes ridiculously sensationalist garbage gets to the front page. I don’t know. I just hope that the users will try to maintain their personal standards, and that this will be revealed in the aggregate vote count. I’m confident that it will get better.
Also – I would say no to the submission limit simply because there are flood days. And it makes it hard to change the rankings if everyone is limited to the same number of submissions from here on out. It would mean that inactivity would be punished, versus activity being rewarded. Right? And we can always deal with the spammers. But I’m fully willing to hear the arguments for a limit. :-)
Nick: Thanks for the quick reply! I was unaware of the bury/soc ratio, but I think 3/1 sounds like a good number. I would imagine if the community gets much larger it would need to come down a little, especially if we get an influx of people who soc everything. I couldn’t agree more, though about community driven moderation – probably better than a team of mods.
Peter Payne: I’d take a look at the ones that didn’t do so well and avoid submitting ones on similar topics? That would probably get more posts up on the front page.
Billywest: I for one only soc stuff (usually) that has original content or research in it – JapanProbe is a great site but when they just stick a Mainichi article in blockquotes and put “Hey wow look at that” after it, I don’t think it’s noteworthy. If it must be on JapanSoc, I’d rather see a link to the news article myself. I guess people are hungry for readers.
Deas: It’s hard to stop sensationalist stuff succeed, because if that’s what people want to read / find interesting, techincally it should be on the first page, it is a real shame when great stories go nowhere though. I like to comment on ones that are struggling, that can often get them a second wind of reads. As for the submission limit – I think weekends are flood days. Loads of new stories come in, whereas midweek not as many appear. If Nick pursues the idea of community moderation then it’s all good, but if not I’d still advocate a post limit.
Re: “I’ve posted some of my better articles”
Peter, I just had a look at your profile page and could only find one article you submitted (“Some good ideas from Japanese schools”). You posted it over four months ago and got 5 votes, which was very good at the time. Sorry if it didn’t generate the interest you were expecting, you might find that if you post something now, you’ll get more traffic. At the very least, you’ll get an extra link in Google’s search results.
Nick Ramsay: …but more importantly, you get good readers, right? I’d hate to think people are posting stuff on JSoc purely to get more links in Google searches. :(
As long as it’s worth reading, it’s fine by me. Of course, spam, or blatant abuse of JapanSoc, is a big no-no.
“JapanProbe is a great site ”
Yeah, I hope it didn’t sound like I was taking a poke at Japan Probe. I was actually thinking of the sites that post the same same stuff that JP does (usually a day or two later) and then submit it to JapanSoc. Sometimes I read those posts and then look at what JP had posted before and it’s almost the same.
Nick Ramsey: How ban-happy are you going to be? I’m a big fan of if you mess up you get a ban until you apologise. It tends to be that trolls NEVER apologise, so they’re easy to get rid of :D
Billeywest: I only ever, ever soc stuff with original content, so you have my support at the very least ;)