There Are Consequences When You Cancel a StumbleUpon Discovery

There are posts we enjoy reading and for which a thumbs up in our StumbleUpon toolbar makes sense. But what happens when no one stumbled it before us? A window pops up and you need to select a category, some tags and then maybe ad a review. If we’re in a hurry or didn’t want to write a review in the first place, we might be tempted to click the Cancel button.

I advise you to at least take the time and select a proper category and a few tags, than press submit. Why? Because otherwise, SU will display something like this: Someone discovered this in “category”. If you were too rushed to pay attention, it’s always the bad category.

So what happens when you hit cancel? No benefit for the blog owner who’s article you liked. The story is practically lost and tons of thumbs ups and reviews will hardly compensate the damage. Instead of showing appreciation for something you like, you harm the blog owner, article writer or who every owns the site where you’ve seen something you like.

Such accidents have happened to lots of us. I admit I canceled a few submissions in my StumbleUpon beginner days. But when I found out what actually happens, I chose to never do it again. That’s why I am sharing this, so that all who don’t know what the consequences are can make an informed decisions :)

Keep well and enjoy the weekend!

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This post has 25 comments

  • Hendry Lee

    Thanks for the tip, Alina. That makes sense. Never thought of it from that standpoint.

    I think that gives too much control to the first stumbler. I would be interested to see how SU overcome this…

  • Bamboo Forest

    This is very interesting. Are you saying that when you press the stumble button, and then press cancel (before it is stumbled and goes into the system) that it says, “someone has stumbled this.” ?

    I will await your clarification.

    Thanks.

  • Brian

    Thanks for the tip! :)

  • TJ Colatrella

    You mean if I did that to all Conservative and Republican related sites it would be bad for them…!

    Thanks…!

  • Chris W

    I’m in total agreement with you, especially about not taking the time to use the correct tags for a post. It only takes a couple of extra seconds to tag a post properly.

  • Alina Popescu

    Hi Hendry, I think a good option would be to keep the page undiscovered when someone cancel their submission.

    Bamboo Forrest, I had no idea what happens when you click cancel, nor what causes the “someone”discoveries. Some more experienced SU users pointed out the cause to me while I was trying to discover how it happens.

    TJ, yeah, the harm is significant. I tried to get some traffic to a cool travel article, and that mysterious discovery simply killed it…

    Chris, you’re right. A few more seconds wouldn’t kill anyone. We could all be kind enough to take them and do something right if we start it :)

  • website design

    I ve always seen it where if I select to thumb something up and then cancel it, I also cancel the thumb up so that someone else will discover it instead. Maybe if you just press cancel it screws things up but if you unthumb it, it should return it to a discoverable state.If this is REALLY an issue you should bring it up in the Bugs forum

  • Alina Popescu

    Hi there, I already replied through a SU message :) I’ll get more info to see if it’s really a bug and then see what the bugs forum has to say about it.

  • Karen Swim

    Alina, I had no idea about this and am so glad you brought it to my attention! I will never hit cancel again. This was a very good tip.

  • Alina Popescu

    Hi Karen! I’m also guilty of doing this a few times. Had I known… :) Hope this helps us all become better stumblers :)

  • Caroline Middlebrook

    Yes this is a bug in StumbleUpon and the resulting phenomenom where the page is discovered by “someone” is known as the StumbleUpon Graveyard.

    One way around this is to click the reviews button to just check if the page has already been stumbled, if it hasn’t then you get a message saying that there is no record of that page but there is no harm done.

  • Sueblimely

    I often forget to go to the actual post I want to stumble and end up stumbling the whole blog instead. then cancel.
    My diigo bookmark button is just above my stumble thumb button – I quite regularly hit the wrong one! I will now be more careful, thanks Alina.

  • Alina Popescu

    Yup, that also happens to me. I just want to add a new post to SU and instead I press the button for the entire site :) As for canceling, when you don’t know what actually happens, you assume the submission is really canceled. It’s a sort of bug from what I understand, so I hope they fix it eventually :)

  • Alina Popescu

    Hi Caroline! The name is perfect if you think of the effects it has :)

  • Laura Spencer

    Count me among those who didn’t know this. I think that this is definitely a bug and StumbleUpon should take steps to correct it. I’m sure that lots of stumblers make this mistake.

  • Alina Popescu

    Yup, we all did it assuming what happens is what is supposed to happen for a cancel action. Until SU finally fixes it, it’s good to know what happens.

  • RennyBA

    Very interesting and informative – thanks for the tip – I’ll keep it in mind!

  • Alina Popescu

    Hi Renny, welcome to WOBM, glad you’ve found my tip useful!

  • Adam Khan

    I just found this article while stumbling. That’s a great tip, and I appreciate it. I also wanted to say that I love the design of your site. It’s beautiful.

  • Alina Popescu

    Hi Adam, thank you for stopping by. Glad you found the article useful.

  • Luis Gross

    Alina,

    Wow! I never knew. I myself have to admit I’m guilty of canceling as well.

    It also makes a lot of sense to me, because some of my posts simply go down in traffic when someone submits it without bothering to add tags or place it in the correct category.

    Thanks for sharing with us. I use StumbleUpon often, so I appreciate it.

  • Alina Popescu

    Hi Luis! Sorry for the late reply, but I still am on vacation. yes, a lot of stories simply die in such conditions and it’s a real shame! Most of them are worth reading.

  • Ionela

    Thank you, Alina, for writing this! [I didn't know about this]

  • Alina Popescu

    A lot of people didn’t. And I believe it’s good to know what happens in the back :)

    Alina

  • JaiGuru

    StumbleUpon! is trash and has been for a while now. It’s a glorified add server.

    It died the day it was opened to IE users. The fact that you had to use firefox to even have a shot at stumbleupon in the past served as an idiot block. You had to have some actual knowledge of the webs, and thus had a decent chance of actually recognizing a novel website. Those days are gone forever and even stumble’s corporate hq seems bent on squeezing the last bit of life from it.

    If I didn’t know better, I’d think they wanted it to die, and I’d be grateful if it did in respect to the glorious thing it once was.

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