Why dont you filter the global feed to active topics? Also we really need some sort of way to mark stuff as spam.
I might but someone who stumbles on the 'Ski wont, is what im saying.
I meant that for the admins. I agree with your view on this. When I first stumbled onto hubski I thought it was dead because no new topic were appearing in the main fed for weeks and global was filled with spam. It's only when I realized that you have to follow useers did my feed become manageable. That's really a huge design flaw. Now I just follow all real users as I find them but that's not super convenient either
You could also have a probation period for new users. Say for example no posting new links until some minimal number of 1 point or higher comments (1 is probably enough at current activity levels). Eventually spammers will game this system so then you up the requirements to 1 point from a user w 3 or more points. 2 points from different users. There is obviously a point where it's too invasive so you have to balance it out based on how motivated the spammers are. At the current volume you could probably manually promote threads to the front page. At 5-10x the users that's not viable but that gives you some time to fine tune a better algorithm