So Dave Winer thinks Techmeme has become a “cesspool,” as he puts it. Why? He says it’s because of the Techmeme leaderboard, and how it’s encouraging people to say all kinds of things in an attempt to game the system. But I think Dave is just pissed that a certain person he doesn’t name — but whose name rhymes with Mason Balacanis — was topping the site for much of the day.
Dave can’t even bring himself to mention J-Dawg’s name, calling him an “idiot who says idiotic things to get attention,” a reference that I assume goes back to Dave’s little contretemps with JC at a conference awhile back. The ironic thing is that by doing that, Dave himself engaged in exactly the same thing he claims to abhor — and got some nice Techmeme juice out of it to boot.
Update:
Mike says that Dave is using tinyURL in his post when he links to Jason, to prevent JC from getting any link juice. I guess that’s pettiness 2.0 (In a comment below, Dave denies that this was his intention). And Scott Karp has some tips for Gabe on how to prevent people from “gaming” Techmeme to rise up the leaderboard. But Scott, that would ruin all our fun 🙂