My Personal Experience with Wikinut

I liked Wikinut.  I joined and posted and because it was so clear what one had to do to get a Star Page, most of my items were Stared.

One needed to write about 1000 words, five images, five links, five words in bold.  Do that, and as long as your spelling and grammar were okay, you should get a Star and be on that prestigious front page.

It wasn’t supposed to be a guess or a lottery.  It was supposed to be knee jerk.   There were a number of mods, every item had a mod’s name beneath it so that the writer would know who had checked their page.

Now that would be fine if every mod was a decent, honest person.   (And You know where I’m going with this).

I was fairly lucky in that Most of my articles were moderated by a decent, honest person.  Some were not. Some were seen by indecent, dishonest persons who did whatever they could to deny me that ‘Star’, keep me off the front page.

Complaining to them or to Chief Nut, who was the owner was a waste of time.   To elaborate; if I copied and pasted two items for your perusal, one which had attained a Star and one which had not, you would be unable to determine which one was the Star.

This was my first and should have been my only distress with the site.

Wikinut was,  for most of its existence,  (until just before it became non-paying) a very good site.

Firstly, when it paid, it paid.  It was rock solid.  It always paid and there was no evidence of any kind of tampering with hits.

Some sites will tamper, such as Factoidz, and Expertscolumn.   The hits are kept low to prevent one reaching the payout.   Wikinut did not do this.

For some reason,  Wikinut attracted the top writers. Many of the articles were excellent.  One would log on, see the ‘Star Page’ and start reading.

As with Factoidz, one often logged on to post, but got captured by other items, and sometimes didn’t get around to posting. This is to underline the quality of the writing on Wikinut.

Many times I might post an item on another site, then enlarge it, and post it on Wikinut.  This was not plagiarism as it was the same topic, but far more facts, far more information.

It is the difference between an Exam question asking;  “What was the Black Plague?”   and another; “The Renaissance was provoked by the Black Plague.  Discuss.”

As you can envision, were you asked the first question, you would be short and concise because that is what the question asked.   The second question would have to be many times longer because you would have to define the Renaissance and define the Black Plague, fit them into the time line, and then discuss both in some depth.

The first question could be completed in three hundred words or less. the second would require more than a thousand words to answer.

I take time to explain this to lead up to what caused the collapse of Wikinut.

There have always been crapwriters.  They join every site, they post crap.  In some places they get away with it, in some they don’t.

A few Crap Writers play tricks.

This is the trick that was played on a moderator at Wikinut.

A gal joined and when she posted her first item and got the name of her mod began to tell him a sob story about how she was dying from some disease.   However she did it, she owned and operated that Mod.

She would post obvious shards from items she had published elsewhere.

To give you an example, suppose you had posted a very long item on the World Cup from 1930 to present. There wasn’t much information beyond where the World Cup was held, which teams participated, and who won.

It was the type of item that would be cut and pasted from a Wikipedia entry where a lot of information was left out and downgraded.

To avoid plagiarism where one might read; (and to avoid plagiarism I am making this up)

“The Klingons took the field at 19:01 on the 46th day of Gringle playing their first game against the Romulans who were making their debut.”

One would write, “The Klingons played the Romulans.”

Sure, important information is left out because if one uses an idiotic plagiarism checker, facts will get your item bumped.

The Crap Writer who was ‘dying’ would take the Wikipedia entry, write the second italicized item.

Her original would have all the matches from the first game to the most recent, and with some stuffing reach 2,500 words.

She would chop the item into 500 word pieces, post them as five separate items on Wikinut, and get five Star Pages.  This meant that when one saw the Star Page, she’d fill it with her garbage.   If you read one item you would suck your teeth, and leave the site, feeling it was full of crap.

Now I want to advise that I warned the Mod.  He is the one who told me about her ‘dying’.   He was so moved by her, that he would do nothing to stop her constant written diarrhea which was causing the site to lose views and respect.

But it simply, if you go to a writing site and see rubbish spotlighted, you will be sure that the people who write there write rubbish and so either you will write rubbish, (i.e. a Clown series) or go away and never come back.

That is what happened to Wikinut.

Views declined, and the site made its final payout, but remained up as a non-paying venue.

The Crap writer was the first person to leave the site.  Having destroyed it she moved on to find another site she could sucker and republish all of her garbage.

When Wikinut stopped paying, everyone ran off the site.  I stayed to write it’s eulogy, then left.  It has never recovered and probably never will.

This is why any Owner of a site should be alert to Crap Writing.  It doesn’t just effect the user, it effects all users.

This is why any Owner should insure the Best stuff is on the front page, not just current junk which got a couple of views, but the very best.

Factoidz did it.  It kept old items on the Front Page because they were the Best.  One of those items was only removed when something even better came along.

Wikinut didn’t.  It let the Star Page become a garbage dump.  So, it no longer pays.