What is TapTheHive?
The goal of TapTheHive is to have a strong news aggregator and discussion community. Although the site is slightly ad-supported, making money is second. I'll be happy if the site breaks even.

TapTheHive was created in a Miami apartment with $0.00 in venture capital. I didn't go out and buy a whole bunch of servers and office supplies. I sat down and made up some UML, wrote out some spreadsheets and graphs for algorithms, and then started coding.

Another social bookmarker/new aggregator/social networking site? Seriously?
Yes. Seriously. This is not about some Silicon Valley cash-in. Other aggregators are either slow, too centralized, or pander to a different crowd. This is about making a cool web app for intelligent discussion. Some of the biggest aggregators suffer from serious lack of editing (even amateur editing would help). TTH is set up so that people who are decent editors get a lot of integrity and can fix any garbage they see -- whether it's a sensationalist title, bad grammar, or just incredibly vague information.

What's does TTH have that the other sites don't?
-- Blogging platform: many news aggregators simply grant the users the power to post links with a short title and a summary. TTH is a blogging platform which allows the user to post a body also shown on the comments page, and the links are optional.
-- Validation: TTH has validation up the wazoo. This validation is designed to automatically keep out the majority of the single-serving, more-questions-than-answers, lost-generation, cluelessness writing that has become so prevalent in web publishing.
-- BBcode: TTH supports a form of bbcode. Check the bbcode howto for supported syntax.
-- Wikifields: higher ranking users are able to edit titles, summaries, and bodies of posts. Reversion is also supported.
-- Linker: this is a small widget for the sites you visit most. The sites you visit most in the linker panel float to the top while the sites you visit least sink to the bottom and eventually fall off.
-- Auto-embedding: links going straight to youtube, scribd, and other top embeddable sites will automatically be embedded to the discussion pages.
-- Slash-n-burn: on a lot of other aggregators, once you've seen the title and the summary, you'll see the post again every time until it falls off the main page. If click turn Slash-n-burn (when logged in), all posts that loaded on your page will never show again in your main feed.
-- Threadwatch: this is designed to work hand-in-hand with Slash-n-burn, and promotes conversations. On certain sites, once a post enters the main queue, it will fall off permanently, and the discussion dies as no one comes back to it. Threadwatch automatically keeps track of your comments for when they're replied to (for the time period specified on your preferences page). The homepage widgit will show the most recent watched threads, and the main Threadwatch page will show all of your watched threads.
-- Ad-reduction: higher ranking users see less or even no ads. (explanation)
-- Auto-tagging Taxonomy: it's surprising that in this day and age, sites are still using fixed categories, and requiring humans to enter them. Computers can generally figure these out. Not only will the tags try to auto-generate, they'll use a taxonomical hierarchy.

What are some upcoming features for TTH?
-- openID logins
-- Blog integration and scraping
-- support for submitting posts and comments in wikicode and html
-- firefox extension to synchronize the linker with bookmarks

What codebase does TapTheHive use?
TapTheHive is custom coded from scratch in PHP and MySQL. It does not use pligg, wordpress, drupal, or any other canned content management system.

How do I score something on TapTheHive?
Log in. Then click the mark button near a submission or comment. This will give you many options.

What does each mark mean?
Marks are a two part system. Objective marks float content in and out of the system for everyone.
-- Interesting: when the info presented is something that interests you, choose this mark and your main feed will be adapted to present more posts of this topic.
-- Spam: links to junk sites for buying the latest male enhancement herb, connections with women offering various vice services, and sites that have more advertisements on their page than content deserve the spam-hammer. If enough integral marks build up for a link being spam, the entire domain is banned from mention on TTH.
-- Inaccurate: this is for the content that is factually wrong. Note that improper titles and summaries are NOT cause for using the inaccurate tag. Just edit the post if that's the case.

What is NSFW?
Something is NSFW (not safe for work) if you would rather not have your boss walk in on you looking at it.

What's the deal with the mirrors?
Archive.org typically doesn't mirror things until they've been up for 2 months. Google Cache merely depends on when the outbound link was last crawled. Supposedly, Coralcache keeps up with a lot of the latest sites submitted to aggregators. Many of these respond to robot flags, so the content might not be cached.

How do I source things?
When two sources report on the same story, but both are generally credible sources (NYT vs. AP vs. Reuters, etc.), that's merely a dupe. Feel free to submit additional sources for a post, but don't submit blogspam -- the crap where some blogger copies a quote or two from the original article (and sometimes the entire article), and maybe gives a short opinion. Frequently, these blog sites grind to a halt as a few visitors come in, usually because of cheap hosting or bloated content management systems.

I just marked something by mistake, or I changed my mind about a mark. What do I do?
Visit your profile, find the link in your activity list, and hit "unmark".

Is my mark worth the same weight as everyone elses?
Probably not. It can be more, or it can be less. It depends on your reputation which is shown on your profile page.

What's the easiest way to get rep?
Submit good comments, links, and posts. When other reputable people rank them up, your rep will go up too.

I just gave out a ton of marks in a few minutes and my reputation went down. What gives?
Ever heard the phrase "deal your lightning bolts"? Under normal marking circumstances, the vast majority of people will never see any reputation lost for this. This is intended to prevent people from spamming up posts of their friends.

How else do my own marks affect my reputation?
Giving out all positive or all negative marks doesn't give as much rep as if you marked good content positively and bad content negatively. Also, giving out much more negative marks than positive marks will negatively affect your rep too.

What are some other benefits of high reputation?
Reputation is the foundation of TapTheHive. As your rep increases, everything you do has more effect on the system. Noticeable benefits include:
-- Comment Exposure: your own comments will be seen by more people.
-- Front Page: your posts and submissions will hit the front page faster.
-- Heavier Marks: everything you mark will either move up or down more based on your rep.
-- Less Ads: you'll see less ads on a probability basis, and if your rep gets high enough, you won't see any ads at all
-- Tool Reliability: tool marks like dupe, blogspam, mirrors, and NSFW will respond more to your actions. For instance, if you have high rep and you mark something as a dupe, TapTheHive is more likely to take your word.

I just created an account and I'm handing out marks, but it doesn't look like anything is happening.
There is a newbie break-in period where your marks are just not worth much. Keep submitting links and comments and you'll get out of the newbie period faster, although submitting quality comments are the fastest way to rep up. This way SirSpammalot cannot create 30 accounts to mark up all of his own submissions. The scoring algorithm is set up so that once you get out of the newbie break-in period, your score is back calculated so you get full credit for all your previous comments and posts.

Once I get rep, is it permanent?
Generally, no. Your rep is always subject to the marks people give for the content you've posted. Rep decreases over time if you're inactive, but formerly high rep users can easily get their rep back up. This prevents SirSpammalot from making 30 accounts, letting him wait out the newbie break-in period, and then spamming up his own submissions.

How do I view the stats for a post or comment?
You can view the stats of your own posts and comments. By checking the stats, you'll see the number of people who gave various marks. However, you CANNOT see who those people were, or how much their mark was worth. Theoretically, a post can still have a negative overall score with a thousand different positive marks, and only ten negative marks. That's the point of reputation -- some people have a more valid opinion than others.

How do I see what I've marked and visited?
It's all on your profile page.

I can see what I visited and what I marked. Can anyone else?
Other users viewing your profile cannot see your visitations and marks, but they can see your comments and posts. This is mostly to protect against gaming. If the paid gaming site cannot verify that a gamer marked something, that really puts a monkey-wrench in the gaming business.

What other anti-gaming and anti-spamming measures are there?
Don't create a second account for logging in at the same computer. Not only are there simple technical measures that will out you for this nefarious activity, there are also complex behavioral models that will detect this. If you have family member or friend using the same computer, the system can detect this via the behavioral model.

Can I delete my account?
Somewhat. When you request (and confirm) deletion, all of your submissions and comments are assigned to Hades, a psuedo-user that collects everyone's dead threads.

Can I share my account?
Technologically, yes, but it's ill advised. If you and another person are using a single account simultaneously, you're both going to get logged out over and over again due to session controls. Also, your combined marks are much more likely to set off the hammering trigger and your rep will suffer. When we see two IP addresses fighting over the same login info, the account will likely be suspended temporarily until the password reset function is used.

What does TTH do with my email?
TTH will never knowingly or intentionally share your email. Messages can be forwarded to your email based on what you set on your preferences page. Administrative messages will be sent to your email regardless of your privacy settings, but those are used as sparingly as possible (really, no weekly updates or any of that spam). If you don't have an email address submitted, you cannot use the password reset function and no messages will be forwarded. By default, your preferences are set only so that messages from your friends will be forwarded to your email. Any usage of your email will always be preference based so you can turn it off in the preferences tab.

Why are various words banned from use in post titles and summaries?
-- you, my, me, we, us: talking specifically to the reader is a sign of informalism that is just not welcome on TTH. Most news sites with any shred of credibility prohibit this, and so does Wikipedia.
-- breaking: this is just unnecessary filler. Besides, in a few hours, the story is no longer "breaking," which doesn't make sense when someone reads the story later.
-- rumor, could, may, might: speculation and punditry is crap.
-- best, amazing, addictive, addicting, absolute, worst, stunning, shocking, amazing, fear, awesome: more sensationalist filler that is tired and over-used.

Why can't I post any lists or open letters?
Lists inevitably repeat the same content over and over again. While the new ideological trend appears to be that copying another's content isn't wrong as long as it's not done for commercial gain, copying someone else's content and passing it off as your own is more reprehensible than eating babies and clubbing baby seals.

Open letters are a sham. They're not so much intended that the recipient actually read them so much as the writer is just saying "Look at me! Look at me! I'm blasting someone!!!" That behaviour is not desired on TTH.

Who makes your sexy icons?
The icons are a mix of the Pinvoke Fugue icons and the FamFamFam Silk icons.