Digg Users Try to Take Over the Asylum, Take Two
by
on January 25, 2008,
Every news feed that I read this week has been filled with stories about the latest Digg revolt. But it was the New York Times' coverage that first grabbed my attention with their opening line "The volatile users at social news ranking site Digg.com Thursday launched a new revolt against the site."
I rarely use Digg. I'll often lend support to an article that I think deserves the attention, but as far as reading news? I don't even bother. And the reason I don't generally use the site is exactly what the Powers That Be are trying to combat: Digg is, at its core, nothing more than an online game. The top Digg submitters acknowledged that in their letter to founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson when they said
"Digg is, in part, a game. It always has been - and that is one of the reasons we love it. Unfortunately the rules to the game have never been under the community's full control. The latest change in the algorithm, along with rumors of secret editors, auto-buries, etc., have led us to believe it is time to break ties with Digg.com."
The mistake that any user of a Web 2.0 site makes is that contributing content should somehow make them part of the decision-making process. A site's owners have to think about the bottom line as well as how to grow their audience, and honestly, I don't think that the previous Digg system was going to help with that.
The current cabal of top submitters controls virtually ALL content that makes it to the front page of Digg. To them, that signifies importance, but it actually signifies Groupthink. If a story doesn't meet the qualifications that the top submitters think are important, there is no chance for the story to receive the eyes that a front-page Digg usually receives.
The changes to the algorithm were an attempt to make the site more balanced. Unless the site is all about egoboo (which, apparently, it is in the minds of the top submitters), it shouldn't have mattered. The top Digg submitters can still submit the content that they want, but more people would have a voice in what stories deserve attention. Someone has to explain how this is a bad thing for ANYONE other than the top submitters, who no longer have sole control of the content that makes the front page.
If Digg wants to be taken seriously, changes like this have to be viewed as something that makes the site better. But if all the top submitters want is to play a game, then they are correct when they say there are lots of other options out there. Like WoW.
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bob patterson
aa
Alan Kodzasov
Shallow
CopyrightLawSucks 
kinghajj 
Michael Fidler 
Huh, so Digg won’t just be about what a bunch of 15 year old boys think would be funny to be on the front page anymore?
Maybe I’ll go digg all of the articles bashing the Digg whiners..
…and, ironically, the “Digg This” link is broken on this post…
thanks
The fact that Digg is being ruled by its top users isn’t exactly as black and white as you made it to be. For starters, 90% of the Digg reader don’t actually submit any stories. From the ones who do, if they’re dedicated enough their stories would eventually reach the front page. That leaves you with about 200-500 users who actually “control” Digg. That’s a lot of diverse people with different interests and submission habits. Compare that with the usual 1-5 editors of a regular publication and you’ll find that Digg actually has a very well balanced spread of front page stories that isn’t biased by an elite few people. Sure, there are top 10 lists and stupid pictures but there are a lot of very good hard hitting stories that wouldn’t make it to the front page of other sites.
Char, and why do you think that the 90% don’t actually submit any stories? At the point at which you know that anything you submit won’t get noticed, why would anyone continue to submit stories? Whether it’s 2 or 200 users controlling the content, it still turns it into a game. Digg isn’t supposed to be a “regular” publication. It’s supposed to be a vetting, of sorts. 200 people who generally vote the same way don’t provide any more balance than 2. That’s the whole theory behind Groupthink; eventually they start to think and move as a unit. If changing the algorithm breaks that up, again, what does it hurt? Other than egos, that is.
I’m sorry, 90% of the stuff that’s submitted is by the top few hundred users. Most users would submit something occassionaly. The hardcore users submit between 5-50 stories a day. I also gave up after trying a few times at first, but once you get the hang of things and know what to submit and where to get the freshest news you can get things to the front page.
As for the friends issue, you gotta have them if you want to contribute to this site. Not as gaming buddies but because if you go to the upcoming stories section you would mostly find spam and duplicates. If you take your time to vet users and see that they are submitting quality stuff and aren’t marketers you can actually get a glimpse of the news and what’s cool. Yes, in this case you would digg a lot of their stories.
From experience (I was a top user myself, although not very active nowadays), your story would never hit the front page based on your friends’ votes no matter how many of them you have. If other readers don’t vote as well it simply won’t make it.
A story that hits the front page may get 500 votes. It will get 20,000 visits which serves to show how inactive most users are on Digg. The fact that a few hundred people actually take the time to do the job should be commended.
For a lot of them it is a game, some have alterior motives, but hey, they’re working for free. I personally think digg should pay them.