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344 Comments
- detonate, on 10/12/2007, -13/+159That's all fine and good but why did the original story get buried and disappear from the digg queue with over 170 diggs in less than 2 hours?
- Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -20/+113That doesn't make the process acceptable. If thirty or so people auto-digg each others' stories, it effectively means that stories THEY find interesting automatically get a leg up on everyone else's, and worse yet clog the front page when stories OTHER people find interesting could be there instead.
God forbid we have a dedicated group of libertarians, racists, or fundamentalists taking advantage of the system... signs point to that already being a problem. - detonate, on 10/12/2007, -16/+83Yeah, but the article is about how his story was buried, so your reply is off-topic. I definitely am interested in digg for the cool links, but it bothers me if some kind of censorship is taking place.
- FyreGoddess, on 10/12/2007, -17/+76Something to consider is that there are other ways to bury a story than just for inaccuracy. Spam and Lame are also used often and could be the culprits in this particular case. There are plenty of folks who mark most submitted blogs as spam and often the meta-Digg stories are marked Lame by users who, as mentioned above are looking for news, tech news and cool links.
The idea that people simply aren't interested in Digg-centric stories is very much *on* topic for this discussion because of the numerous ways that stories can be buried, which is not touched upon in the linked article. - ryanlive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+50An interesting experiment would be to withhold the story submitter identification for 24 hours. I suspect that this would prevent people from digging stores just because it was submitted by their friend and force stores to be judged on their own merits. All in favor say aye!
- headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -14/+59"Straight up, you come to Digg and what you see on the front page is what OTHER PEOPLE THINK IS COOL."
Yeah, it's what these 30+ people think is cool. And that's not cool. - canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+43yeah, not cool at all. gopher makes some quality submissions. sure, some garbage too, but when you submit as much as he does, they can't all be winners. the problem is not the submission, it's the blind digging of the submission by "friends"
- fiver22, on 10/12/2007, -9/+50kill the 'friends' feature.
- canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -3/+40ok, but the problem is not that ""good" news stories every day on the front page" because they don't (and yes, everyone's opinion of a "good" story is different).
the problem is that a "good" story submitted by a user that isn't popular rarely sees the light of day, and if gopher (just an example, i'm not trying to pick on anyone in particular) posts a pic of himself taking a dump it is somehow front page material because of the cabal at the top
this will eventually hurt digg's bottom line because you can only operate like this for so long before casual users refuse to use the site because they don't care about another "AMAZING pic". - canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -5/+42karma scores got to go too
- jesusphreak, on 10/12/2007, -6/+38Check out the most popular stories in the 'upcoming' page. The whole way through it is virtually only this same set of guys:
http://www.digg.com/view/all/upcoming/most/page1 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -30/+61The reason why I've packed my luggage and heading off to Slashdot :P
- Whitey04, on 10/12/2007, -6/+33PUBLISH THE DAMN ALGORITHM.
You can't be user driven unless the algorithm is known. We can all make guesses and suppositions about how it works but there is no difference between a secret council (or conspiracy) and a secret algorithm.
How am I to know that my diggs, submissions, and burys have any effect on digg whatsoever? - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -10/+36"It's a case of majority rule, so if you're in the minority, you take action and try to make yourself in less of a minority"
No, actually, jesusphreak's *point* is that this is a *minority* 'ruling' in a system that's *supposedly* ruled by the majority. - Roguecop, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28Funny, I just e-mailed them about this very thing not two days ago...
It goes much deeper than that, I believe these friends groups are even burying quality posts and turning around and stealing the submission. Take for instance...
http://www.digg.com/gaming_news/Bill_Gates_Inside_Doom_
buried
reposted here:
http://www.digg.com/videos_people/Bill_Gates_Inside_DOOM_Pimping_Windows_95
1760 diggs....
Take a look at Foenetik's friends list...
The same thing is happening right now with this post:
http://www.digg.com/videos_people/Man_takes_a_photo_of_himself_everyday_for_6_years
46 posts and never seen the front page...never will. Because it was buried, at around 30 diggs while headed quickly for the front page...rest asured it will show up again by one of these 'top' users and generate a 1000 diggs...
This has happened three times with my submissions., it probably has happened hundreds of times over all. But if you complain on the top user/thief's comment about how the link is a dup you immediately get dugg down by the self same friends group.
There is a bigger issue at hand when good submissions are being suppressed and stolen several weeks later. There is a simple solution: a 'Who Buried This' tab, this will identify the perpetrators and expose them to ridicule - JimDigg, on 10/12/2007, -7/+32I have no doubt that the top diggers are the top diggers for a reason. They are the people setting around looking for news to submit and digging news that they see in the queue. That's fine with me. But to digg someones story because they're your "friend" and not on the quality of the story they submit is just wrong.
I believe that this exact problem is what causes so much of the front page news on digg to be one sided both political and content related. You see so much Apple/Unix/Hate MS articles on the front page because those in the "click" feel this way.
Just my opinion.
- Jim - jesusphreak, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27> jesusfreak is in the top 300 out of tens of thousands
You are correct. I believe out of my 15 frontpage stories, 13 are from over a year ago. I didn't take advantage of the system.
> A:) First i wonder if he thinks the slashdot model is better
It isn't better ideally, but currently it might just be working better.
> C:) offers no solutions
You are right - I want this brought to light so hopefully someone can fix it or offer a solution. - headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -8/+31Digg's TOS also says no gaming the system. If you guys are digging each other's stories on the spot without reading the stories, just because of who submitted it, then you're wrong. After all this time, I'm sure you're all aware of each other, and you know exactly what you're doing.
You've turned Digg, a community of half a million people, into a community of 30. What YOU guys find interesting is what gets posted on the front page. - fishbert, on 10/12/2007, -6/+28Yes, Digg is flawed!
The flaw is that it will only ever be as good as its users.
And, being human, Digg's users are prone to:
Laziness -- "Ooo, shiney headline! But I don't like to read. I'll digg it anyway."
Nepotism -- "My friend, Sam, dugg the story, so I'll digg it as well."
Mob mentaility -- "A story with 84334 diggs... I'll digg it so I can be cool too."
Tabloid fever -- "Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht's lovechild is Batboy?! Digg!!"
Buzzword-itis -- "OS11: Web2.0 Ubuntu written with AJAX on Rails?! Digg!!"
Egocentricity -- "73 diggs/minute and my story isn't on the FP?!?! Digg must broken!!!" - nixfu, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24
------------------SOLUTION----------------
Why is there a "who dugg this" tab, but not a "who buried this" tab??? hmm? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+27Non-amazing fact: Kevin & Co have shown that if they really want an article front paged, they'll make it happen. Digg isnt democratic. It is semi-democratic, and it also suffers from ballot stuffing.
- Gregd, on 10/12/2007, -26/+44Why does everyone keep insisting that there is a conspiracy afoot? The digg algorithm is based on numerous factors which explains how one story with 25 diggs can make the front page and another story with 40 won't be on the front page. One is the velocity at which people digg the story. Another is how many bury your story. So basing your theory on number of diggs alone doesn't work because there is more to it than that.
On another note, why does everyone insist on telling me, or anyone else for that matter, on how I should be using digg. I can use it however the ***** I want to use it as long as I don't violate the TOS. If I want to simply digg a story for reading later, then I can.
I'm sure I'll be modded down for speaking my opinion, but such is digg.. - jesusphreak, on 10/12/2007, -7/+25Big props to the Digg moderators for allowing this to hit the frontpage. Hopefully some of these issues can be worked out.
- zengonzo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21You make a good case. At the very least, the model for front paging ought to be changed to make popularity a less significant impact - enough so that it wouldn't be worth the effort.
- n8r0n, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Am I the only one who does not look at who submits a story? I just read the story and the comments.
- Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -23/+39>> I guess my question, then, is how does a dedicated group
>> of people digging each others' stories or burying specific
>> stories make Digg less user-driven or democratic?
>>
It doesn't, at least not inherently. What we're talking about is something totally different that equates to a pre-emptive strike on the system itself. If a story is submitted and requires 40 or so DIGGs before it hits the front page that is one thing... but when stories are being submitted with a near-automatic 20 or so DIGG boost it skews the field in their favor, giving a severe level of influence over the types of stories that hit the front page. If 30 people are submitting and cross-promoting their own stories, it means that what we read is what THEY THINK IS COOL, not us.
You're missing the forest for the trees. - zengonzo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22 It certainly is a shame. It is a flawed system. It shouldn't be overhauled, but it definitely requires adjustment.
- canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20cutting people off on the highway is not prohibited either. but you don't do it because it's not right. digging 20 stories in 20 seconds because your friends submitted them isn't right either.
nova, i applaud many of your submissions, but to sit here and say you have earned the top spot by only fair and equitable means is complete b.s. i could care less about being on the front page myself, but i do care about fair play and a true democratic system. - crombenevolant, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Ask Kevin if they have any plans of how to keep corporations/special interest groups from taking advantage of digg?
While the case in point seems to be a small group of friends, I could see a Dell/Microsoft/Sony/etc hiring a hundred guys and tasking them with promoting a product through digg and other viral marketing means. If a dozen or so guys can control what appears on the home page, what would happen if big business really took advantage of this? A 100 guys at $7 an hour is nothing in a corporate advertising budget and the amount of traffic they could create is staggering.....
Can you imagine if the RIAA decided to peddle their poison here? With a dozen guys digging they could ensure that no anti-RIAA articles ever made it on, and lots of pro RIAA ones did. To the un-enlightened digger it would appear that public opinion was changing and that lots of people thought that DRM was good. It could be a scary thing. - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19"It seems to me that many of the complaints that people make in these sorts of stories are that they are in the minority on an issue or that there is a majority working to change the face of Digg..."
I would say that the 30 controlling digg are the minority, not the rest of us getting boned because nothing we submit makes it to the front page. We're always blasting companies like Google for censoring and Microsoft for controlling a market. Yet, here is our own, being complacent about a group of super-users, the top tier deciding what the lowly bottom are allowed to see.
If you are for digg being controlled by these super-modders, then you are against exactly what digg and its users have always expressively been about, and you probably have your own hand in the pool. You are the minority. - tdogg241, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14@ryanlive: I think it'd be even better to do away with submitter identification altogether. Then people would be submitting stories because they believe in the idea of digg, not because they think it's some kind of popularity contest where the kid with the most stories on the front page is the coolest.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Jesusphreak i just want to thank you for replying with such a good demeaner, even concidering i was basically dising your article.
I often think the playground attitude of the comment system can be much worse of a problem.
AS it is nice to have someone with a completely different view respond without just resorting to name calling.
a buried catagory might be nice, so you can see the buried stories with the most diggs.
And i would like to see an easy way to check the stats that you researched..I dont mean check your math, i mean digg should impliment something so when you click on someones profile you can see how often their friends digg their stories, so you can get a better idea when people vote in mindless groups. - zengonzo, on 10/12/2007, -8/+21Unless it's changed recently .. I was under the impression that users with greater approval ratings had greater digg influence.
Unless that is not the case, this means that cadres will have a snowballing effect. As they improve one another's approval ratings, each of their digg ratings go up .. and thus they receive more diggs, more approval, etc .. So that their combined influence becomes not an addition but a multiplication.
If the response becomes simply forming another cadre to take on the first cadre .. Well, that still doesn't solve the issue, and works for crap in most systems you find it.
With the exception of kung fu and western epics. - zengonzo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15I've never submitted a story, moonshn. I probably never will.
So I'm not too concerned about whether or not I could get a story to the front page.
It's not about popularity or equality or punishment .. it's all about quality.
As it stands, the range is being funelled into a rather narrow pipe which, as the system is currently designed, can only become narrower. - nanobot001, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16I think there are a lot of people who just don't get the point jesusphreak is trying to make.
#1) voting 'en-bloc' isn't the problem -- yes it happens in democratic environments, but the difference here is that a particular block has a lot of power. Its like each of their votes is worth like 50-100x what everyone else's is. A story submitted by someone with a lot of "reputation" or "karma" gets instantly boosted. A story by a no one, doesn't.
Put it to you this way: a group of 50 diggers who have no reputation can digg all they want -- the algorithm is not likely to promote them to the front page no matter how many diggs they get.
A group of 50 diggers who are the TOP 50 might only need 20 diggs to do it. From that point EVERYONE on digg hits it -- and voila, super mega traffic
#2) Who cares whether this is happening? Why is this important? Why does it matter which stories hit the front page? _traffic_ that's why.
Traffic is the lifeblood of e-commerce, and when something hits the front page it gets a huge surge of it. Traffic might jump 100 - 1000x that day. Although none of the top50 diggers are doing it maliciously (probably) when such a prize is dangling there are tons of stakeholders thinking of ways to get it.
#3) Why care at all if this happens on Digg?
Because Kevin Rose made the cover of businessweek -- Digg is big news. And furthermore, Digg gives its users the impression that all is good and cool -- that its users control the news.
Well, its not the case. Just ask ForeverGeek. Or Aliwood.
http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2006/08/18/why-i-think-the-whole-digg-aliwood-thing-is-a-big-deal/
http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2006/08/25/a-brief-history-of-digg-controversy/
Peace! - FyreGoddess, on 10/12/2007, -39/+50I guess my question, then, is how does a dedicated group of people digging each others' stories or burying specific stories make Digg less user-driven or democratic? It's a case of majority rule, so if you're in the minority, you take action and try to make yourself in less of a minority. It doesn't lessen it being user-driven unless a single person is running multiple accounts.
It seems to me that many of the complaints that people make in these sorts of stories are that they are in the minority on an issue or that there is a majority working to change the face of Digg... but isn't that the point? I mean, here we all are, imposing upon each other our personal preferences in both the forms of submissions, diggs and buries. Each one of us carries the same weight, but at the same time, there's nothing stopping anyone from forming their own mob to increase or decrease popularity.
It also seems that the primary issue surrounding this would be less which unique stories make the frontpage and more whose submissions trump others when duplicates are submitted. It honestly appears to me that people are seeing favoritism where little to none exists and labelling this sort of behavior "taking advantage of the system" really seems extreme, since it's something that anyone could do if they put enough effort into it. - GreenLantern33, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Well it looks like this story made it to the front page. Do you think it will stay there?
This idea is completely right. I wouldn't call digg corrupt or rigged, but I would say that something is wrong. There are many reasons it's wrong, but the biggest is the impact on newer users.
Take me for example. I have submitted almost 80 storiest to digg (http://digg.com/users/GreenLantern33/submitted), 2 of them have been promoted to the front page. It almost made me mad when I would see the same story show up on the front page that was submitted by another user 2, 3, or even 4 days later. So what can a little peon like me do? Nothing. I ended up giving up on digg. I felt like I wasn't part of the club. I started visiting less and less. Now I only drop by occasionally to check on the videos section. - espion4ge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12So in a sense, this is like high school again? All the digg users need to form social circles of your own in order to gather enough support for your articles to hit the front page? The biggest group of friends gets to own digg and what it publishes? Why does a news submission site have to involve a popularity contest - why can't it just be about the content?
Get rid of friends lists and make submissions anonymous. You can still have all the data to recognize top contributors, but don't allow bias into digging stories. - jesusphreak, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16I agree. I don't *think* these guys are intentionally subverting the system or anything, they are just taking full advantage of it. Unfortunately that just means the system is easy to game and needs to be changed.
But I could be wrong - there have definitely been people in the past who have abused the system (whatever happened to albertpacino?). - RustIndy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Having read about half of the comments to this point, I can see two immediate adjustments to the Digg system that might improve the percieved or potential flaws.
First, as suggested by another user, hide submitter identities for a period of time. 12 hours might be a little long, but 8 or 6 should work. This would prevent most of the "he's my buddy, so I'll digg him" diggs and most of the "he's a dick, so I'll flag him" undiggs.
Second, many people like to digg things simply to bookmark them for later viewing from their profiles. Perhaps adding an actual diggmark page (or something) to profiles and a second digg button (named differently, natch) to stories would prevent most of these. If specific bookmarking functionality is available to users, they will be far more likely to use it for bookmarking.
Just a couple of thoughts, take or leave them, suggest improvements, evs :) - Evroccck, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16we are marketingshift.com are supposed to have an interview with Kevin Rose today for this Very topic that we posted about a few weeks ago
http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/8/downfall-digg-forthcoming-here-why.cfm
does anyone have any questions they want me to ask them? - ShagNASTY, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Since Digg went to v3 I've noticed the quality of stories on the front page has declined. Prior to v3 the stories that made the front page deserved to make the front page. At that point in time I honestly believed that Digg could offer an alternative to Slashdot. Now there's no chance of Digg being anywhere as interesting as /.
Sometimes I think Digg has attracted a crowd of users who are more interested in digging as many stories as they can. I'll put the blame on teenagers for now. - headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I usually don't either. But after a few months of quick glances, I started to see a pattern, and started paying attention.
- Whitey04, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I've tried. You can only get to the origional article "http://digg.com/software/Digg_the_rigged_A_closer_look_at_Digg_s_democratic_model" by a direct link.
There should NEVER be a method where a digg article is removed. If it is reported it should be dugg down and marked. Not erased and hidden. - brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12It's on the front page now.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10The article is definitely unleashing the truth. I have noticed this increasingly for the past few weeks.
I don't consider it a conspiracy or anything, this is just how the top diggers have been acting. A lot of crappy stories make it to the front page because they are submitted by a popular user. We would get many more higher quality and original submissions on the front page if the popular users didn't get to it so easily. - Gregd, on 10/12/2007, -13/+22To add:
Being in the top 30 myself, I can unquivocally tell you that I'm NOT in cahoots with any other diggers to automatically digg their stories. I digg stories based on their interest to me. I may also digg a story for reading it later and to use digg as a type of bookmarking tool for me.
I don't believe that because I'm in the top 30, that my burying or digging a story holds any more weight than anyone elses. If it does, then I'm sorry for that, but that's on digg and not me. I have many stories that get diggs near 40 that never make the front page. Just look through my submissions and you'll see them.
All this being said, don't give up if you get frustrated. Digg is what you make it.... - attila, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Dollars make sense right? When I joined digg it was new, the system worked, they didn't have venture, investor funding (that we know about) and again, the system worked. It seems as though, some sacrifices were made to policy and enforcement thereof; both societal (amongst Digg.com's community) and administratively for how things were going to be handled. The popularity of a cadre of top-users assists in Digg's bottom line. It ensures that there will be "good" news stories every day on the front page. It's what most people come to Digg for in the first place. What we all have sacrificed is this, what made Digg unique: The process of top stories becoming top stories...
Digg is just another website that has succumb to the "Dollars makes sense" motto. - jo42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9The #1 problem with Digg is that if you look at the Upcoming Stories tab, there are, right now, over 3900 of them in there from the last 24 hours. How in hell does anyone have any time to constantly look at, read and then digg thru that many submissions? We don't. So you end up with a small group of people that run the show.
- zengonzo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Gregd, it would appear we are doing the same here .. Voicing our opinion on how we would like to see digg.
And while some might throw about the term 'conspiracy', I think the real issue at hand is more a flaw or bug in the system.
We're not talking about paranoia and jealousy and power-jockeying, we're talking about smoothing out a wrinkle in an otherwise lovely fabric. -
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