Plime is a pliable tree of interesting links, cultivated and pruned by everyone. It relies on the power of online community participation to control it's structure and editorial content. It's also a great place to meet others with similar interests. That is how Plime describes describes itself.After reading that you might think that Plime is just another social bookmarking site such as Digg, Propeller or Reddit. You might also think that you can just sign up and start submitting stories and voting on stories. If you took that path you would be in for a very large shock.
Plime takes the social side of it's site very seriously. So seriously in fact that if a member turns out to be a spammer (as determined by the other members) they will quickly find themselves unable to post and comment on site. On Plime the power of moderation is clearly in the hands of the members.
Unlike the sites that most social media users are used to Plime works in a wiki format. On the left side you will see a collapsable list of categories. Selecting these categories works much as you will expect. Once inside a category you will find three tabs; popular, all links and deleted.
- Popular - This is the default category view. Only stories that have gained enough support to become popular show up here.
- All links - This tab contains all of the links in the category that have been promoted to popular status as well as those that are still working their way up. The only links that do not show up are the deleted ones.
- Deleted - This tab contains all of the stories that have been deemed unworthy by the membership and contains the following warning: This page contains posts the community has voted down. There may be links to objectionable and stupid material here. Posts can be restored through voting the articles back up.
Sandbox
Because Plime is a true community driven site they had to devise a method to keep the spammers and other undesirables out of their system. To do this they created the new user sandbox area.
The Plime Sandbox is a place where new members can post links and try out the system. Old members will vote on good content to help promote them up to level 2, so they can participate fully on Plime.com.
In order to post content onto the main Plime site you have to acquire a bit of Karma, enough to make you reach level 2. You gain this karma by having existing members vote up your submissions.
Karma
Each member on Plime has a certain amount of power, or karma. When people vote up (or down) your submissions and comments you will gain (or lose) a certain amount of power in return. A user with a high karma has much more weight in determining what (and who) gains (or loses) popularity on site. If someone with a level of 20 votes up your submission you will find yourself 20 points closer to your next level. Yes, the reverse also holds true.
User level = (Karma/10)^(1/3)
Some people might look at this system and think that it is a ceiling that they can never pass above but this is not true. If you become an active member of the Plime community other members will vote up your good stuff and vote down your bad stuff. After a while you will begin to learn what the community likes and dislikes. That is not to say that you must become a conformist to succeed it because I have seen many users vote up a comment they disagreed with because it was well written and the writer raised a fair point.
The Look
Plime is very unique in that it allows you to change the colors used when logged in. Unlike other social media sites that force you to use their color scheme you can choose to view Plime in hot pink or any other color combination.
Moderation
Because Plime is member driven and member moderated it is good to know that their are certain rules in place to keep the site from becoming a total free-for-all.
When it comes to moderating there are a few simple rules as to who can moderate what:
- Level required for moderation
- Edit posts (must be a higher level than the persons post you are editing)
- Create/edit categories/sub-categories (5)
- Edit Category color schemes (5)
- Change User access levels (25)
Anyone of a higher level than that of the submitter is allowed to edit their submission. You can also edit your own submission. What is most interesting here is that ALL edits stay on site and are visible to everyone. Even if someone edits your link your original link will be there and everyone will know who changed the link and why. Not only that but all users can up or down vote the edit!
Even though a high level user can cause some havoc on site they will quickly be clubbed down by even higher level users if they feel the edits should not be made in the first place.
Site Mail
Plime has a built-in site mail feature that allows you to message other members.
Forums
As if the comment system were not enough Plime even has a full fledged forum system for discussing items that might not fit as a news article. These forums are broken down by categories and can be searched.
Just like the main areas of the site forum comments can be voted up and down.
Submissions
If the users are the heart and soul of a social media site than the content is the physical body. On Plime all users are encouraged to submit content that they think the other members will find interesting. Becuase of the sandbox feature mentioned before it is relatively rare for spam to make it onto Plime. If spam does make it the members will vote it down and the submitter will (possibly) lose a level.
Sometimes a dupe gets through and the members are usually far more forgiving in this regard. I have seen members down vote the dupe but up vote the members comment in the same story to offset the hit. in this case members are not seeking to punish the member too harshly but they do want the dupe removed.
When submitting content you need to have a link, title and synopsis ready. Submissions go into a specific category and can be given tags. What makes Plime better than so many other social media sites is that you also get to attach a small thumbnail picture to your post.
This image can either come from the Plime gallery or you can upload your own.
Conclusion
Plime is an excellent social media site that has not gotten a lot of attention in the past. Because they are so heavily driven by the membership (more than any other social media site I know) they have been seen by some as a bit of an acquired taste.
If you care about social media and want to become a part of a close-knit online social news community than you should take a look at Plime. If you just want to spam social media in an attempt to get hits on your personal blog site than you should not visit Plime.
- Good
- Clean wiki-style interface
- Collapsable category listing on the left side
- Up voting is transparent
- All submissions can have an image associated with them
- You can customize your color scheme
- No advertising
- Bad
- Incomplete FAQ on site
- Same content you will find on Netscape/Reddit/Digg
- Will not appeal to users who like to submit their own content... wait, that's a good thing!