digg

Frequently Asked Questions

Using Digg

1. What is Digg?

   Digg is a place for people to discover and share content found on the web. From the biggest online destination to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people collectively determine the value of content. In doing so, we’re changing the way people consume information online.

2. What’s the best way to find interesting stuff?

   Digg is organized into groups of categories based on topics. First, go to the homepage, where you’ll find the best of the best according to the Digg community. From there, click around on some of the topics listed at the top (Technology, World & Business, etc.) and you’ll see the top stories in each individual category.

   If you’re more of the get in early type, check out our expansive Upcoming section for stories that haven’t been promoted yet.

3. Can I change the Digg homepage to only show certain categories?

   If you’re just not interested in some of the topics that get promoted to the Digg homepage feel free to personalize your Digg experience. First, make sure you’re logged in. You can change the default view of your homepage by clicking on the Customize button, which is located on the top navigation bar next to “Images”. Once you’re on the customize page simply deselect the topics you’d prefer not to see on your homepage. Also, any specific topic or category can be set as your default homepage — at the bottom of the customize page, there are two drop down menus for selecting both topic and specific media types.

4. How do I report a bug, problem or abuse?

   If you encounter a bug, abusive behavior or other problem on the site, please use our Contact page to let us know what’s happening — Digg’s support team is available to make sure the community’s concerns are heard and responded to quickly.

Accounts

1. How can I change my username?

   Having an identity crisis? First, make sure your preferred username is not already in use. Just log out and go to the registration page, where you can enter the new username you’d like in the form and tab to the next field to test its availability. Then you can request a username change by getting in touch with us via our Contact form.

2. The email address I used when I registered doesn’t work anymore, and I can’t access my account. What do I do?

   It’s important to check your registered email address periodically to ensure that it’s the one you currently use. This is one of the ways we confirm that we’re communicating with the correct user about account status and information. However, if your registered email address is out-of-date and you have no way of accessing it, contact us and we’ll do our best to help you.

3. How can I close my Digg account?

   For the time being, you’ll need to contact us to have your account closed. Please note that your account’s submissions and comments will not be removed, per our Terms of Use (see section 6), but that content will be anonymized and not associated with your username.

4. Can I choose which emails I receive from Digg?

   While we don’t want to bog down your inbox unnecessarily, we do, by default, notify users when certain events happen on Digg, such as when another user befriends you. However, you can manage which notification emails you receive by logging in and heading over to the Email Preferences area of your profile.

5. I tried to log in and was told that my account is invalid. What’s up?

   You’ll need to contact us from the email address associated with your username so we can take a look into your account history.

6. Is it OK to have more than one account on Digg?

   Unless you exist in two parallel universes at once, unfortunately no. To protect the integrity of the system, our policy is one person, one account. This is to help prevent users from artificially inflating the Digg count, which is explicitly against our Terms of Use.

Facebook Connect

1. What is Facebook Connect?

   Facebook Connect is a service offered by Facebook so that people can log into their favorite sites using their Facebook username and password. To try Facebook Connect, just choose the Facebook login option on any login page on Digg.

   In addition to making it easier to log into Digg, Facebook Connect also allows you to use your name and profile photo from your Facebook account on Digg and to easily share with your friends by posting your Diggs, comments, and submissions to your Facebook feed.

2. Can I have both a Facebook Connect Digg account and a regular Digg account?

   Managing multiple accounts is against the Digg Terms of Use so we ask that you log in to Digg first and then connect your Facebook account.

3. How can I connect my existing Digg account to Facebook?

   Connecting your Digg account to Facebook is super simple. Go to your Profile Settings and choose "Connect". Done and done!

4. How can I change my Facebook Connect settings on Digg?

   All of your Facebook Connect specific settings are available via your profile settings.

5. What personal data from my Facebook account is shared with Digg?

   Currently, only a user’s full name and profile image is shared. You can choose whether to use your full name from Facebook on Digg via the About Me settings page.

   You can also choose to sync your Digg and Facebook default profile images via your Digg profile settings. If you choose to sync those images, updating your Facebook profile pic will update your Digg account.

Submitting

1. How do I submit something to Digg?

   Easy! Go to digg.com/submit or click on the “Submit New” link that’s shown on every page to logged in users. Paste the direct URL of the news story, image or video you’d like to submit, and then tell us if it’s a news story, video or image. On the next page, add a concise headline and description, choose a thumbnail (if one is available) and be sure to select the topic you feel is best suited to your submission. Hit “Submit Story” and you’re all set. (You may be asked whether your item is a duplicate of something already submitted; if the story doesn’t offer a fresh perspective, please Digg the earlier submission.)

2. Why can’t I submit things from certain websites?

   Our active community regularly identifies websites that violate our Terms of Use — after investigating the reports, the Digg Team may place a block on those sites preventing them from being submitted in the future.

3. I am a site owner and you’ve blocked my domain. How can I get it unblocked?

   If you own a domain that has been blocked, you’ll need to contact us about its status.

4. Is it OK to submit a duplicate?

   Users spend a significant amount of time and energy looking for the best content on the web. Submitting duplicate stories is definitely not cool, so we ask folks to Digg the original story instead of submitting a duplicate. Of course, there will be similar stories from different sources that are submitted to Digg. In those cases, we let our users determine whether a story is a duplicate or if it offers a fresh perspective. However, if we find that users are consistently submitting duplicates (and bypassing our duplicate detection), their accounts may be banned.

5. Someone submitted a duplicate of my story, how did this happen?

   There are a few ways this could happen. First, if both stories were submitted at the same time (or within a couple of minutes) there’s the chance that our system just didn’t catch the original. The second way is if the subsequent submission was from a different URL and/or had a different title and description — we do our best, but we’re just not perfect and sometimes miss these. The third way a duplicate could be submitted is if the second submitter simply ignored our duplicate detection warning. If you feel that the behavior was abusive — and you’re sure the duplicate doesn’t add a new perspective to the story — feel free to contact us and we’ll look into your report.

6. How do I edit or delete something I submitted?

   We are able to edit submission titles, categories & descriptions. Contact us from the email address associated with your username and include the Digg.com URL of the submission as well as the changes you’d like to make.

   However, as stated in the section 6 of the Terms of Use, we don’t delete content unless it is in violation of our Terms of Use. Please note that un-Digging a story removes it from your profile, but not from Digg.com. Additionally, we can’t switch a submission’s thumbnail for you, but we can remove it if you’d like.

Digging, Burying and Promotion

1. How many Diggs or buries does it take to promote or remove a story?

   It depends. The promotion or burying of stories is managed by an algorithm developed by Digg, and there is no specific threshold of Diggs or buries required to promote or bury a story. Instead, our algorithm takes several factors into consideration, including (but not limited to) the number and diversity of Diggs, buries, the time the story was submitted and the topic.

2. There are stories with hundreds of Diggs — why haven’t they been promoted?

   Our algorithm takes several factors into consideration, including (but not limited to) the number and diversity of Diggs, user reports, the time the story was submitted and the topic. Though we cannot go into further detail about the algorithm, we can say that one of the keys to promotion is the element of diversity, as mentioned above. Without diversity, a story will not be promoted.

3. Can I un-Digg or unbury a story?

   Changed your mind? You can un-Digg a story by logging in and clicking My Profile. Find the story in the Recent Activity section (or click the History tab) and you’ll find an un-Digg button next to each item. You can’t unbury a story, however.

4. Why don’t you show who buried a story?

   Simple: We like to focus on the positive and don’t want to spark sandbox fights between users. What you bury is your own personal decision, and our math takes care of deciding when a story will be buried.

Comments

1. Can I edit or delete a comment I made?

   You can edit or delete to your heart’s content — as long as you do so within five minutes of posting your comment.

   However, after those five minutes are up, your comment becomes dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain and cannot be deleted unless it is in violation of our Terms of Use. See Section 6 of our Terms of Use for more information.

2. Can I change my vote on a comment?

   Sure can! If you’ve voted down a comment that you now want to support, just hit the thumbs-up button once to neutralize your down-vote and then a second to record your positive vote time (and vice-versa).

3. Someone’s being rude to me in comments, what do I do?

   While it might be tempting to hurl back an insult, that just adds fuel to the fire so let us deal with abusive commenters. If someone is being lame, contact us and we’ll look into the situation. Check out our Community Guidelines for a bit more info.

4. How can I see the vote totals on a comment?

   While checking out a submission’s comments, you’ll see the net total of up- or down-votes to the right of the comment. Clicking on the net total will display the break down of comment votes.

5. How can I report an offensive comment?

   If you vote down a comment, you’ll notice two tools for dealing with lame behavior. Click “Report It” to let us know about the comment and “Block User” to prevent that user’s comments from appearing when you’re logged in. You’re also welcome to contact us with the direct comment URL and we’ll take a look.

6. I have a story that I want to submit, but there is no topic for it. Can I submit it?
   No, if your content does not fall under any of Digg topics, then please do not submit it.
7. Can I submit porn, pr0n, or pornography?
   Any porn submissions will result in an immediate ban and/or account deletion. Moreover, while nudity isn't necessarily porn, it still violates our TOU. A good rule of thumb: if there's nudity, it's probably not a good idea to submit it. More often than not, it will result in an account ban.
8. How can I delete a story I submitted?
   Once a story has been submitted to Digg, it is dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication, available at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ according to our Terms of Use. We do reserve the right to remove content that is determined to be in violation of our Terms of Use at any time and at our discretion.
9. How can I edit a story I submitted?
   Please contact support@digg.com to edit a story. Be sure to include the Digg URL of the story you want to edit as well as the updated title, category, or description. You must be the original submitter of the story to request an edit to a story and you must email us from the email address associated with your Digg account.

Profiles and Friends

1. Can I make my profile and Digg activity totally private?

   Digg is a social media site by definition, so sharing a certain amount of information is important. Your Diggs, submissions, comments and favorites are all important contributions to the Digg community. That said, you can keep personal information private if you like by updating your profile settings.

2. Why is my private information (age, location, name) showing on my profile?

   First, make sure your settings reflect your desire to keep certain information private by logging in and clicking the Settings tab in your profile area. You can share your age, along with other information (such as your full name and location) to everyone, just your friends or nobody at all.

   Note that if you’ve chosen to display certain information to nobody, you will still see it when you’re logged in and viewing your own profile. However, it won’t be shown to anyone else on the site. You can confirm this by logging out and viewing your profile.

DiggBar and the Digg Short URL service

1. How do I turn the DiggBar on or off?

   There are a few different options for turning the DiggBar off. First, if you’re viewing a page with the DiggBar you can temporarily remove the DiggBar by clicking the “X” in the upper right corner. You can also choose to turn the DiggBar off by mousing over that “X” and clicking “Always hide the toolbar”.

   The option to turn the DiggBar on or off is also available via your profile settings.

2. Is there a way for me to easily turn a URL into a DiggBar short URL?

   Totally! We have created a bookmarklet you can save as a bookmark and use it anytime to create a Digg short URL. Download the bookmarklet on our Tools page.

   If you’re using Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera: click and drag the Bookmarklet button into your Bookmarks Bar. Can’t see your Bookmarks Bar? Find and select “Show Bookmarks Bar” from the menu in your browser.

   Internet Explorer: right-click the Bookmarklet button, select “Add to Favorites”, and choose a place to save the bookmark.

   Once you’ve installed the Bookmarklet on your browser all you need to do is click on it when you’re on the page you want to turn into a Digg short URL

   If you’re the minimalist type, you can also just add “digg.com/” to the beginning of any URL, hit enter and BAM! Digg short URL.

More Digg Info

1. Is there a mobile version of Digg?

   We have two options to choose from: The original mobile version of Digg can be found at diggriver.com. An enhanced version — found at m.digg.com — is perfect for devices that support the full web-browsing experience.

2. I want to put a Digg button on my site, how do I do that?

   We have created several options for people who want to encourage their readers to submit their content to Digg. Just click Integrate Digg Buttons, found at the bottom of each page, for instructions on how to integrate Digg into your site.

   Additionally, if you’re using a blog publishing service, it might offer its own tools for connecting with Digg.

3. What if I have a question you don’t list here?

   We won’t even pretend that we’re able to see into your brain, so if we missed anything, feel free to contact us and ask away.