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31 Comments
- wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10What percentage of all stories submitted are by those same users? You will probably find that we submit 67% of the stories that are appreciated and enjoyed by the users. You need to study all of the lame stories that are submitted and take those out of the equation. The statistic you have given is based on one sample the day after digg went down for half of the work day, if you really want to impress people do a study over a period of time and add more stats like the one I have offered. The only thing I see here is an attempt to bring traffic for a second straight day to your personal blog.
Reported as Innacurate - msaleem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Lets try to make some sense of this buddy. How does one get to become a top user? Well, by submitting stories that are enjoyed by the digg community. If the diggers enjoy a story, it gets promoted to the front, and the submitter gets credit for it. If a user gets to the front enough times, he goes to the top. Out of all the people that are on digg, who are the top 0.03%? Yes, you guessed it my friend, these are the people that post the best stories, which are liked most by digg, and are promoted to the front. That is exactly why they are on the top. I don't understand what you are trying to say. Either I'm really really dumb, or you are using circular logic to prove nothing at all.
If I post good stories, they go to the home page, and if I do it enough, I become a top user, and in effect the stories that are on the front are posted by me, a top user, who got there by posting good stories.
Where is the crime for which I should be banned from digg, have my computer taken away, and not be allowed near any electronic equipment for a period of 10-12 years? - wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9You are right enfact, you clearly understand why this site was started and why it has gained so much in popularity since the days of Albert Pacino having 90% of all the front page stories. You know so well what this site stood for and still does. You have a complete understanding, so much so that the founder of the site dugg your story yesterday as flew to the top of the front page bound for Diggnation superstardoom and then proceeded to support each and every one of your comments. Like I said earlier this is some lame way to get attention to your blog, and pick a fight with people or something, I don't really even know why I am wasting my time with this, but maybe just maybe you might get it through your thick head that you are actually wrong my friend. Listen to the masses they have buried your story twice. Get over yourself please so people can enjoy digg for what it has grown too and what it will further expand to in Digg 3.0.
- capn_caveman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I need to ask you something enfact. What exactly is your problem with top diggers making the front page? There are many people who spend time searching the internet to bring news to digg. There are some users that seem to spend more time doing it than others. And there are some people who are really good at it. Is that some type of crime? Why are you posting submissions on digg that are against people that are contributing heavily to the website? I'm a top submitter, but when all is said and done - I'm just another dude typing on a friggen keyboard like you. Get over it man.
- wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I feel like I did contribute, try offering some real statistical analysis regarding your subject.
- wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6By the way here is a story that I dugg last night I believe that only had like 8 diggs from a person whom has never made the front page until just now. So any chance I get to help someone to the front I will.
http://digg.com/science/Ball_Lightning:_A_Shocking_Scientific_Mystery - wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Good luck with your blog, it has been nice chatting with you, maybe oneday you will get the picture, until then, ~ cya wayjer
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Your stats are misleading. You have failed to take into account the vast number of people who NEVER submit a story. In other words, your 99.97% includes thousands of people that digg but don't submit. The only way to become a top user is to submit stories, so how can people who choose not to submit claim that Digg is undemocratic? You have also failed to exclude the inactive diggers, too.
You also seem to ignore one of the key elements for digg: the queue diggers. A story is made (or not) by the first 30-40 diggers who find it in the queue. I doubt very seriously that you will find that dominated by the top 100 users. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3OK, lets look at some other numbers. 13% of your stories have made it to the front page, but you have only submitted 15. On the all-time list, Top User #5 only has a 9% success rate and #8 only has an 8% success rate. These same two are #2 and # 5. The difference is that they have submitted thousands of stories. Have you considered that it may be a volume thing? Since I am one of those who likes to digg, but not submit, I will never find out through personal experience.
- johndi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As Radientbeing stated Digg works much like other democracies. Are you suggesting that Bill Clinton shouldn't say vote for this guy because he is really swell? I guarantee when the Clintons endorse someone it impacts the vote. If it wasn't meant to be like that on Digg you'd have no way too see what stories interested your friends.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3And here's another number for you, of the 200,000 active users, only 24929 have submitted a story, so this situation is not nearly the crisis you make it to be.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That's absurd. Every site has a subset of power users which make the site run. WIthout them, where would 60% of the content come from?
- wayjer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2freakin idiot......gosh!
- BocaJuniors, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I disagree with the premise of enfact's argument, namely that having a majority of stories submitted by "the elite" is a symptom or cause of a less democratic digg.com. In fact, "democracy" has little to do with where ideas come from, instead concerning itself with how ideas are accepted/enforced/made law/etc. Hence, I think a much more interesting study of digg.com would be a longitudinal look at if "the elite" are always the ones pushing articles up to the front page. If so, how much more their votes "count" than others, if at all.
Anyways, putting aside that point. I think that enfact made a stellar suggestion in his blog entry:
“Take a feed for any level or any tree item on the list and put THAT in your firefox bookmarks bar. One great thing about this, if created right digg could effectively create multiple, smaller nested digg site microcosms that would create the same type of communities that digg is as a whole.”
This is an awesome idea.
As I commented on his blog, it would probably make business sense for digg too. A preemptive strike, if you will, against strong niche competitors that are going to be springing up everywhere in the next 6-12 months. - RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's the same in any country, organization, etc. There is always a small elite that is responsible for producing the majority of the wealth, ideas, etc.
- WackyT, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3It looks like all enfact is going to do here on digg is bitch on his blog.
http://digg.com/technology/Is_Digg_losing_its_Democracy_
No digg for you! - ColdWater, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1reported as lame...traffic sucker, we've seen many like you come and go
- jesusphreak, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Well and then there are people like dirtyfratboy who just copy and paste stories from other sites (like Reddit).
I've noticed numerous times within the past month where a story he submits has the exact same title as a story on Reddit and is submitted several hours later. I don't have a lot of respect for that. - enfact, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Then what is this site for, did you want me to post it somewhere else and link to it? Stop flaming and start contributing, people like you are the suckers of sites like this. Instead of complaining, post something, write something...
- enfact, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1haha, you've invented guerilla digging!
- enfact, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Other people, like the thousands a day who post here and their links don't get anywhere would make up that. There are ALWAYS tons of links submitted with like 5 diggs, the content isn't any less exciting there as on the front page.
- enfact, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1If you would have actually read my posts, the first post used the "recently active" diggers, which i thought was a conservative number because i knew stats freaks would be all over this. When i did this, the number was 60,000 but i was quickly commented to by Kevin Rose that the number was 200,000, can't argue with the creator of the site. If you can really argue against the numbers, just look at it your self, there should never be a time where one top ten user has three of the top fifteen posts at one time. When there are probably at least 5-7k stories submitted a day. If you dont realize with these kind of numbers something's wrong with ya.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1It looks like few people make this site work. You just gave them credits.
- Looking4TiffB, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Interesting.
- enfact, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1You shouldnt be able to help people to the front, this is exactly why the site is not democratic. The story didnt get there because people like it. The story got there because people subscribe to your feed and after you digg it, so do tons more because they go right to your (or other top user's RSS). Democracy doesn't mean a RSS buddy club, it means people find the good stories and digg them just like all the other stories. Again, before you comment on this ACTUALLY read what i have posted, the answers to all your rants on me are in there. Yes i want traffic to my blog because i want people to read about this stuff... Why else would i have a blog?
Why are you flaming me for trying to get my blog read when you're pissed about me talking about you losing your "internet allstar" status on digg? Get a life, my point in all of this was to say that digg is losing its democratic ways. End. - enfact, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Here you go, ill update it here for you and everybody else, here are the current numbers for postings on the front page from users ranked under 50 which is way under the top 1%
6,6,9,12,15,16,19,27,27,43 Thats the exact same percentage as before, new stories. 66% of the posts are from the top 0.03% cmon, you cant deny that it's a little less than democratic. If i did this over the long term it would get even worse, im not that crazy about it.
And hey, it looks like you have a story up there, are you getting affended because one of the people im poking at is you? Couldn't be hah - enfact, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2If you would have taken the time to read EITHER of the posts or their comments, you would have realized, why this second one was posted. Why don't you try actually reading the content on here before you start flaming, rather than just jumping around digg to sweat all over the place?
- enfact, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1There was nothing innacurate about my post, if you read the article it says that that was taken from one shot of the digg front page this morning. It also says i posted again because i was surprised that it wasnt that bad yesterday.
- enfact, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1When 2/3 of the stories on the front page are from most of the same people all the time, thats not really what this site was started about, it was about getting everybody's news out there, and lately its been failing at that, period. I dont care if it's my stuff, i prefer it's not because i don't want to pay for the bandwith but its sad when TONS of people contribute links that only get five diggs. What makes me sad is that these people probably give up, which means digg becomes more and more just the top 50's stories until thats all there is, there are a couple submitters and tons of people who follow and digg, thats exactly what this site was NOT supposed to be. No matter what's to blame, that is what's happening. Of course you won't like this post if you're in that top whatever, but if you support what this site was supposed to be you won't be able to deny that it is true. I'm not saying they're bad links or these people are not putting more effort into it, simply look at the numbers, there shouldnt be two stories from number 6 and three from number 9 out of 15 on the front page if there are over 200,000 users, you surely can't miss those numbers.
- nuclearpenguins, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2There are a lot of power-submitters I mark as lame/spam every time, no matter what their submitted story is.
- enfact, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Ok wayjer, take a look at my blog that i PAY to have up there. Do you see ANY ads at all? Why would i want more traffic? Must not be for money, it must be because i want what i write to be read... Please stop flaming and contribute rather than criticize. Yes i post here to be read, and from the looks of the responses gotten, people are interested in keeping digg democratic.
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