The Digg Crew wants to hear your thoughts!
Please take our short survey about Digg and potential feature ideas.
Visualization: A Day of Diggs and a Thin Blue Line
content.stamen.com — As a follow-up to the first visualizations we made of user activity on Digg, we've analyzed an entire day's worth of digging activity in greater detail. The visualizations illustrate some general patterns, and one controversial story (claiming that the BBC reported the collapse of WTC Building 7 before it happened) immediately becomes visible.
ericrodenbeck- 1572 diggs
- digg it
- bcasper1, on 10/12/2007, -55/+4you have way too much time on your hands. that is all
- DisposableRob, on 10/12/2007, -3/+47This is from Stamen Designs, the people responsible for most (if not all) the tools available in Digg Labs, not some bored geek. Anyway, that was a great insight into how potential gaming can be rendered in an easy to read visual form.
- randf, on 10/12/2007, -9/+27i think these graphs prove the only conspiracy is the one by the 9/11 nuts who all received instructions to create digg accounts and push their 9/11 conspiracy story to the top. check out some of the more rabid posters...they are the ones with the shortest digg-lives.
- Agilio, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4@DisposableRob, "the people responsible for most (if not all) the tools available in Digg Labs, not some bored geek"
Same difference.
- ahhhhpoop, on 10/12/2007, -34/+5boooooooooring
- kirkouimet, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30I thought it was fascinating. It is definitely interesting to take a closer look at the inner workings of social news.
- mobislink, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I initially looked at the graphs and I thought that it was a waste of time. Analyzing data is part of my job and that is the last thing I wanted to do when goofing off.
I came back and read some of the comments. I went back to read the explanations of each scatter plots and was fascinated. Looking at the data in such a way you could get that kind of information.
Those screwy 911 conspiracy guys defiantly got busted.
I will not Digg or Bury a story any more with out reading it carefully.
- mobislink, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I initially looked at the graphs and I thought that it was a waste of time. Analyzing data is part of my job and that is the last thing I wanted to do when goofing off.
- Rocketbird, on 10/12/2007, -22/+4digg me down
- ryanwarnersteel, on 10/12/2007, -24/+2"What the....did I just get laid?"
- skjalff, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1good for you if you did
...survey saaaaays..
- skjalff, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1good for you if you did
- sparks2, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14I would love to know how they get all the data, quite interesting.
What I would have liked them to do is look at all the LGF stories with things like how fast they get dugg up vs how fast we bury them or how recently all the members joined.
And on a related side note, if you go on bigspy you'll find lgf and similar stories that are up to 3 days old still being dugg after they have 300+ diggs and got buried ages ago... quite funny if it weren't for the fact that they make it hard to see the other stories on diggspy.- boomboxer, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4I was thinking the same thing about LGF posts as I was reading this.
- 1389, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@sparks2,
As even you should have been able to figure out, the only logical explanation is that the buried stories are being dugg by folks who read the original on LGF and clicked the Digg This button on the LGF web page. Anybody coming in through that route won't see anything to indicate that the story has already been buried. If you read anything else into this, you are showing nothing more than your own malicious intentions, disrespect for the truth, and disregard for common sense. - judsond, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@sparks
They work with digg, so I assume have database level access. - Stevejsam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Why do you automatically bury any LGF story? That seems like strong arm censorship of different viewpoint. Very UN first amendment of you.
- allholy1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@sparks2
From labs.digg.com
"With Stamen Design...
The projects currently in Digg Labs are the results of collaboration with Digg partner Stamen Design. As the project matures, we'll be releasing a public API to allow outside developers access to this data."
What would be really nifty is if someone can put one of these graphs on every story so we can view the digg history. I've downloaded and decompiled the SWF to Digg Swarm, maybe I can come up with something pretty neat if I can find the right data. From what I've figured out so far, they access services.digg.com - spartansblade, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1It shows that the system is broken. The fact that you can not bring back a story after its burried even when there are as lots of people interested in it shows the problem.
- thcobbs, on 10/12/2007, -8/+12Hrrm, couldn't be that someone spamed their own link to get it noticed??
- Guard, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Why is he getting dugg down for that speculation?
If you all don't remember, there were the spammers going around in every thread saying that 9/11 was a conspiracy a month or 2 ago (giving myspace links), this could have been the same people and encouragement to create a lot of accounts and digg the story up to the front page. - darkstorm777, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5Rigg teh Digg FTW!
Graphs dont lie.
Sad.
Dugg because something needs to be done about this. - Guard, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I guess I might have misunderstood that first post. Re-reading it, it sounds like he thinks they spammed the digg link on other sites. I think it just shows a persistent user(s) digging their own story up for attention.
But i consider creating a bunch of accounts and digging a story a form of spam as well :p - thcobbs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Sorry for the poor wording.
Looking at the account creation curve after the story was submitted, disregarding the outliers, it was damn near linear account creation... Like a group, or even one person, was continuously creating accounts as fast as they(he) could. - Sheb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm not sure if it was just one person... It looked pretty consistent for the 12 hour period...
- Guard, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Why is he getting dugg down for that speculation?
- gregmo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21that was a really cool read. I hope that turns into something we can look at on digg labs sometime soon. It's just cool they have all those stats at their finger tips.
- VhaidraU, on 10/12/2007, -9/+8I hope the PrisonPlanet.com and JonesReport.com followers will stick around and do more than just Digg what Alex Jones tells them to, and become productive members of this Digg society we have here, submitting more than just conspiracy theories, but other good news too.
- Kinsman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5An interesting comment, in light of the complaining that LGF has had about Digg over the last few days.
"Lobbyist" Diggers from another site, and acting as a group have a skewing effect on what would otherwise naturally appear on Digg; I wonder if the 'blue users' mentioned in the article are a mitigating factor. - boomboxer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3yeah I'd really rather not have warring contingents of people with very specific agendas skewing the digg process. but I don't suppose there's much that can be done. any suggestions that don't resort to unfair practices?
- EricAnderton, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@boomboxer: All I can think of is make a user's reputation score affect the time a story hits the front page for submitted stories.
For instance, I think one's reputation should be based on all of the following:
- number of diggs for stories submitted (obvious)
- diggs for comments (also obvious)
- average reputation and diggs of responses to comments (discourages FP abuse, encourages discussion)
- ratio of high-ranking comments to low-ranking comments (fits in well)
- average word count per high-ranking comments (one-line jokes and memes with high diggs have a reduced effect)
- reputation averaged over the life of the account (active user)
- doesn't appear on a block list, or exists on very few such lists (obvious)
Keep in mind that I'm suggesting both positive and *negative* reputation scores in this. The revised reputation calculation would then be used to boost the velocity for submitted stories by that user.
The idea is to favor active, contributing users that fit with digg's overall community vibe (by peer vote) by attempting to value the discussion content a user provides as well as the quality of stories they submit. Going just by the sheer volume of diggs one receives isn't enough, and has been proven as easy to abuse. This way, it would make it much harder for newer users to abuse the system by catering towards active, contributing and positive users, who themselves do not need to post any stories in order to gain a strong reputation.
To help with "warring factions" as you say, it comes down to how the scores are skewed. If one gives a heavier bias to one's contributions to digg (along with locking old threads down), then I think the effect might be reduced. - boomboxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I don'tt think that the amount of diggs stories you submit get or how any up or down diggs you get on your comments should effect a user's rating though. that would only encourage people to submit and say what they think other people want to hear. also, it would still make people vulnerable to a contingent from a specific blog who descend upon a page all at one time and bury it and digg down all comments they don't like.
- KataLieb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Have you considered that perhaps the call for people to join Digg happened and spread because the original WTC 7 story was buried without good reason? I think this is the reason for this. There are now plenty of forums and blogs who report that Digg has a) censored or b) biasedly buried the original story, and this has caused a rather massive flock of new people here.
Before the Burial the hype was nowhere near the level its at now. The old truth at work, try to prevent something and youll just make it all the more interesting.
- Kinsman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5An interesting comment, in light of the complaining that LGF has had about Digg over the last few days.
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25The info about the BBC story is certainly interesting. I was just saying to a friend earlier that up until very recently, users spouting conspiracy theories had tended to get dugg down, while those debunking them got dugg up. In the BBC story, it was the polar opposite. I thought that was strange. Now I know why - it was gamed.
- boomboxer, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1oh sorry, digg down
- R34C7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Digg is a great social experiment and has implications for a wide variety of medium.
- idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2o rly?
- scispaz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8My question would be how many of the people who signed up to digg that article will still be around in a week. I wonder how many have already disposed of their digg account.
- boomboxer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6they'll probably keep their accounts so they can do the same thing next time they're called to action
- knomevol, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2i like your question. about three quarters of the way through the graphs and i can see logic making one want to wonder such a thing.
think again.
the digg got blogged the hell out of, and people around the world with suspicion in their heart clicked a button on their mouse.
there is no disposal - it's graphed now. - somerandomnerd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd like to know how many IP addresses correspond to all those new registrations.
- Brows, on 10/12/2007, -19/+4mmmmm....graphs....so boring......
- NoahK, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Hardly! The graphs really show how we use the site on a daily basis. The "controversial" story had me thinking that it was simply "bots" who were digging the story, but I guess it really was a bunch of new people who had been tricked (?) into digging just that story and no others.
I would love to see an hourly animation such as Kevin posted once on the blog last year.
- NoahK, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Hardly! The graphs really show how we use the site on a daily basis. The "controversial" story had me thinking that it was simply "bots" who were digging the story, but I guess it really was a bunch of new people who had been tricked (?) into digging just that story and no others.
- lukehh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Really incredible - any chance of these visualizations becoming realtime/flash?
- boomboxer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I've always thought that digg is a reflection of democracy, and this just adds depth to that analogy. now at digg, just as in american democracy, you have special interest groups coming in and skewing the process so that those with a specific, extreme agenda get more exposure than they deserve.
- h00paj00, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Digg should be more of a representative democracy then...
- knomevol, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1king arthur: old woman!
dennis: man.
king arthur: oh, man, sorry.... what knight lives in that castle?
dennis: i'm thir-ee-seven.
king arthur: what?
dennis: i'm thir-ee-seven, i'm not old.
king arthur: oh, well, i can't just call you man.
dennis: name's dennis.
king arthur: well i didn't know you were called 'dennis'.
dennis: well, you didn't bother to find out, now did you?
king arthur: well, look, i did say sorry about the 'old woman', but from behind
old woman: hey dennis, there's some lovely filth down 'ere - oh, how do you do?
king arthur: how do you do, good woman. i am arthur, king of the britons. whose castle is that?
old woman: king of the 'o?
king arthur: king of the britons.
old woman: 'o are the britons?
king arthur: good lord, woman, we all are! we are all britons! and i am you king.
old woman: king, eh? i thought we were an autonomous collective.
dennis: you're foolin' yourself - we're living in a dictatorship! a self perpetuating autocracy in which the working class...
old woman: oh there you go bringing class into it again!
dennis: but that's what i'm on about! if only people would...
king arthur: please good people! i am in haste! what knight lives in that castle?
old woman: no-one lives there.
king arthur: then who is your lord?
old woman: we don't 'ave a lord.
king arthur: what?!
dennis: i told you. we're an anarchosyndocist commune. we take it in turns to act as sort of an executive officer of the week. and all the decisions of that officer haf to be ra'ified at a special bi-weekly meeting, with a two-thirds majo'ity in the case of purely internal affairs but a simple majority in the case of all others
king arthur: be quiet! i order you to be quiet!
old woman: order? 'o does 'e think 'e is?
king arther: i told you, i am your king!
old woman: king, eh? well, i didn't vote for you.
king arthur: you don't vote for kings!
old woman: well, 'owed you become king, then?
king arthur: the lady of the lake. her arm held aloft ex calibur from the bosom of the water signifying by divine providence that i, arthur, was to be your king.
dennis: oh, god! strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government.
king arthur: shut up, will you?! shut up!
dennis: i mean, if if i went 'round sayin' i was the emperor because some moistened bink had lugged a scimitar at me, they'd lock me away!
king arthur: bloody peasant!
dennis: ah! now we see the violence inherent in the system! 'elp! 'elp! i'm bein' repressed! - itsmekirby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4America is a democratic republic, digg is a true democracy. Your point still holds, though.
- 13B1303, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Digg is a true democracy, it is proven every time real facts get buried and popular trends get dugg up.
- Donald2007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Actually I think this is inevitable in any democracy. And, while special interest group are trying to 'game the system'...developing some system to prevent this i, ironically...also a way of gaming the system. I think certain groups will have an over-weighted interest at times..but only at times.
For example, if a 'conservative' blog like LGF rallies its members and creates a sudden influx of new people here...I would imagine the people in 'liberal/progressive'' blogs on like Huffington, KOS etc would find out about it..and then there would be an effort there to bring lots of their people in. And..why not?
It reminds me of the argument that in a functioning democracy, ALL people should vote. But...what if some people don't have an opinion...or a preference in an election. They have a right to that. Similarly, on these hot political issues...there are some passionate liberals, some passionate conservatives...some 'moderates'...and I'm sure some Digg users who have no interest in politics, and avoid political articles...seeking out other stuff. And they have a right to that.
Similarly, in American politics. Why shouldn't people form groups to advance their cause...a long as they do nothing illegal. For example, 'gun control'...both 'gun control advocates' and the 'right to bear arms' people should have a right to lobby...to form group and devise strategies to convince congress that they are right.
If a group of people feels strongly about an issue, they might organize, and have picketing/demonstrations. They might organize a letter-writing campaign. Is this unfairly 'gaming the system'...? An interesting question.
- h00paj00, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Donald2007: Well Played!
- fittysix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8BBC story aside, those are some damn cool graphs.
- misterpony, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'd like to see and know more about "Digg reputation scores" (mentioned in 2nd paragraph after "Joining After the Fact" graph) and what effect that has on story promotion. Also, Digg should allow the users to see the actual profiles in the graphs to find fits into certain trends. Or Digg could recommend similar stories or users based on the trends from these graphs.
- invader, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's some great data viz. I need to start getting into making scatter plots like those. Great work!
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It'd be really interesting to have this kind of data available automatically for every digg story. To have every user in the dugg list 'colour coded' like in the graphs (even if it's not identifiable, i.e. each user could be a dot still), so it's possible to see how the story has come to be dugg up. Really, that'd be the ultimate gaming tool I think.
- briantech, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Is it just me or do those graphs look ... analog almost? Like they were created on real paper with real ink, by some kind of analog scanning device?
It doesn't look like your normal digital graph, with points. It looks like it has visual artifacts and things like that.- ericrodenbeck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6that's the best compliment I could have hoped for (Tom Carden and I made the graphs), whether it was intended as one or not.
- TomCarden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Absolutely! I spent quite a while looking at spectrum analysis a long time ago... it must have had some influence on these charts.
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&gbv=2&safe=off&q=spectragram&btnG=Search (see also: spectrum, spectragraph, spectrograph, etc.) - ericrodenbeck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Mike K sent over these last night; similar feel:
http://people.bu.edu/scott/IntroExpHEP/bubblechevt.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/dtrapp/ePhysics.f/images2.f/bubbles98.gif
- Miroresh, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0I don't get it.
- mobislink, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2There should be an analysis of how a Wii fanboy reacts to a negative PS3 story.
- geoid, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Evidence of the popularity of Alex Jones and the 911 truth movement I'd say - they've as much right to be part of digg as wii enthusiasts, Linux hackers, Free software advocates or anyone else with enthusiasm for a particular subject on this site.
- boomboxer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4of course they do - however when they all come in at one time in a coordinated manner, they get disproportionate representation that undermines the digg process.
- jacotyco, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1lots of boring graphs
- kidcodea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6how dare you represent me by a single pixel?!?!
- YokohamaGaijin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Nice stats work. You can definitely see when the majority of diggers are on the site.
- kiensoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought the yellowish/redish line was more important than the blue line. The story of the iPod and the coverflow thing.
- RicoLT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm new to digg, AKA a little Blue Dot, and I'm assuming I wouldn't have happened upon this story if it wasn't in the top 10 when I logged on (I just signed up today). I'm a bit confused though... while I agree with the community consensus that there shouldn't be concentrated collaboration to digg a story up, this very study, and the story it's spawned, is keeping the BBC story alive. I just read it and I'm sure I wouldn't have been aware of it otherwise, unless it was in my normal news sources. So has this in a sense legitamized it now? Are people making a concentrated effort to digg a story down because they feel like it was unfairly dugg up, regardless of the story's content? Does the pack mentality go both ways here or did that many people generally think it was an unworthy story to digg it down and cause "conspiray censorship theories" yet attracting more people to it?
- kokoBware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Interesting stuff... Why isn't there similar info on "bury" stats? Since there are basically 2 rating-options, I think it would be interesting to see who buries what stories most often.
For instance: If a longtime Digg user posts a story about about bugs in the Vista OS, and a new user who doesn't know anything about the story but votes to bury it, and has a penchant for burying every negative story about MS... Wouldn't that kind of info be of equal value? People's bias tends to run both ways. Also, since the Digg links can be embedded in other sites, there are many stories that will draw interest from topical websites which focus on that particular subject. The process seems too controlled. The fact is, a new user coming over from another topical site might have much stronger opinions regarding a certain topic, but is also probably more knowledgeable on that topic. It seems a shame that someone could have the power to shut down a story only because they've been a part of the Digg Club longer, regardless of their knowledge on the subject. Everyone has biases. The reason that BBC story got so many new users was because word got out that it was Buried despite having hundreds of Diggs in the first hour or so. The thread is still going even though it can't be found through normal Digg channels--and it's closing in on 2000 Diggs despite that. Had it not been buried, it probably would have been one of the hottest stories of the day without nearly as many new user signups. As someone posted earlier, it was the burying of the story which created the most furor, because it happened on the heels of Google and YT yanking every video as soon as it was submitted, and Archive pulling the videos from their site. Also, some people signed up just to bury it--as their sole intention of signing up... One person in particular, supposedly from the BBC, went on and on saying that losing the tape was an accident and people at the BBC are really nice people with kids and families... And when we started asking questions, like who was the source for the report, and how did the BBC suddenly lose the tapes, he went postal.... As Twain said: "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics". People can run statistics any way they want. As interesting as it was to look at, I think Bury stats would be equally interesting--especially in a user's profile, like Diggs. - lasenorita, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If you look at it, that thin blue line didn't really make a difference.
The BBC story was posted at 8:15 pm on 2/26, reached the front page at 9:42 pm, and was promptly buried at only 257 diggs and 82 comments.
[ http://duggtrends.com/PlotGraph.aspx?id=0dfbf64a-878c-4783-8d4c-fb6bc3e1479f ]
The majority of the 1900+ diggs and 1100+ comments came after the story was marked as lame by veteran digg users.
Anyways, kudos for presenting the data well. What would be interesting to see is a similar graph analysing buries. As shown in this article, gaming goes both ways: http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/the-bury-brigade-exists-and-heres-my-proof.html - forgottenhope, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Digg sucks. Digg doesn't want to show who buries articles because then they would have to account for the massive amount of nobodies that are not burring anything. Digg my ass, i think of this site as a joke nothing more. If i want to find the latest ipod color or disk size, I know where to go.
The 2008 presidential category really fits in well under the category of world & business. That is what politics is about, global business. Presidential candidates have to have business funding their campaign in order to get enough money to fix an election.
Wow America is so great, thank god digg came a long and fixed everything. - marthabrow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Good. This is too common nowadays.
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is 
