There Are Consequences When You Cancel a StumbleUpon Discovery

By Alina Popescu on Jul 4, 2008 in Blogging Tips, Social Media & Communities, Tips & Tricks, WOBM & Blogging

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!

Popularity: 92% [?]

21 Comment(s)

  1. 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…

    Hendry Lee | Jul 4, 2008 | Reply

  2. 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.

    Bamboo Forest | Jul 4, 2008 | Reply

  3. Thanks for the tip! :)

    Brian | Jul 5, 2008 | Reply

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

    Thanks…!

    TJ Colatrella | Jul 5, 2008 | Reply

  5. 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.

    Chris W | Jul 5, 2008 | Reply

  6. 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 :)

    Alina Popescu | Jul 6, 2008 | Reply

  7. 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

    website design | Jul 6, 2008 | Reply

  8. 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.

    Alina Popescu | Jul 6, 2008 | Reply

  9. 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.

    Karen Swim | Jul 9, 2008 | Reply

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

    Alina Popescu | Jul 9, 2008 | Reply

  11. 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.

    Caroline Middlebrook | Jul 11, 2008 | Reply

  12. 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.

    Sueblimely | Jul 11, 2008 | Reply

  13. 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 | Jul 14, 2008 | Reply

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

    Alina Popescu | Jul 14, 2008 | Reply

  15. 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.

    Laura Spencer | Jul 14, 2008 | Reply

  16. 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.

    Alina Popescu | Jul 15, 2008 | Reply

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

    RennyBA | Jul 16, 2008 | Reply

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

    Alina Popescu | Jul 17, 2008 | Reply

  19. 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.

    Adam Khan | Aug 14, 2008 | Reply

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

    Alina Popescu | Aug 14, 2008 | Reply

  21. 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.

    Luis Gross | Aug 22, 2008 | Reply

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