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Hey Digg: Your “Upcoming” Model Blows, Here’s How to Fix It

wrevenue.com — The concept of Digg is fantastic. Have users submit stories to get peer reviewed and if other people like a story, they ’ll vote on it, and it eventually gets promoted to the homepage for all to see. Unfortunately, their system is fatally flawed.

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  • kevinrose, on 11/12/2007, -22/+500Thanks for the post. Big changes coming soon...
    • meman2, on 11/12/2007, -7/+96Do those changes have to do with this rumor:
      "Digg is close to announcing its sale to a major media player for $300 million to $400 million, according to sources close to the company.":
      http://valleywag.com/tech/rumormonger/digg-close-t ...
      • placidified, on 11/09/2007, -31/+5If Digg does get soled out to who ever, lets just hope that it doesn't get screwed up and forget its roots.
        • Reedan, on 11/09/2007, -4/+45"lets just hope that it doesn't get screwed up and forget its roots."

          You haven't been here long, have you?
          • theone3, on 11/09/2007, -2/+12For the noobs; Digg forgot its roots when it implemented this damn comment rating system (+- x diggs), which led to all the good discussion and fact checking being replaced with funny quips and pandering. It got worse with the introduction of 3.0, which introduced politics and furry animals and hordes of 13 year olds with four second attention spans and Paulites. Now it's turned from an amicable community site with common technology interests to a blithering racket of attention seeking, always overblown and often incorrect stories about US politics and bunnies. http://www.drivl.com/posts/view/731
          • placidified, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1i've been on digg since early 2005, i just didn't create an account until this last year!
        • TenebrousX, on 11/09/2007, -6/+25What makes you think it needs to be sold to forget its roots? HD-DVD key, anyone?
        • gerrymac, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4can a person who joined on May 24th, 2007 really comment on the sites "roots".
          lol, not that i am the one to comment either i joined in February
          • Nossie, on 11/09/2007, -4/+1-1 troll for having a high UID ... oh wait, this is Digg?
          • Nossie, on 11/09/2007, -6/+1-1 troll for having a high UID ... oh wait, this is Digg?
        • arjie, on 11/08/2007, -1/+3@gerrymac: I know I was just a user for around 8-12 months before I registered.
      • ricree, on 11/12/2007, -0/+41Something tells me that he probably wouldn't be able to talk about it if it were true.
      • Harbinger67, on 11/12/2007, -1/+29If he did sell it, I wouldn't blame him at all. Hell, if I were in his shoes and someone offered me 300 mill for a website, I'd take it in a heartbeat. He'd be an idiot not to and you know it.
      • Nerfdude, on 11/12/2007, -1/+25$300 million... that's a lot of organic vegetables and VW Golfs.
      • Elranzer, on 11/12/2007, -2/+12Just as long as it's not sold to NewsCorp. Any rumor of that, and to /dev/null goes my personal data here.
      • juicebag, on 11/09/2007, -2/+7That would be trouble. Digg users hate mainstream media.
      • Bilabrin, on 11/09/2007, -0/+5I smell murdoch...
    • ophello, on 11/12/2007, -1/+32Furthermore, spam that gets buried upon being spotlighted should have a lower chance of being spotlighted a second time.
      • DeathfireD, on 11/09/2007, -0/+7ya but wouldn't you still be seeing spam more often then you would if you just went into upcoming and hit sort by most popular? Somehow I don't like the idea of seeing thousands of Ron Paul, porn news, and blog spam showing up on the front page. Although the idea is great, it would only be usefully if everyone was "playing nice" with the digg system.
        • insub2, on 11/09/2007, -1/+2of course, the more views a story gets, the sooner someone can bury it as spam.
    • Okari, on 11/12/2007, -6/+60Pic section and comments now. Wasn't the pic section supposed to be up in Oct?
      • stacky, on 11/10/2007, -5/+20Would you like to be a little more demanding? It's not like you pay anything to use digg, stop whining.
    • blitzer, on 11/12/2007, -4/+104What about a profile based ongoing point system so I can be recognized for my consistently brilliant comments...
      • brentinkc, on 11/09/2007, -19/+0Amen!
        • andy370, on 11/12/2007, -0/+3People are digging you down because comments like these are why there's a little thumbs up by blitzer. Please use it instead.
    • quaxon, on 11/12/2007, -5/+12i think it would be nice if for the upcomming section, every article submitted in the ladst 48 or so hours gets bumped to the top with each new digg. kinda how on message boards the thread with the most recent post is at the top. it would be a nice way to filter through all the spam and get good stories noticed,
      • Audacitor, on 11/08/2007, -2/+2Ya, but then new submissions would immediately get pushed to the bottom. Maybe a two column view? One for popular stories, and one for new submissions?
        • insub2, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2new stories would be at the top because they have just received one digg.
    • ThinkBox, on 11/12/2007, -32/+7KEVIN ROSE DOESNT CARE ABOUT PICTURES SECTION - KnyWst
    • p0ss, on 11/09/2007, -3/+4just quietly, another way to look at old stories would be appreciated.
    • HunterTV, on 11/12/2007, -9/+152Dugg up for Kevin's politeness.

      "Dude, you site ***** SUCKS! FIX IT!"
      "I will do that. Thank you for your input and have a most excellent day. Best regards, Kevin."
      • Crazymaniacc, on 11/09/2007, -4/+2"I can't believe you did this."
      • arjie, on 11/09/2007, -8/+1If you think that's polite you should see my ISP. I go to a friend's house and send them an email yelling like mad, and they sent me this message:
        "Dear Customer, your complaint has been registered. Thank you for the feedback. Have a nice day."
        They were equally polite the next time too, when I complained that nothing had been done.
    • lolhax, on 11/12/2007, -3/+44Please make a seperate category for Ron Paul articles. Thanks.
    • obliviousfool, on 11/09/2007, -1/+7This idea would be cool if there was some way to filter obvious spam stories out of the "upcoming spotlight" slots. I mean, the upcoming stories are hard to slog through because of all the obvious spam. Spotlighting those on the front page wouldn't make much sense at all!
      • Audacitor, on 11/09/2007, -0/+9Spotlighting spam would just get it buried that much faster, and spammers would get put on a lot of block lists. Give it a month or so and most Digg users wouldn't have to deal with much spam.
        • obliviousfool, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2Am I missing something? It seems like the only way to block someone is in the comments, and spammers never leave comments for you to block them by. I see what you mean about burying stuff faster though.
    • MalDON, on 11/09/2007, -7/+11You've been saying that for months now.
      • Asystole, on 11/09/2007, -3/+1"Major changes" to a site as massive as digg don't happen overnight. Be patient.
        • bluesnowmonkey, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2It has a massive number of stories/comments, and it gets massive hits, but it's not massively complicated. You could rewrite Digg from the ground up in less time.
    • ch33sehead, on 11/12/2007, -2/+28If only the comments section could be changed so that diggers can't see how many diggs/digg downs a comment received until he/she voted. That way, people won't be influenced by the comment's current ratings when voting. How many times have we seen a really inaccurate or stupid comment get dugg up or really good/insightful comment get dugg down because people just go with the flock?
      • Audacitor, on 11/12/2007, -2/+4Now that would be useful. Problem is, thanks to the Digg API, it's easy to find out ahead of time anyway. For example, I've got a little greasemonkey script here that puts those stats right next to the digg and bury buttons for each comment. And I know it's been affecting my digging.
      • TnTBass, on 11/12/2007, -0/+6I'm not sure if I dugg you up because you had a good point, or if I were following the sheep...
    • Coolaborations, on 11/09/2007, -6/+5oh, ***** -- I wanted to digg ch33sehead's comment and I buried it by mistake!!

      That's another site design / usability issue -- have such diametrically opposed (opposite) actions / functions linked right next to each other is NOT GOOD. Such "mistakes" could and SHOULD be prevented by separating the links more clearly.

      Sorry ch33sehead -- I cannot find any way to unbury your comment (please just write it off as newbie innocence

      Please: read ch33sehead's comment -- it is quite valid and certainly should be considered:

      ----

      If only the comments section could be changed so that diggers can't see how many diggs/digg downs a comment received until he/she voted. That way, people won't be influenced by the comment's current ratings when voting. How many times have we seen a really inaccurate or stupid comment get dugg up or really good/insightful comment get dugg down because people just go with the flock?

      ----

      If ch33sehead posts it again, I think it ought to get dugg
      • reubencm, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4dude, just because you buried it doesn't mean it is immediately hidden for all users, that's just on your screen...
        • m3t00, on 11/09/2007, -4/+1hehe, I think having three numbers available for all comments would be far more useful. Up, Down, Total. At least make it an option to display.
      • 4degrees, on 11/09/2007, -0/+6not only did you mistakenly digg someone down you also missed the reply button.
    • joshuaer, on 11/09/2007, -3/+2As i posted before there are allot of ways digg can change things make is so spam stories are less likely to to on the front page and more likely for other stories to get to the front page, Making some middle page would be the best. Honestly i go to digg to many times a day any time my mac is rendering my first stop is digg. i hate the up and coming section it is not up and coming it is just submitted you should ad a just submitted and make up and coming really up and coming stories.

      PS stop banning my account just because my cat is better then yours!!!!
    • charbarred, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4How about paying for better servers? I don't mind spending time in the upcoming section but it takes the pages so long to load that I don't bother anymore.
    • DarkDx, on 11/09/2007, -1/+3*insert random conspiracy theory here*
    • 4degrees, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3how about a simple ticker at the top of the front page that ticks by freshly submitted stories, quickly growing upcoming and most popular upcoming?
      • mrdiggdude, on 12/18/2007, -0/+1oooooh, you mean marquee /me goes to hide under a rock for another 10years
  • olaph, on 11/09/2007, -4/+22good post looking forward to the changes
  • dunderballer, on 11/08/2007, -1/+13It would be a good idea if there was a way to give different users different random "1 digg" stories on the popular page and then have those move to the "Upcoming Top 10"queues if and when they get enough diggs from limited number of diggers it is made popular to.
    • mlostracco, on 11/08/2007, -0/+9It would be even better if they would just deal with the colossal spam problem in the Upcoming Stories section, which has been rendered useless by pitches for cleaning services and porn sites.

      I mean, filters exist and IPs can be banned. Jeesh.
    • Kanidia, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1But wouldn't this just be who's luckier then?
  • spony99, on 11/08/2007, -2/+3im pretty sure digg is going to give you a queue of upcoming stories based on your viewing trends. this way the upcoming stories will be seen by more people and you dont have to sift through upcoming political stories if you have never dugg a politics story. the idea of putting random upcoming stories on the main page is a good thought, but there is no way random stories should spam the front page.
    • TDave00, on 11/08/2007, -0/+3I like the idea of mixing in upcoming stories on the front page based on users viewing and digging trends. It might not be a bad idea to take into account what type of posts users comment on as well. Hell, there's so much data that digg should be able to pull from their users that they should have no problem suggesting upcoming stories to users.
      • unitedstatians, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1Hey!, while were at it, lets universally devalued digg impressions.
  • marc2242, on 11/08/2007, -4/+10Agree, it needs some improvement.
  • JMArchilla, on 11/08/2007, -1/+26Things only get better with constructive criticism, looking forward to the changes.
    • bingobongony, on 11/08/2007, -2/+15But in the last year things have only gotten worse.
  • blitzer, on 11/09/2007, -4/+151In an ironic twist.. this blogger likely got his friends to digg this article up the list.
  • chosenjones, on 11/08/2007, -3/+2Brilliant.
  • indyGuy, on 11/08/2007, -2/+20I'd drop a box in the right column with upcoming stories. I don't want newly submitted content mixed in with the true front page content.

    Maybe then refresh that list every few minutes with a new batch of stories. That way several new (or upcoming) stories get exposure on the front (and other) pages.
    • bruenig, on 11/08/2007, -0/+5It can just be randomized seeing as each page is dynamic anyways.
      • indyGuy, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2True. I'm used to generating cached pages so I tend to think that way...
    • TDave00, on 11/08/2007, -0/+3I wouldn't mind it being mixed in with front page content as long as it is distinguishable from other posts, and the ability to turn that feature off would be nice as well.
    • kevyn, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2how about we lose the ads and get an upcoming top 5 in that nice space to the top right... (now for the adblock comments...)
  • bingobongony, on 11/08/2007, -13/+8Idiotic solutions...Randomly spotlighting some submissions (some of which may suck) won't do anything at all.

    You want to put an end to the popularity content? Simply get rid of the friends list. That alone would stop it a lot as it makes it harder to Digg stories from one person. Even better, don't put the submitter's name under the title, unitl/unless you click on the title to at least load the original story. Even better...don't put the submitter's name anywhere in a submission until it reaches the front page.
    • ricree, on 11/08/2007, -2/+5Have you ever heard of throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Your idea is a perfect example of it. Yeah, there are some issues arising due to the friends list, but a much better solution would be to simply weigh friend votes less. There is simply no reason to go to such an extreme when trying to solve this problem.
      • bingobongony, on 11/08/2007, -0/+7Why? There is no reason to have people vote based solely on who submitted a story. I am sure you are probably trying to get at that the top users won't play the game if they can't win it. Who the ***** cares. The stories that are actually WORTH reading will still be submitted by people who do not have some pathetic need to "win" a website. Even the GOOD submissionsfrom top users are not exactly unique. Someone will submit the exact same story.
        You can still have top Diggers. Just have it be kept secret until a weekly list of top users comes out.
        It would not hurt the site one bit if everything was anonymous. And it would help it a lot.
        • ricree, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2I was really responding more to the idea of removing the friends list than getting rid of the name on the submission page. I don't think that the second part is as cut and dried as you make it out to be, but I mostly was just against the idea of tossing the friends list.
          • bingobongony, on 11/08/2007, -0/+3There is no point in removing the names from submissions if people can still just go to the person's friends list and blindly digg every single submission.
            Digg will NEVER be like Facebook or MySpace. People on your Digg friends list are not your friends. There is NO reason for the friends list other than to help you get diggs from people based on other criteria than that they think the sotry is a good one. Anyone who gives a ***** about who is in their Digg's friends list needs to SERIOUSLY contemplate suicide. That is not a joke.
    • xpose, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1That is a rather brilliant idea sir. I just may do that for my site
    • misterS, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2in that case, the submitter would just spam his friends per email..
  • anaravia, on 11/08/2007, -3/+3I love it. GREAT idea!
    • sebastijan, on 11/08/2007, -2/+0I totally agree this wood be great improvement.
  • vwvan, on 11/09/2007, -2/+25people with large networks of co-diggers get their stories dugg. others don't.
    the usual corruption ensues.
    • angrytito, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2I wouldn't call it corruption. The system is just flawed for now.
  • shacknasty, on 11/08/2007, -4/+19There is also one other critical flaw in the way the comments work - human nature. Have you ever heard the theory that if something is suggested (eg a place to go) to a group of people, generally everyone will do what the first person to respond says.

    I see this happen all the time with comments - if someone gets dugg down, then there is a flood of other people who will do the same, regardless of the content of the comment. The very same comment could get a flood of diggs in the other direction, if the first person simply made the other choice.

    Im not too sure on a way around this, but possibly something where the positive or negative status of a comment is invisible until you personally digg it, or an algorithm to take human nature into account when ranking comments (yeah right...).
    • BingoPower, on 11/08/2007, -4/+5So true.

      Another thing to curtail the "friends digg friends" scenario is to hide the identity of a source until it hits a threshold, such as +50 diggs (or -50 "buries"), before revealing. At least then stories of true value rise on their value alone, and not on whom posted them.

      Just a thought, not a flame.
    • ricree, on 11/08/2007, -3/+3I actually like this idea. He's right that people tend to play follow the leader a bit in these sorts of situations. As far as I can see, his idea is quick, easy and effective in solving it.
    • xpose, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1That's not easy to prove, but I see what your saying.
    • thailand1972, on 11/08/2007, -1/+2I agree, often a snarky comment is somehow funnier and more witty if it has +7 diggs next to it. If it's on -7 diggs, the impression is the comment is rude and uncalled for / clumsy / just not funny. Once you get passed a threshold on the plus side (say +20 diggs) it becomes kind of meaningless. This IS human nature. We seek consensus of the peer group. If the peer group approve, the comment is actually better than the face value YOU give it. If it's not approved by the peer group, even if we agree with the comment, we might doubt our own judgement and decide not to digg it up. Not only that, but if a comment is on +120 diggs, there's a feeling of futility in digging it down - what's the point?

      I think your idea is excellent - do NOT show how many diggs it has until you vote up or down. This would give a truer reflection of how people judge each comment. You're judging it soley on your own, and not first seeing what the group thought of it.
    • aelias, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1I like where this is going. If you're going to digg, digg. Don't just give the guy with 300 diggs a digg to get on the digg train.
    • arjie, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Well, then what's the point of buried comments at all? Isn't the idea that bad comments become less visible because people will bury them? They should just cap the number of diggs/buries per comment. So you can digg it up but it won't go past +10/-10. At that point it's quite clear that the comment is valuable/useless.
  • MonkeyFarts, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1Decent enough of an idea I suppose, but wouldn't it work better to simply remove the popularity factor altogether? I.e., remove any sort of "friends" features and remove the line telling the person that submitted the story.
  • matc, on 05/07/2008, -3/+12I don't comment a lot (2nd comment ever), but I totally agree with this. Digg has been on a steady decline, due to the increasingly polluted level of content quality. Lets hope they get over themselves and take this suggestion seriously.
  • chubbybubba, on 11/08/2007, -4/+4I know this sounds crazy but Digg in conception is not unlike communism. Very idealistic, but wholly unrealistic. It's a good intentioned idea but fails miserably in real life. Digg has become a tabloid of spectacular headlines. Not real news.

    Ultimately the solution is everyone will get their own personal front page based on their own history of diggs (kind of like stumbleupon).
    • DirtySnachez, on 11/10/2007, -0/+2It's not the system that fails, its corrupt / greedy HUMANS.

      Take us out of the equation and every thing should be just fine.

      Anyway, I'd much rather the Digg "communist" model, rather tha being force-fed mainstream "capitalist" news, that only favours dollars over worthiness.
  • gotamd, on 11/08/2007, -1/+24That's an interesting idea. I remember back in the good old days™ when it was possible to actually use the upcoming stories section to find a decent number of worthwhile stories to digg. I haven't tried it recently, but I stopped doing it a while ago after I found myself flipping through pages and pages of junk. I don't know if this idea will fix the problem or not (I doubt it will because the majority of stories submitted to Digg are still crap and the good ones wouldn't get a lot of exposure in this system anyway). If I was Digg, I would figure out a way to look at a digger's history and friends and intelligently present stories that the user has a high probability of finding interesting.
  • unr1, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1hmm, :)
  • Petzke, on 11/08/2007, -2/+5I completely agree...the two times I submitted content (which was 100% original as I always hear people complain about the lack of original content) I got a single digg on each of them. While yes, I am a complete idiot, I find that there are more than the fair share of them. This means that more than one person should have found my content interesting (if they got to see it, which I doubt they did).
  • mizike, on 11/08/2007, -1/+3I always found it amazing that fark was able to charge people, successfully, on a monthly basis for the "privilege" of looking at the thousands of ***** stories which are submitted every day.....

    it's even more hilarious in that there are no voting privileges....at least on digg the people that care to look at the upcoming stories get a vote to put it to the front page.
    • RobotBuddha, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2I think they were primarily paying for the status of having the little TotalFark icon next to their posts, and the ability to constantly talk about "slumming" on the main page to the people who didn't. That, or people who just generally felt like it was a site worth supporting with a few pennies every month to cover the server costs. Gave it up for bannination, but I will at least say that it was somewhat worth it for the content once they put a discussion page in place.
  • caferrell, on 11/08/2007, -2/+3Great idea
  • uploadjoe, on 11/08/2007, -1/+6I agree 100% upcoming articles need to be some how displayed in a more accessible manner.
    I am not sure there is any "perfect" way to organize so much data, but this suggestion is definitely a good start.
    • unitedstatians, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1How about an upcoming news ticker at the bottom of the popular home page, in same exact format the Friends Invite announcements appeared on the top of the frontpage months ago. I believe the Digg crew WON'T implement 'idea this story suggests' (whilst a horrendous "fix"). Will decrease the end-user experience in discovering quality news story on the home page. For example, the clogging of the frontpage with upcoming news stories, which should have a strong opposition from most active diggers (who believe newly submitted stories, should earn frontpage status by election only from the entire communities diggs/input).

      A Upcoming news ticker seem to stay with main point of this story minus all the disadvantages. Unless the Digg crew plans on rolling out, better topic managing options, more friendly visual informational visualizations or a long ago alluded too (by Kevin Rose hmself), a "upcoming Bury news story bin".
  • OswaldKenobi, on 11/09/2007, -1/+11The article fails to mention the true failure of digg. Too much opinion. I have seen numerous stories and comments dugg down simply because a mob disagrees with the content, despite being well thought out and articulated. This happens in politics section (something I think digg would do well to remove) where a comment or story is dugg down or up solely through mob mentality, not the quality of the content.
    I have to say that I am less enthusiastic about visiting digg now than when it first started. I guess I keep hoping it will die and be reborn with more intelligent, less opinionated groupies.
    • chaosium, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1"I have to say that I am less enthusiastic about visiting digg now than when it first started. I guess I keep hoping it will die and be reborn with more intelligent, less opinionated groupies."

      The problem is to a small extent the younger demographics, but far more the scale digg operates on.
    • hockey, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2If they charged for access to the site (even if they only charged a buck) I bet 90% of these issues would go away.
  • sysconnected, on 11/08/2007, -3/+3Very good idea. I would like to see DIGG this way. This idea is brilliant.
  • Durrok, on 11/08/2007, -3/+5As usual when a story about digg changes comes up everyone talks about making friends votes weighted or hiding someone's identity. There are two good reasons why this won't do diddly squat:

    Example One:
    Welcome to Random Digg Spammers Forum
    Please digg the following articles I have posted here and post the articles you need dugg!

    Example two:
    You have joined Digg Friends Chat Room
    Spammer1 joins the chat room
    Spammer1: Here is the link I need you guys to digg
    Spammer2-200: Great, here are our current links for the day

    People with a lot of friends do get their stories dugg but there are legitimate groups of friends who digg their stories up because they are dedicated enough to actual take time out of their day to actually help each other get their stories to the top. Changing the system only benefits the spammers and harms the legitimate users. While both are abusing the system at least the former tends to give us varying degrees of decent news.

    Note: I can't speak to any of the non-tech related groups as I filter those stories out.
  • blackrich, on 11/08/2007, -3/+5If it's a fatal flaw, it can't be fixed. How about severely flawed?
    • admdrew, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2Naw, fatal flaw just may mean it'll kill you.

      I'm going to stop going to Digg if a software flaw has the ability to end my life. Fatal exception, anyone? *anyone*?

      Sigh. I'll be here all day, folks
  • Hortinstein, on 11/08/2007, -3/+2that is a really good idea...I have been disturbed by the power some users have for a long time...this sounds like a great idea but not a total fix
  • temugen, on 11/08/2007, -4/+3How did you get this on the front page? Lol.

    BTW - Great idea!
  • aflaks, on 11/08/2007, -4/+2i wont consider this a car until they get rid of a live rear axle. Come on, how do you use 1940's technology on 21st century sports car.
  • ensert13, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1agreed 100%
  • anderaaron, on 11/08/2007, -1/+0Damn, Good Point!
  • RTPMatt, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1Also how about taking into consideration the rating peoples recent comments? I made a page to do this myself using the API, and i see a lot of stories that only have 1 or 2 diggs, but are from people that have a good number of upvotes on comments. The stories seem to be much better than just the upcoming stories...It unfortunately does not use any caching, and has to dig through a ton of crap to get stories (out of 100 upcoming its lucky to find 10,) so it's slow to use. The idea is though that its much easier to get a comment upvotes than a whole stories.
  • NeilMeyn, on 11/08/2007, -8/+0Ok ok ok... come on guys, i go on digg every day, but im not a member, i signed up to comment on this.

    if you look at that photo, the "up coming" story about Leopard had only been on Digg for ONE MINUTE!!!!

    no ***** it had not been dugg yet
    scott, your a total nube
    • meman2, on 11/10/2007, -0/+6Hey retard: it was a mockup, an example showing placement of the idea. As the other 50+ people agreed above, this is a real problem at Digg because there are too many stories in upcoming to ever have a chance of being organically dugg. The only way stories are being promoted is via friends, power users, shout outs, IM, etc, not people hanging out in upcoming, which was the original intent of the site.
  • xman2, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1good idea.....
  • LostinService, on 11/08/2007, -2/+3yes because everyone wants to see the spam that's auto submitted by some ***** sites.
  • sb76117, on 11/08/2007, -3/+7holy ***** kevin rose posted.
    heres a thought, friends' diggs should be "worth" less. in affect, the more non-friends vote, the faster it shows on the front page.
    and another change, how about allowing me to set my upcoming section to sort by most diggs by default? so i dont have to drop-down list and change it manually or maybe im blind and missed that option.
    and please dont go all myspace and sell digg to rupert murdoch.
    • m3t00, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1I wonder how Mr. Rose actually found this story to comment on? Friends, filters...? Would be interesting to know how the creator uses his own site.
  • sb76117, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1tdave00... you stole the words right out of my mouth... digg trends. my previous comment suggested that people's digg friends' votes should not effect the first-page potential of a submission. then i realized that many people dont digg-farm like that.
    digg trends: just like it sounds, people who constently vote up certain users submissions (ie, non-digg friends) wont affect that submission's front paginess.
  • sb76117, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1i love digg. i heard someone mention the jon stewart paying his writers thing on the radio and he cited digg... i almost wanted to call in and tell him to refresh his sources and start an offline flamewar.
  • ToscaDisco, on 11/08/2007, -2/+0... but this story wasn't dugg by your friends!!
  • georgi0u, on 11/08/2007, -2/+3That and the entire concept of friend digging needs to die. Its one thing to spotlight upcoming stories but the somewhat meaningless stories that are given momentum by groups of "digging friends" also need to die. Leave the web 2.0 aspect to the social interaction of commenting and individual story digging; not artificial popularity contests that produce the same effects as privatized media (the popular people representing the moguls of newscorp, viacom, etc). They control the digging so they control the stories
  • plod, on 11/09/2007, -1/+5I think this guy got it right:
    # Posted by memetic 7th November, 2007 at 10:35 pm
    Besides what is suggested in the article, I think all users should remain anonymous. That would end a lot of the crap right away.
  • unruled, on 11/08/2007, -1/+6"In essense, Digg is a simple popularity contest."

    yeah, it sucks :/ I hope they do fix it
    its always the same submitters too nowadays
  • Coolaborations, on 11/08/2007, -7/+1I posted this over at wrevenue.com:

    -----

    Sorry, Scott,

    but I think your solution is LAME.

    Using Digg's general architecture, I would suggest something more along the lines of:

    1. look at percentage of first 10 diggs coming from friends (OK, this would probably be high since they're watching this stuff more than others)

    2. look at the timing of the first 10 diggs

    3. disable any user account if the user has been known to "ask" for diggs (or at least disable their "posting" rights)

    4. study the patterns of the first 100 diggs

    5. after the first 100 diggs, further diggs might actually be detrimental -- too populist, too sensational, too britney spears etc. (so I would set a limit somewhere, and then look at WHO is actually digging it -- how RELIABLE those diggs are, and/or if their just "1 in a million" diggs)

    Just some BASIC ideas -- for something more sophisticated, you'll have to pay me money for my advice! ;P

    :) nmw
  • sylbud, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1bardzo fajna strona
  • floatingpoints, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1Here's an idea: if I block a user because they constantly submit ***** stories, their stories should not show up on the front page, or any place for that matter, when I log in.
  • internethero, on 11/09/2007, -3/+1Dugg for totally random use of the word organic.
  • joeanon, on 11/08/2007, -1/+2Digg like any user driven site is only as good as it's growing population. As the user community gets watered down with people more interested in being Digg superusers or who are just full of BS the quality of the articles must decline.

    The only way for a service like digg to not corrupt itself behind the point of usefulness is for them to start providing a higher level of moderation.

    Face it, most of the articles on digg suck.A lot of them are just idiots posting crap drying to get diggs.
    If people in general were actually intelligent enough to run their own news or say government the world woulc be a MUCH different place. However, we have journalists and representatives to help create a buffer between an intelligent thought and the publics ignorant impatience.

    I think the content is bound to lose quality until the digg population stabalizes. Most people are not here to help create quality content. They are just here to read a few sensationalist articles and feel like they get to have their say. The idea of digg powerusers and such only makes the system worse. Everyone should just be a normal user, no special ratings. Rating systems ALWAYS cause people to try to cheat and scam their way to the top. With no rating system people have only their content.

    Wikipedia's model is vastly better since it allows the same user driven feeling, but with MUCH higher quality content. If wikipedia just had up-to-date events and an easy way to rank articles it would kick diggs ass all day long.

    As far as the comment thing goes. I really don't think most people read other people's comments. They may post their own opinion, and that's somewhat useful, but it's not really all that interactive. It's just a bunch of people blurting out their uninformed opinions over and over and over. The few intelligent peoples posts are lost in the masses of copy and paste mentalities and personal attacks, conspiracy theories and the guy who is always right.

    Digg has no special model as far as I see. It's just a fancy web forum with a poll at the top of each thread.
    Controlling content quality will become digg's main challenge or facing the fact that digg will just become a propaganda launching pad for politicians, corporations and just plain ol crazy people.

    How often do you read a Digg article and have to Call ***** on it ? It's only getting more often. The average person is simply not smart enough to pick my news for me. Perhaps the average journalist isn't either, but that still means the quality of news sucks.

    Take a place like slashdot and you get your articles a bit more filtered by reason instead of trendy voting patterns, but you don't get sensationalist BS articles all the time designed to get lots of diggs.
    I think as long as your rating news and each other the site is doomed because it the is no way to avoid becoming a popularity content.

    This would be a great model for a gossip site, which is more or less what digg is/will become. Sorry folks, but just take the time to look around. Quality has declined and popularity is on the rise. Comments are more or less useless as very VERY few people read them beyond the first couple comments. You have as much likelyhood at getting a photoshopped picture of your ass as a top article as important news. Or, well your ass probably has a much better chance actually.

    So... if you want news you can trust.. digg is not the place. It's a good place to find breaking BS mixed with fact, but id you want any level of honesty you need to use a non-American media source, like the BBC or other foreign news which are not in a market of complete media monopoly. Or you can constantly bury articles hoping that your making a difference, but chances are more people are voting FOR photoshopped pictures of my ass than against them. But, at least with digg when you bury the thread they hide it from you to make you feel as though you've accomplished something.

    It's a fun model, but there is basically no quality control. thesuperficial.com should steal diggs model.
    If you want good ideas for a user driven site just look at how popular web forum software works. It's really just about the same exact thing, karma and comments, top threads. They however have more intercommunity features like mail and taglines and BS like that.

    There is no reason this place couldn't be a full fledged social networking site. I think the only idea that matter if that digg takes their currently population and expands with it in a way that keeps the site growing. As far as actually accomplishing anything. well cmon digg is just a web site run by the same people of the world that sit around and do nothing about the worlds problems but complaining. It's only fitting they are empowered to complain publically and internationally.

    Digg's greatest service so far is probably helping draw attention to police brutality. Perhaps digg could get more embedded journalism to add some more substance to the site and lass photoshopped picture BS or just sensationalist articles looking for votes.

    VOTE RON PAUL and all that bs, Um.. no thanks and surely digg is not my source for honest politican news. If you don't want to do the research yourself, you don't want to know the truth. I see digg as a place that is easily abused by lobbyiest and other propaganda business. It's even faster movving and less regulated than wikipedia and you can see they have abuse problems degrading the quality of their content. Without moderation the site would be useless once it gained enough populrity to be entirely corrupted. I can't see how the current digg model will really avoid that. Most people are idiots who like funny pictures not educated people looking for technology news. Most American's don't even try to go to college and many of them don't even know who we fought in WW2.

    Anyone seen Idiocracy ?
    • floatingpoints, on 11/09/2007, -1/+3tl;dr
    • Bilabrin, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2Well, unfortunately, nothing's perfect. I think what upsets you is the fact that Digg is still in fact very good but not as good as you'd like.

      I agree with the suggestions in the article but maybe with the added element of preference tracking to customize the stories that pop up to your preferences. Amazon is pretty obnoxious about this. They analyze your clicks and then select ads and other products you might prefer based on what you've looked up so far. Heck, maybe even cookie tracking to determine your preference like ads do now.

      My point being, say you find a Ron Paul article which you believe to be pure fluff and promotion and bury it. After 3-5 such buries Ron Paul stories would not appear for you because Digg knows you don't like them. A tailored experience.
  • OrlyonokEaglet, on 11/08/2007, -1/+1There's another idea - different homepage stories for everyone. A bigger pool of homepage promoted stories a subset of which is shown on the homepage each time you visit.
    This also solves the digg effect problem to some extent (people don't see the same story at exaclty the same time, just when they draw it from the pool of stories).
  • radio1mike, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2I think it is a novel idea, especially for new Digg users.
  • Dujoducom, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2This is an awesome idea, I love the "make sure a story has been seen x amount of times" idea. It gives every story an equal chance of being seen.
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