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325 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -25/+182I say ban them!
- plnegative1, on 10/12/2007, -10/+155I have submitted 17 stories and none of them have been promoted/reached front page. I find that most stories that make it to the top are by users who have tons of friends/profile views which makes it impossible for people like me (with 5 friends and under 1,000 page views) to submit a story that reaches the frontpage.
- headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -12/+101It's not just about friends digging each others stories. It's about people auto-digging each others stories. These guys likely don't even read the stories they're digging, they just digg them because of who submitted it.
In the end I strongly believe they know they're gaming the system. - Whitey04, on 10/12/2007, -13/+97One problem with digg:
"Digg should only get better and Kevin already knows it if this is a big problem. "
Blind faith. - lordthor, on 10/12/2007, -8/+86It is not "being rigged". It is being manipulated. It is being abused.
It is important to note that the digg administration has nothing to do with any of this, and these are just a few flaccid ***** who want some attention. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -24/+74i say we burn them! then ban them!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+55@diggywiggit
Are you speaking of banning the users altogether? Or just banning them from the practice of digging each other? Cause I'd support the second option, but not the first. They top diggers are spending hundreds of hours submitting stories. That's not a problem. The problem is the lame submissions (which happen to everyone, top diggers and all) that make the front page just because they're from p9s50W5k4GUD2c6 or whomever.
I propose that the top diggers can't digg any of the other top fifty diggers. Or, limit them to one or two diggs of the top 50 per day. Granted, the community will have to pick up some slack digging for stories, but it would clean a lot of junk from the front page. - MrData, on 10/12/2007, -11/+54I keep a list of ppl whose stories I auto-bury as "spam". It matches the list of ppl in this 'circle-jerk'.
- zombo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35The submit times of some users is very strange, anybody spot a pattern?
- pintomp3, on 10/12/2007, -14/+40auto-burying is no better than auto-digging.
- headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+31"Isn't that "auto-digging" theory just speculation on your part?"
Yes, but it's not an unfounded theory. If you watch their activity, you'll see just how quickly they're submitting stories, and just how quickly the stories are being dugg by members of the group. Unless these guys are super speed readers, they aren't actually reading the stories. - bearloverhr, on 10/12/2007, -9/+33I say lets start burying the *****. If you see any posters that are part of the so called "circle jerk" just bury their story.
- chicagospur, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26It's pretty simple to fix this flaw. Introduce anonymous posting, with poster details only available to the moderators to prevent spam.
Also add a hit count meter next to the Digg counter to show exactly how many people have actually clicked on the link to the original story and not just Dugg it blindly. - tlmac59, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26Given that I have dugg many of the stories submitted by this group that is supposedly “gaming” Digg (and vice versa), I hesitate to comment because my comments are likely to get me flamed. Nevertheless, I do have a few points.
1. While it is true that the group of 8 that you identify in your blog collectively 1712 stories on the front page (2 more since you ran your numbers), they have also submitted 4780 stories. Quite obviously, part of the reason that this group has so many stories on the front page is that they have submitted so many more. Perhaps more importantly, this group has collectively dugg 97,955 stories. For the sake of argument, if they each dugg every story they submitted, they would have still dugg 59,715 additional stories. In other words, the group you have selected is a very active group of Digg users that is doing more than group digging each other’s stories.
2. It has become popular to claim that Digg is rigged because there are top users who seem to get a lot of stories on the frontpage. However, once there, the stories seem continue to get digs. This suggests that the stories are “worthy.” Thus, the real complaint does not target the content of the stories, but the lack of diversity of authors. In my view, the dominant cause for this problem is the lack of diverse authors, not some sort of “conspiracy of the elite.”
3. I have been a member of Digg for about 4 months now. None of the first 50 or so stories that I submitted went anywhere. My initial reaction at being 0 for 50, like that of so many others, was that Digg was “fixed.” Now I realize that the majority of the blame was more properly directed at me. As a new user, I knew what I liked, but had little or no idea what others liked. I also did a poor job of writing (or rewriting) headlines and providing the written description of the story. As I got better at selecting stories and writing them up, three things began to happen – 1) I submitted fewer and fewer “lame” stories; 2) more people began digging my stories; and 3) people began to “notice” posts. The third development essentially means that I started getting “friends.” Some of my earliest “friends” were some of the same users that are mentioned in your article, presumably because they spend so much time on Digg and have the opportunity to read lots of posts. In turn, because they were digging my stories, I started looking at theirs, and found that there were common interests. Thus, there are mutual diggs that, in my case at least, are based upon my interest in their posts (and, presumably, vice versa). Do I digg a lot of my “friends” stories – Yes. Do I digg them all – No.
My conclusions: Every time I think about this problem, I try to figure out what the requested “fix” would be. It seems to me that punishing people for have stories dugg by their “friends” runs contrary to the underlying social nature of Digg. Nevertheless, as you may or may not know, about a month ago, Digg changed its algorithms in a way that appeared to make it more difficult for users with lots of friends to get stories to the front page. I have seen stories with diggs in the 30’s make it to the front page from the same category as one of my stories with diggs in the 40’s. If this sort of weighting increasingly becomes the solution, I think you will see worse stories getting promoted instead of better. Many of the stories that get less than 10 diggs don’t deserve any more than they get. So, if you were to say that less popular users should be held to a lower standard than popular users, you certainly would get more stories on the front page – but these stories will undoubtedly include more lame stories, duplicates and spam.
Finally, to those who say "ban them," are you ready to possibly lose that content? - lazydrumhead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24or we could just bury the stories we dont like and promote the ones we do like.
- Hoovooloo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26@ tokyomonster:
Digg is not a pure democracy. There are formulas working behind the scenes that vary the power afforded each digger, to try to prevent spamming. This can cause a positive feedback loop, making it almost impossible for non-top diggers to get stories on the front page. - taylorhayward, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23I looked into it. The most interesting pattern is that they often submit blocks of stories in under 15 minutes. I haven't checked the times of day for all their stories (there are thousands), but that would be great if someone did.
- LeFrenzy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23this digg story is way overdue.
- tzmguitarist, on 10/12/2007, -10/+30Misguided trust in Digg's Kevin is better than misguided trust in MySpace's Tom.
- LoungeActx, on 10/12/2007, -4/+24How do we know that these guys aren't actually the same person with multiple accounts?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+26Lame ideas? This site is Alexa ranked in the top 20, which is remarkable considering Digg is at the forefront of a new web paradigm. You don't think Federated Media is paying Digg more than enough for those adds? They can boast they have a very specific, vocal tech community and therefore their ads have more penetration than most.
Digg was a wonderful idea, and I sure it has been a plentiful investment for their bankers, et al. - Matic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19there are digg groups that people join that basicallyhelp each other get stories to the top. I guarantee that they are not reading most of the stories. A group of 50 diggers meeting up on IRC and posting their submissions in that chat will get the job done. They don't even have to be friends
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19It's top-user syndrome. It's diggs biggest problem, and really, really needs fixing. Good stories are being completely overlooked in favour of more ridiculous or unworthy stories, simply because those unworthy stories are dugg by a top user who people naturally add top users as friends.
I think there's 2 possible solutions, one minor and one major. The minor one would be to do away with the top user ranking page. Stop ranking users. If the digg algorithm gives more vote to higher users, stop it - every user should have an equal vote.
The more major fix would be to do away with the friends system completely. It's un-web2.0 and I would miss it, but at the same time it's what muddies the quality of frontpage stories. If stories were dugg on their merits rather than who submitted them there wouldn't be a problem, but that's not the case.
It actually improved a little after some of the top users went to Netscape, but it's creeping back with the 'new' top users. - mcflynnthm, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23I guess I'm just not as offended by this as everyone else seems to be. If they were spamming with personal journals or something, or adverts, then I'd feel it more of a problem. But the stories are generally quality or at least interesting (as far as I've noticed anyway), and are things that I wouldn't always come across in my normal travels on the web, which for me is the point of Digg. So I guess I think of this as making mountains out of molehills. And yes, I'm prepared to get buried. Oh noes.
- falstaff, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20Under a democracy, everybody has an equal vote.
With the prestige system, some people's vote counts at Digg more than others.
Digg: User-generated, yes. Democracy, no. - spect3r, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20I say just get rid of the friends system all together. It's useless, and causes problems like this.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17just 1 more reason why:
del.icio.us > digg - armbar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13MrData, I recommend just marking according to how you view the story. Gaming the system against them isn't any more beneficial than them gaming the system in the first place. If you like it, digg it; if you don't, either don't digg it or mark accordingly.
I don't necessarily like that users like BloodJunkie get to the front page all the time with unnecessarily partisan political stories (for example), so I usually mark his stuff as inaccurate or spam because it usually is. However, he sometimes does have decent stories, and I digg those. It's really not about the submitter, it's about the content. - armbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12gcnaddict, if the stories are actually decent, marking them as spam could eventually lead to a site being blocked, not the users. So, a good site could theoretically get prohibited by just auto-burying as spam.
- hemphill81, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14I have been posting responses, but it doesn't matter they just get buried.
http://hemphill81.blogspot.com/2006/09/response-digg-rigged-closer-look-at.html - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I don't know whats more interesting. This story, or the fact that Aidenag, elebrio, gwjc, hemphill81, p9s50W5k4GUD2c6, TechFan, Turdmoe or webtech haven't posted any response. Might have to wait until the morning since they seem to be running in a different time zone then us.
- sxtxixtxcxh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11says who?
- dmoney06, on 10/12/2007, -7/+18This is like mutiny, I love it!
- hodyoaten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10We should be digging or burying stories on their own merits, not based on who posted them. Let's get rid of the popularity contests.
- Cl1mh4224rd, on 10/12/2007, -29/+39I've heard it said that "Digg = democracy". Well, guess what, folks? This is democracy in action...
- MrData, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16I like to think of it as my own democratic response to a non-democratic action being taken by a minority.
- taylorhayward, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Inaccurate? It what way is this article inaccurate? It's pure, unadulterated data.
- qwertydvorak, on 10/12/2007, -16/+26we could put them on, "double secret probation"
- ttntyler, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14"This site is Alexa ranked in the top 20, which is remarkable considering Digg is at the forefront of a new web paradigm."
In the words of Jason Calacanis..
"Page views mean nothing, revenue means something, and earnings mean everything" - socokoolaid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Some of you people seem cynical. They are making money off this!!! Have you not noticed the growing number of crappy articles on sites full of Ads? I notice the massive number of Digg links that have Double Click spyware, because of my firewall logs. Boosting web page's Ad profit by spamming them on message boards is and old technique. Similarly they post on digg, and use a few accounts to boost the rating. Viola! instant traffic, instant money$ I've also noticed a serious increase in posts of repeat articles. The system is vulnerable to easy manipulation.
- Whitey04, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13@tokyomonster
It isn't that they submit good stories. Usually they submit dupes of articles already posted. But on digg there is no reward for being first, only popular.
As time has progressed the quality of articles has dwindled. Last winter I'd read almost every article on the front page. Now, I can hardly find one out of twenty in the upcomming and don't even bother with the front page.
The system is faulty. It is hidden and secret which by definition is not democracy. I want an open system. I want open voting (for both diggs, and undiggs / bury's). And I never want an article removed from the search database even if spam or lame. - Pattyo13, on 05/14/2009, -3/+12it's the pattern of no life
- ceoandpresident, on 10/12/2007, -6/+151) Submit Digg stories
2) ???
3) Profit!!! - kafka47, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Nice one... can we call it 'circle-jerkk' ? :-)
- aeproberts, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12It was on the front page and has now been removed.
hmmmmm.... - Robotsu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Doesn't that pretty much defeat the entire point of Digg?
It's funny, but groups like that---who I would imagine are pretty, "***** yeah, Digg! New Media! user participation!---are pretty much operating in the exact way as "Old Media Execs" and other Media Kabals who control what content we see. - dejager, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9The solution might be simple. Don't show who submitted a story till it reaches front page status and or a few days have passed. I doubt the average digg user reads stories based on who submitted them.
- tlmac59, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Digg already monitors IP addresses and shuts down this kind of Digg fraud.
- robbh66, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13http://www.digg.com/topusers shows the problem clearly as day.
These guys sit around and spam stories every day all day long and when they're not submitting stories they're spamming their diggs on all of their friends to make sure they get to the front page. This is exemplified by the fact that losers like gwjc have dugg over twenty THOUSAND stories. If you take into account that his account has only been around for about 400 days or so, that's over FIFTY stories dugg- each and every day. And we all thought these "Top Users" all read the crap they dugg. Yeah, right...
I thought digg was about raising the best stories above the rest. These guys all will argue that the reason they're more successful is that they're better at finding more interesting stories and giving them better titles.
*****.
They're successful because they sit around and digg each and every story their friends submit, while their friends do the same for them. It doesn't matter if it's the biggest headline of the year, or what the hell Oprah wore on her show yesterday: If you're on the friend's list, you'll be dugg.
It's not about the best stories anymore, its about who your friends are. - Harpalus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8You forget that Digg has power in the media. It's one of the internet's top sites, and news on Digg can influence the stock market, people's opinions..in short, Digg, meaning the people who control it, have a lot of media power now, and the point is that's only going to get worse. If it were just a random forum, I would completely agree. But it's not, it's a very large website with a lot of sway.
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