It was neat and special, looking at the web with childlike wonder. It shone a quirky and distinctive light on the world it lived in.

With the effortless joy, it swam through the shark infested waters of the internet and was never bitten.

We got to enjoy the web through it’s eyes. It never followed. It wandered where its fancy took it, and the internet followed along, knowing with the confidence of repeated experience that a road trip with Neatorama would be a new kind of unexpected fun every time. Great times.

But nothing lasts forever. We should be happy it lasted as long as it did. We have been spoiled up until now. We had it very good for very long, and I for one want to say thanks, Neatorama. It’s been really, really great.

It’s like going into your favorite sushi place for premium toro and they hand you, instead of your two pieces of toro, six pieces of maguro – the maguro is okay and more plentiful, but it is not that little bit of perfection that you came in for.

Keep your editorial integrity and find the good stuff. If your readers could do that, they’d have their own successful blogs.

#2: Next, a flood of unfunny, uninteresting user-submitted content of the type that shows up in my spam folder from relatives that just got on the internet 6 months ago. Devastating.

#3: Um… If it’s not broken then don’t fix it… ?

Thanks for asking us and giving us the space to give our input.

I still read Neatorama, but as I see it it is only a matter of time before I unsubscribe.

I’m all in favor of enhancing and expanding the site. The new forum is cool and could be integrated more tightly into the rest of the site. More detailed user profiles would be great, and an ability to rank comments up or down for quality like I’ve seen on many other blogs. Ranking forum posts as well would be a great addition to that idea. Perhaps rewards for highly-ranked commenters, or something else to encourage quality of quantity. This will keep Neatorama neat. And as someone above said, maybe the submission button should be made more prominent.

For those of you who want Queuebot-less RSS feed, here it is (simply copy and paste):

http://www.neatorama.com/feed/?author=-5587

Thank you for your feedback, everyone! Please feel free to comment in the new post – we’ll continue to listen.

or maybe you should first autorize the people who put stuff in the queue? Like, autorize some 10-20-50 people that first fill out a survey with examples of what they’d put? something like that to filter out the really bad stuff

Sure, there’s stuff that’s not as good as before, but even before I didn’t read everything. As long as the original posts keep coming, I love the huge mass of neat stuff coming at me. Sometimes I even sift through the Queue pile and read the ones that I know won’t make it to this page becuase of the negative votes.

I’d love to stay subscribed to your feed so I can see your website and content… however, it’s just as easy to unsubscribe and never come back when it gets to the point where your site just becomes a waste of time. Please… do seriously consider the impact that all of these upcoming queue posts are having on your RSS feeds, and in turn, your subscribers. Not using RSS might work for you, but I’m not about to stop using it just to keep up with one website and a bunch of frivolous user submitted links.

Please, be more strict with what gets through so we’re not just get a bunch of duplicates from other sites, and my bigger request: please create an RSS feed which just offers your regular content for those who don’t want to have to see the entire upcoming queue stuff. It makes your site impossible to keep up with, as it is I’ll probably have to unsubscribe soon if it doesn’t change, simple because I don’t have the time required to get through ALL these new postings every day. Sometimes less (and better) is really more.

That day that yahoo users submitted lots of stuff, really killed the UQ for me.

“The quality of writing in most Queue posts is too poor!” – Jenny
I have had several “neat items” but do not feel that I am that great of a writer to post something to the Q. Which was why I have never posted something to the Q.
However, some of the items posted in the Q were neat, yet they failed to garner my attention due to their poor writing.

But, I dont think the UQ is a bad thing. I think it needs to be policed heavily, and there needs to be a high quality standard. Otherwise I fear I may loose interest in this site eventually.

-=[MauS]=-

First of all, please let me thank rellimz for submitting the post and all of you who commented for the feedback. I want you to know that I read every single one of the comments, and am going to post a response after a cup or two of coffee to make sure I’m thinking straight.

A lot of you have raised similar concerns: the sheer quantity of posts that made it to the front page and the quality of those posts. I gather that for the feed readers, seeing their “unread posts” number from Neatorama shoot through the roof must be kind of unnerving (that’s the reason I stopped using a feed reader, by the way, and simply visiting my favorite blogs in their native environment).

A number of you also raise the issue of sifting through a lot of unneat post to find the gems in the Upcoming Queue.

I’ll be sure check this post again to read new comments.

I’ve noticed a huge difference between the stuff I submitted and wrote as compared to when Alex edits it and posts it. Plain and simple I am not that great of a writer.

I do like the increase in volume…but I would say some pretty ‘un-Neat’ stuff has been getting through a bit…see: 100 depressing photos of Detroit homes. I would just like to see a bit more editing.

Other than that, I think a lot of the posts have fit into the site well.

Neatness is in the eye of the beholder?

I see two main problems :
- pace : even if the post are high quality, some people seems to be needing sleep
- editorial control : before getting bumped up on the main page, a tough mandatory purgatory seems to be necessary (more work, Alex…)

And at last : a suggested read : “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson ;p

As for the whole iPod thing, I think it’s great to reward contributors, but I feel that it works better when we don’t know what the prize is, or even when we’re going to be rewarded. It would appear to me that people are posting as much as they can, regardless of whether it’s really relevant or “neat” just to win the prize, and it’s kindof annoying. It makes it less of a reward and more of a contest. I myself have submitted a couple of posts to the Queue, but it was because I found them interesting and wanted to share, not because I wanted the prize. I think it is a problem when those who are posting to win take away any chance that might have existed for those who are posting to share. For me, it kindof goes against the spirit of what Neatorama is. Or was.

The quality of writing in most Queue posts is too poor!

If you go back, you will find that a large number of the posts made by neatorama were in fact user submitted.

Anyways I have a problem with splitting the queue bot into its own section. If you do that then there will be tons of neatorama-worthy posts that will either have to be double posted from there or ignored in an attempt to keep both sites unique. I would probably never even bother visiting the queue section, but I’m sure some people will. For them double posts would be kind of annoying spam.

I’m all for innovation and experimentation. I applaud you guys for being willing to try new stuff in order to give us a more enjoyable website. But I just don’t see this working in any sense. Please switch back, but how about making the “submit a link” button much more pronounced. I’m sure many people who visit neatorama don’t even see it in the top right.