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Top 5 StumbleUpon Buzzkills
By dana | September 18, 2007
You know what I’m talking about! You’re stumbling along. You’re getting on a roll and then boom…
- 404s, page you were looking for was not found and/or various Wordpress database errors
- Somebody stumbled a PDF…I understand the wonderfulness of PDF’s, really I do, but when I’m on a Stumbling frenzy and all of a sudden my whole system starts to freeze waiting for Reader to open…Buzzkill!
- You must be logged in to do that…don’t stumble login required and protected pages, please!
- Blatant, useless, undisguised stumble begging…ie “We’re trying to set a record for the most stumbles ever on a page, so please hit thumbs up now.” Come on people, if you want to set that record, provide something. Off the top of my head, maybe try a list about StumbleUpon stuff
- Pop-ups, pop-ups, pop-ups!
Am I being too picky? Possibly, but when you’re spending as much time as possible stumbling as I am these days, you can’t help but pick up a few pet peeves!
What did I miss? Any Stumble issues that drive you crazy?
Other Stuff You Might Like:
September 18th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
6. Adsense ads that force content below the fold! Grrrr!
September 18th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
There’s a Firefox extension that prompts you whenever you go to a .pdf, so it doesn’t freeze everything up if you really don’t want to read it.
Ah, here it is: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/636
September 18th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Oh yeah, that’s a good one! It takes a heck of a headline to make me stop and scroll through those to actually check out the rest.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Autoplay audio. Grrrrr! Scares me every. single. time.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
I hear you Suzi! And it’s never some soft, soothing tune is it?!
September 18th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
When some of those occur, especially if I get a pop-up or pop-under, a protected page, or stumble-begging, I just thumbs-down the page and move on.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I don’t really fancy those flash games…
September 19th, 2007 at 6:08 am
I hate stumbling the same “Top ## Pictures” over and over from different blogs. Then again, I guess that’s not a Stumble Upon problem and more of a problem with worthless bloggers. I would really like a “Report Duplicate” button to weed out the same crap from popping up every three or four stumbles. Sure they’re from different sites, but if the content is identical….
September 19th, 2007 at 6:11 am
THIS is one of those stumbles. Get rid of it.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:13 am
Lol, nicely written.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:20 am
PDFs — the freeware Foxit PDF Reader opens them substantially faster than Adobe. Doesn’t eliminate the frustration, but does make it a bit more bearable.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:35 am
Videos that sneak in with my stumbles annoy the heck out of me. That is why I select “websites” when I stumble (usually), but they tend to sneak in. BTW, I just NEVER review them — who has the time?
September 19th, 2007 at 6:53 am
[…] blog as you puts her whole soul into her writing. My head was nodding in agreement when I read her Top 5 StumbleUpon Buzzkills article. You know, those nasty surprises you get when stumbling […]
September 19th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Michael- I think that’s what everyone should do…all that stuff still bothers me though
YC- I’m glad I’m not the only one that hates those flash things too!
Rino- I think that would be a really good idea. Duplicate post stumbles seem to happen quite a bit…and I don’t know of any way to check on it ahead of time, so I think a reporting button might help…then again, maybe just thumbing down would be as effective?
Tom- Wow, thanks for taking the time to comment, I don’t think I’ve ever actually stopped long enough to do that just because I don’t like something I stumble upon…
Karthik- Thank you! Thanks also for that Wordpress tip in your post today!
Bill- I’m going to go grab FoxIt now. Thanks!
Matt - I’ve noticed that happening a lot too! I very rarely stop to look at them, mainly because it bugs me that they sneak in when I’m not wanting to watch them. Every long once in awhile, I’m in the mood for it, and I’ll actually stumble videos, but not often
September 19th, 2007 at 8:04 am
There is no Dana, only Zuul.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:15 am
You can probably alter your stumble preferences so you don’t get the flash games anymore (at least, not most of them).
I love them myself.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Spanklin- Are you the Keymaster?
September 19th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Samantha- Good to know. I’ll have to go look into that. I like a lot of them too, but it just depends on what mood I’m in…I wish there was a separate category for them live Videos and Photos.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Dana,
So nice to meet you via Matt Keegan! Geez–like I TOE-TAL-LY hear you on this post..really!
SU is by far my favorite social bookmarking/networking site…but people are getting WAY over their heads!
Since being on bedrest for over 2 months and slowly weaning back into the “game”…I had SO many “owed” stumbles; and well–my #1 criteria is: It has to be Stumble-able to get my thumbs up! Annoy me once (well–your mistake)…twice or more, Stumble Buddy-or-NOT–I have NO time for this kind of relationship!
To our success & empowerment,
Ponn
P.S. Would love to buddy-up with you Ann
September 19th, 2007 at 10:54 am
This is great!! #2 “Somebody stumbled a PDF…” is definitely my biggest peeve! GREAT list!!
September 19th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Thanks for your comments Ponn! I was very glad to find your blog via Matt’s post as well.
I agree with you completely. I am perfectly fine with people sending me pages, but I always try to make clear that I will look at everything, but I will only thumbs up if I think it’s worthy.
First, I don’t think cheating the system is fair for anyone. Secondly, I am starting to see that however their system works, it does work. The more active I have become the more it seems to be figuring out exactly what I want to see. That saves me a lot of frustration and sends me a lot fewer “buzzkills!” Plus, I have really begun to enjoy the community aspects of SU and don’t want to send any lesser quality stuff to my friends
September 19th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Chrisitne- Exactly. I guess it’s inevitable that we’re going to run into a few though. I just installed the Firefox extension mentioned above by Zeno and Bill. Hopefully that will help!
September 19th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
7. Someone stole your content and had friends stumble it with a review. [So what you do is thumb them down and leave a negative review, right?]
September 19th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Hi Raj, I hope you’re not talking about me
But yes, I would definitely add that to the list. I would also contact whoever stole the content. And as someone did to me today, I would send a message to anyone who had thumbed up on that content to let them know about it.
I checked it out and saw that it was indeed stolen content and changed my review right away!
September 19th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
September 19th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Dana: No, no, not you. Apologies for the confusion.
I put up a feature at Performancing.com yesterday morning and by night someone had stolen it and it had been stumbled. Even people who write for Perf made the mistake of stumbling. That’s because they searched in Stumble for the title.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
That’s what I thought, but I wanted to be sure! But that is the one that I caught…Chris found it and messaged me about it. Hope it’s all straightened out. That would definitely be annoying!
September 19th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Yeah, Chris contacted a few people, but the site has stolen a ton of Perf content - probably from the feed.
September 21st, 2007 at 6:43 am
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September 21st, 2007 at 11:32 pm
My gripe…listening to my music while stumbling…and those doggone autostart midi, videos, etc
September 24th, 2007 at 5:47 am
I totally feel the same way…. When I’m in My StumbleUpon Zone I don’t want to be stopped. I get quite frustrated.
September 25th, 2007 at 6:56 am
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October 9th, 2007 at 11:04 am
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October 10th, 2007 at 3:59 am
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October 24th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Hi Dana, I just Stumbled ya!
What really gets me in a tizzy is when I don’t see any content unless I scroll down…the page, or when I do I find something and want to comment, the joker requires you to “log in”. No way, nope, not gonna do it! So, thank you for having good content I don’t have to scroll for, no pop ups and no log in required. 
October 24th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
POP UPS! Argh! I agree with what you are saying. I especially cannot stand the pop ups that cover the stumble button.
November 13th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Any Stumble that talks about Stumbling is an awful stumble. What a waste of time.
Thumbs down.
November 20th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Two freeware programs can fix two of your problems. The first is a firefox add on, Adblock plus, you will never see a popup again. The second is Foxit, free pdf reader that does not slow your system down at all, and firefox recognizes it. Oh and if your still useing IE, um I’m sorry there is no help for you.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:51 am
1. You thumb a page up, the next day the site is down, it’s not under anyone’s control. Unless you’re psychic.
2. PDF + SU = Configure
3. It’s hard to remember which site you’re logged in to sometimes you know. It happened to me a few days ago.
4. Thumb down, move on.
5. Firefox + Adblock Plus = NO Pops Ups
Shouldn’t a “Stumble Queen” know all of the above ?
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:06 am
Having to list an email to leave a comment.
I’m on a dish and only get a limited amount of download a day. Automatic videos really eat up the megs.
December 7th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Buzz kill?…shit like this.
December 15th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
It seems that maybe the crowd isn’t so wise then. The thing lets you have a say, so if you don’t like it just thumb it down
February 10th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
[…] Top 5 StumbleUpon Buzzkills Author: Dana Wallert of DanaWallert.com Avoid being thumbed down, dont do these five things. […]