What is Digg?45 Comments
- mitrebox, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21Business Week loves digg.
- kevinbowen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19I digg stories about digg users digging stories about users digging digg stories...
- shaft63, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Judgment Day
Digg has become self aware. It is out of control promoting itself and must be stopped. - Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20Good article, but I don't see how the recent changes are at all aimed at improving the QUALITY of digg submissions, and right now there are articles like "Leopard Kills Mother Baboon, but tries to save Baboon Baby from Hyenas!" on the frontpage.
Personally I think the only way to improve quality is moderation. - blackmariah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16They already have that. It's called the content of your posts. The ***** your posts, the faster they disappear.
- Wobs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17I'm a new registered user but have been reading Digg for 5-6 months now. I do have to honestly say that the quality and depth of the news reported here lately has been decreasing. Something needs to be done to separate the news from the 'random cool stuff' that is everywhere. Splitting off videos is a great step in that direction, Digg becoming a repository for Pod casts also seems like another step in the right direction.
My humble 0.02 - Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Forget that - the corners need to be rounder.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+19Stop digging stories about digg.
- Popdmb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Wow...great article. I just paid a visit to techmeme as a result, and it's really well done. While I love digg, I'm definitely going to be visiting that more and more.
While people spend a lot of time criticizing Digg, I think they miss a lot of what's great about it. Had this article about Digg not made the front page, I probably wouldn't have found Techmeme for another few months.
To the critics: lighten up a little. Provided you read the articles, Digg opens a lot more doors to information than you give them credit for. - deepdiggdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5DIGG TEAM: FIX CLOUD VIEW !
- koregaonpark, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I completely agree with the following two paragraphs from the second page of the article:
The danger for Digg and sites like it is that the influx of new users and new types of content could alienate the core users who rely on Digg for hard news. Sure, they can personalize their page to reflect their penchant for breaking stories. But too much personalization, in order to avoid unwanted stories, could result in users missing out on the kinds of hard news stories they awake to now when they view the top stories on Digg. In a November post, venture capitalist Jeff Nolan wrote in his blog that he was finished with Digg. "I'm just not getting anything out of it anymore."
Christine Tatum, national president of the Society of Professional Journalists and assistant business editor at The Denver Post, says the move from "mainstream to mystream," popular with user-generated and social-networking sites, is bound to keep people from being exposed to necessary information outside the realm of their favorite topics. "The chief danger here is that, by striving for personalization, people are weeding out a lot of information that everybody should be exposed to." - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Kevin Rose VS The Founding fathers, who will win? More news at 11.
- dswinscoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5that sounds more like Slashdot, which differs considerably from Digg's Democratic Journalism charter, and is more akin to something like "Feudal Journalism." Bad idea for Digg, IMHO.
- geoffrobinson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This isn't Fight Club. We can talk about Digg.
But seriously, I guess the answer to the author's question is "no" since this was dug. - onimusha115, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think digg is taking the right steps to improve the site. As Wobs said, splitting off videos was a good way to seperate news from random things people find. Moderation is not the answer, making room for everybody is. Why shut users out? I come here for news, but the thing that i like about the site is that I can find interesting things on the web not seen on other news sites, it is what makes digg cool. Plus the site is controlled by the users, so most of what makes it to the font page is what people want to see, if users dont like that they can participate and change whats happening. Sure it dosent fit in the normal confines of a news site, but isnt that the point? Its the exact reason I have been using digg for over a year now.
- flag564, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5They do seem to post an odd number of stories on this site. I see it at least two mentions in almost every issue.
FTA:
"It relies on registered users to submit their best articles to its site."
Um, ok..... - ZeroMP, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Personally I think the new layout is an abomination.
The comments look ridiculous splayed out this wide with the digg up / digg down buttons so far away from the user name, and one line comments with a mile of blank space. And the green is fairly yuck as well.
And I will say it once again - for all those diggers who have such a big, hard, boner for "hard" news (which I can only assume means tech-only news the way digg used to be): YOU DON'T HAVE TO CLICK VIEW ALL. Problem solved.
Don't like Momma Orangutan stories?
You don't have to click on the link, or click on View All.
Hoooray! No more chimps or kittens!!! - neoform, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6So, when is this circle-jerk going to end?
- crashflow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@shaft63
It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. but digg fights back.
digg uses the digg effect on servers of russian nuclear bases. Why russia? Because digg knows the Russian counter-attack will eliminate its enemies over here. True enough. several million pieces of polonium-210-laced sushi land on US soil. - Knoton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I've been on Digg for over a year and the thing that I have noticed and rather dislike is the shift from quirky or interesting pages on the net to becoming more news oriented.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Digg may be more demorcratic, but it is failing to provide quality.
I'm tired of see "essays" from a 14 year old's blod mixed in with World News - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2When I first heard that digg was going to expand beyond tech news I was excited, remembering stories of bloggers forcing mainstream news media to cover stories they chose to ignore. For a while it looked like that promise was coming to pass. Now, I see "essays" from some 14 year old's blog being mixed in with the World News.
Comments are moderated by whether or not said 14 year old ( or adult with that emotional age ) likes your opinion and not on the quality of the comment. So much for democracy. Your opinion will get modded up and stand a better chance of being seen if people like it, not whether or not it is intelligent, informed, makes a good point etc.
Something needs to be done if digg wants to be more than a very sophisticated blog for IT geeks. That is cool if that is all digg ever is and I will use it, but I think the owners see more potential and want it to become more. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://digg.com/bugreport
- open_sauce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2A paragraph from the article:
"In theory, providing additional ways of segmenting information should let users more easily find the content that most matters to them and avoid the stuff they don't care about. Thus the initial tech audience could still find the serious technology articles under the tech industry news section and avoid some of the more lighthearted content such as a video of a golfing parrot."
Except that the submitter saw fit to submit that story under the "Tech Industry News" section. - GamingNews, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I'm not sure the article contained any true substance, but still, I have to tip my hat to Digg. Getting a web site face lift covered by BW can't be an easy task to accomplish. Good job on that.
Personally, in addition to PodCast and Video, I would like to see Blogs broken away as a completely separate category. If I never saw another blog post again I would be quite content. - deepdiggdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thanks, 2 tomato - complaint filed.
- ulyssesyt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"hard news"? wtf? you mean, like the 17th posting of the lightsaber kid?
c'mon, man. Digg is for recreation. it has nothing to do with "news", unless you mean "posting occasional links to news stories." - jo42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1> Will the changes help?
No, they won't. - Wobs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1While I agree with you, I think blogs serve a special purpose with Digg. Many times the opinion presented or the inconsistencies found there serve as a starting point for the digg discussion/comments. Just the raw information without that kick-start tends to have more boring and dry commentary from us users.
- HebrewHammer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Its a love hate relationship
- Arkonnan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Digg is what we make of it. If crap makes it to the front page, it's because the voting majority wants to see crap. Any form of moderation beyond the democratic vote will turn this place into Slashdot.
- musicbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wasn't digg originally just a kind of proof of concept by a kid known as "the dark tipper" from a small cable tech show? Isn't it amazing that Business Week cares about it's importance or it's redesign or that there is a lack of "hard news" at a web site originally dedicated to tech news for geeks? Or that people are disappointed that other users aren't submitting stories that they want to read at a free user submitted tech news website? Amazing indeed!
- Mylonite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't mind so much that we've gotten away from hard news - there are lots of non-news Diggs that I'm damned glad to see - but I do think it might be too easy for a 'story' to get to the front page now. 40 diggs and on the front page? Too often, it's actually the 9th submission of the item, and it's just a link to (or worse, an article copied word for word from) a *real* news site - by way of a blog with more ads than content.
I don't think they want/need any real form of moderation over and above what comes out of a social rankings site, but they'll obviously need to work on how to tweak the system to not allow a few well-timed diggs (or something shadier) to put a crap item on the front page. - tzon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One negative aspect of Digg becoming excessively "personalized" as spoken of in the article is, IMO, a loss of a sense of community. I like knowing that what I'm reading or seeing, everybody else is reading or seeing as well.
- hiscity, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Here's a suggestion to increase the quality of digg's thumbs-up-or-down voting.
Use thumbs-down to mark most of the comments you've read -- that contribute little, (...especially good for long groups of comments). You can see responses much more easily when checking back. That leaves 2 choices: no-thumbs vote or thumbs-up. The thumbs-up should be reserved for the comments that contribute something worth reading.
So instead of using thumbs-up-or-down for agree-disagree voting, use it for "worth reading"-"not worth reading."
Granted some "good" folks may get lumped in with the rest of the "thumbs-down" crowd, but generally the "thumbs-up" = "worth-reading" group should rise to the top.
The best part though is using thumbs-down to collapse most of what you've already read, so that the remaining comments are easier to follow, (especially when you come back to a thread to see what's happened). - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It seems like there is a conflict between people who want digg.com to be a fun place to come to and people who want it to be a serious news site.
There are already plenty of both kinds of sites on the net, the thing that would set digg.com apart is being something different.
That something different is the idea of being a democratically configured news source.
So much goes on that the powers that be and the mainstream media just shut out. Over the last few years I have been excited by accounts of how bloggers have embarrassed/forced mainstream news media into covering stories they hoped to bury.
There have been a lot of comments in this thread about keeping digg.com the way it is for the sake of democracy. Well, the aforementioned paragraph is the potential of digg.com to enhance democracy right there.
That will not happen if digg.com cannot become more than an overgrown blog for young tech geeks. Digg.com will not get taken seriously when you have frivolous stories and stories with laughable sources mixed in with the serious "front page" news.
It would be a tragedy to the level of democracy we could have if digg.com does not get actualized as that kind of tool. Is having another place to go to on the net to act silly and have fun worth that sacrifice? - hiPpymIck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2i like the speed & spontaneity of Digg - keeps it real
new layout can only help - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Digg owned? I can't get the site to load. Weird.
http://duggmirror.com/ - zkatkin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Great Idea tinker. Let the system and its users moderate itself. There was a great post and blog article about the downward spiral of Digg (and its top users) over at this site that I found interesting: http://themulife.com
- barnett25, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I agree. I already have sources for serious news. There are a million out there. Digg is great to come home from work and find some random diversion to unwind after work. Whether it be some weird/funny article or a cool game or video I've never seen.
Making Digg just like every other site will only make me visit less... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3Amen.
Maybe users can be scored. If someone posts crappy stories or trollish comments they get a low score. User with high scores earn the right to post stories and score other users. - hiPpymIck, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3i Digg Digg stories about Digg users Digging Digg stories about Digg users Digging stories about users Digging Digg stories
EDIT...am i 24 mins. late? duuuh - jacobcarbonero, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0I love the karma idea!
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1I just want more community related features.... such as a karma system that controls how quickly your comments get dugg down.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -30/+1bury
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