What is Digg?469 Comments
- Erfus, on 05/07/2008, -9/+229The decline of tech related stories that hit the front page. One thing that I would LOVE to see is a site filter. Meaning, if an article is from xyzsite.com, you can block it from your view completely. I've seen enough Huffington Post stories for a lifetime.
- BigManOnCampus, on 05/07/2008, -20/+215I was talking with the friend who got me onto Digg two years ago now. We've both admitted our digg use has declined.
When we discussed why, we both came to the conclusion that useful information has been pushed aside in favor of whatever the mob wants.
Exhibit A:
http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/What_I_hate_abou ...
That digg article got buried for being inaccurate, but it is not inaccurate at all. Diggers do have biases, and the main page, and all the main topic sub-pages suffer for it. Science is rarely about science, and 80% of the time it is greenies pushing their agendas and beliefs. Sometimes I even see religious articles under the guise of "well, it's about evolution, so that's sciency". Last week there was a pravda.ru url that got 300+ diggs in the science section for an article claiming that vampires are real. It's become a joke.
The main page is worse. There are so many fans for Obama and Ron Paul on Digg that you have to wonder if digg itself hasn't been completely hijacked by activists for particular sides. Most of the time the main front page is all about Obama. I myself don't mind hearing about the man, but Digg use to have easily-accessible-information that was useful to me. Now it's all about what political cause is most represented here.
Is anything going to be done to finally obliterate the mob-mentality that seems to have risen to completely dominate digg? - Bukowsky, on 05/07/2008, -12/+167I may be mistaken... but If I remember correctly, wasn't there supposed to be an *Official* Digg Forum in the works?
A place where diggers can openly communicate with each other & digg moderators without having to troll through ton's & ton's of spam shouts. When is this going to be launched? - Sarawanan, on 05/07/2008, -4/+140Any chance that we can get some word-based blocking by which I mean that you can go to your settings and set certain words that you do not want to see stories about. An example of this use would be if you wanted to block all stories tagged "NSFW" or "(some politician)".
The reason that I would really like this is because I frequently check the Top 10 stories and as of recently a lot of them have been about Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama and I would rather see the Top 10 stories on Digg that are not related to Obama or Clinton. I'd love to see this feature come. - sbader, on 05/07/2008, -3/+95The upcoming section needs help. I'm not sure what it needs but browsing it is slowly becoming more and more overwhelming. If i browse by most popular I have to go through about 20 pages of stuff before i get to articles with 30 or 20 some diggs. Which i think makes the upcoming section more dependent on large friends networks which makes it harder for users with small friends list to get past 20 diggs and for it to get seen by people who don't have you befriended.
- DroidBlender, on 09/18/2008, -6/+89I want to hear an honest discussion about the direction Digg has taken. I joined in 05', because I heard about it on TechTV and I really liked the concept of finding odd, unique tech stories. Ever since Digg added the non-tech related sections, there has been an explosion of user growth, which was great because more stories were coming in, but also spam went way up. I didn't like the politics section, so I removed it.
Still, there are special interest groups who have been sneaking them in, and its upsetting. I feel like digg has been hijacked by rude, agenda driven people who have made the digg experience less enjoyable. - Branchex, on 05/07/2008, -4/+84I am constantly getting new fans for reasons unknown, it would be nice if if they could give a reason and that I could see what they and I have both dugg easily. I'm always suspicious of a person that would become a fan of someone who never had a submitted story reach the front page.
- cards, on 05/07/2008, -5/+84Instead of having checkboxes for each topic/subtopic, can we have a slider for level of interest? I'm not an avid gamer, but I might be interested in the most popular stories in the gaming category. Similarly, I'm getting burnt out on the US Elections section, but I don't want to miss the submission that gets 10k diggs saying "Obama wins democratic presidential nomination". With both categories, I could set my level of interest to low and then only see the very most popular stories in these categories. Similarly, I can set a high level of interest to the linux category and see more stories in that category.
Besides helping me see more of what I like and less of what I don't, I think this would also help stop people from trying to game the system. When everyone has a different front page, there's no one way to push your spam to "THE" front page. - zizzy, on 05/07/2008, -4/+78There should be a link under Digg stories, where you can click "Report as duplicate" or "Submit alternate source." If you reported it as a duplicate, you would be required to choose the Digg story it was a dupe of, and if enough people did this it would show up under the main story as an alternate source. And if you wanted to submit a story but it was already frontpaged, you could just submit it as an alternate source. Also, when submitting, the duplicate check would have an option to select one of the dupes and submit yours as an alternate source to one of those. It would discourage people from submitting dupes, because while a dupe doesn't have much chance of being noticed an alternate source listed with the main story would.
Each story would then have a section for "Alternate Sources" (possibly another tab, next to Comments/Blog it/ etc.). These sources could then be voted on, so alternate sources that are just blogspam will be buried and legitimate alternate sources will show up higher. It would help consolidate topics and prevent dupes from showing up, since people would want to get their sources linked on prominent stories and dupes would be found and changed to alternate sources.
(And I know you can already bury as duplicate, but this is a lot better) - blackolive, on 05/09/2008, -6/+61You asked "Tech News" fans for town hall questions & they all want more tech news... Meanwhile people watching world news didn't even get to ask a question!
Frankly we're the ones this really affects! Our political speech is being *censored* by an algorithm designed for other people:
With "digg diversity" you've successfully censored the Ron Paul spammers - but you've censored legitimate views too. You've censored people who simply share the same views & digg the same type of stories *but don't spam!* (wasn't the problem with Ron Paul spam the spamming itself?)
Meaning couldn't the algorithm treat *political* submissions slightly differently - and censor the obvious spammers (the people who submit routinely) - without equally censorsing the political views of people who don't spam? - GeekyGerge, on 05/07/2008, -8/+63Removal (or limiting) of shouts? Shouts cause Digg trading and kind of take away from the whole premise of Digg in the first place.
- Charlatan22, on 05/07/2008, -11/+60Any plans on helping people who joined Digg years ago to be able to get the news that made this site great? IE the tech news, the science news that was legit and not BS, and less of the newest 4chan-ish junk. I feel even you guys would agree with this seeing as how alot of the stuff on Diggnation tends to be the 1000-2000ish ranges that used to be the number of what the great stories used to achieve.
Basically i want the old digg back even though its probably impossible at this point... - mark076h, on 05/07/2008, -5/+46Digg is in desperate need of the ability to edit the headline of a submitted story in case it has mistakes and a separate picture uploader so if digg does not detect a picture or the story does not have one you can add a relevant picture.
- laaabaseball, on 05/07/2008, -8/+491. Are you still gonna kill the podcast page, or are you gonna replace it with something?
2. When is the new comment system gonna hit?
3. I still think shouts are still an issue, because many people don't like them, and others that want to use them cannot simply delete the shouts they have to be done one by one, and cannot filter them by category, or choose which friends to use, or institute a block user button.
4. I think users abusing commonly dugg topics, such as writing misleading titles on XKCD comics shouldn't be allowed or tolerated on digg.
5. I'm sure there's more topics that should be discussed, and I am open to replies on this - ThinkBox, on 05/07/2008, -4/+42One more thing, I have 713 people that have added me as a friend. Most of them it was because they wanted me to friend them in return so they could spam stories.
Most of them arent people that digg more stories. So in effect, the shouts didnt ruin shouts, it ruined the friends system too. When people add you on a friend, and then yu see they have tried to add 50+ people in the past 24 hours... then that sucks. When you friend someone, have a questionnaire why, with a comment why they wanted to friend you. If they like my comments, my stories (which of my stories have they dugg?) or they know me in real life, etc. - tranzport, on 05/07/2008, -5/+40what happens when you see i've buried the last 5 submissions or even comments of yours and you're able to see that? you will take it upon yourself to always digg me down now. this may not be YOU in particular but the community as a whole. it will get abused, just like shouts do. the point of shouts is to send a cool link for your friends to check out. instead, it's used to get tons of diggs on spam stories.
bottom line, showing buries will fracture the already spiteful digg community....ESPECIALLY in the political sections of digg. showing buries for a giant community just isn't good. users, as a whole, WILL NOT behave. you think the bury brigade is bad now.... - BigManOnCampus, on 05/07/2008, -8/+40That would be awesome.
I can think of a number of domains I would block... sorry divinecaroline.com.... you keep posting trash, so ve vill bury yoo. - inactive, on 05/07/2008, -8/+40What about Digg Forum which was promised in the last town hall. A digg forum where users can ask question(s) to digg staff or to other digg users. Digg has a lot of users who have questions which can be answered by other expert digg users. Let's admit it diggers don't user "get satisfaction" service and the only way they can get satisfaction is via digg platform.
Forum Layout ...
Sticky... Message from digg staff
General
Tech
DIY
OffBeat...
World
Sports
Video
Audio
In the forum, digg users can ask a question to digg staff or digg users if they reach particular diggs ( or may be not diggs at all, meaning just like regular forums).
A link to the forum can be placed in the footer of digg pages and the layout of the forum can be somewhat like digg blog. - eir574, on 05/07/2008, -9/+40I would love a link at the top or bottom of each comment that will take me to the parent comment. In long threads, it can be hard/annoying to follow the line at the left hand side of the comment back up to its parent. It's a minor thing, but from time to time it would have made my experience on digg a little more pleasant.
- Ocelot13, on 05/07/2008, -10/+40can we discuss the decline of tech topics and the huge explosion of lame lolcat and 4chan articles?
- JimmyDushku, on 05/07/2008, -6/+36When I joined Digg in 2005 I looked at the site as cool stories being submitted by other individuals in a community run by the people. Over the past year or so it feels like there are certain groups getting things pushed to the top. I would normally assume the content of the submission must have been worthy enough to make it to the front page, but when you see the same ridiculous website on the front page more than a few times a day, it seems like the community is being controlled by people who own those sites and their friends. Is there anyway we can have personal filters and filter out news stories coming from a certain site? Often times the articles submitted are so one-sided that it begins to get annoying when you see them constantly.
- BigManOnCampus, on 05/07/2008, -7/+35Mob mentality is what is killing digg. You say it makes it, I disagree.
Digg was initially very valuable as a website to me. I was always finding something on here that I didn't know before coming here. This was because truly unique ideas/sites/blog-entries were posted and enjoyed. Since then, we've had an election cycle start. What the mob disagreed with was buried/not-dugg, what the mob believed in was dugg up extremely quick. That's not what digg is supposed to be, if I wanted biases on my front page I'd pick up a copy of the New York Times each day.
As for a solution, that's hard to conceive of, much less suggest. The only thing I can think of is using some form of real-id and giving greater value to diggs by people who register as real people. As it stands now I can have as many accounts as I have free e-mail addys, and anyone who's seen internet polls knows how unfair that can be. - TROY7, on 05/07/2008, -10/+39This concerns the iPhone/iPod Touch version of Digg: I'd really like to be able to post comments. Will that ever be possible? Other than that it's great! Is Digg working on a native application for the iPhone/iPod Touch for the release of applications and the Application Store in June?
- zizzy, on 05/07/2008, -8/+36Digg needs a NSFW section (reddit has it - http://reddit.com/r/nsfw/).
However, it shouldn't just be one of the topics. It should be handled similar to how many other sites do it, for example StumbleUpon, where when you're submitting you have to choose whether it is NSFW or not. Just like choosing "Video," "Image," or "News Article," you would now choose whether it was NSFW or not, but it would still go under the normal topics. It would make it a lot easier for people to filter it out at work, or just see that stuff (pervs ;) ). - evanstapler, on 05/08/2008, -3/+29How about a COMPLETE revamp of "shouts"? It's just a tool used for promoting digg stories unfairly. Rarely is it used to show someone a story of interest, or to communicate with other Diggers. I see things like this constantly: "Just shout me your articles and I'll digg them, as long as you digg mine!" Is that fair at all?
- cards, on 05/07/2008, -5/+31All of the comments about "I'm sick of seeing..." and "how do I block..." can all be solved by the same thing; a working suggestion engine! A suggestion engine that looks at what I've dugg, what I've buried, what I've viewed but not dugg, etc, then compares that to other users and then suggests content that other users "like me" are looking at and digging would be awesome. This would virtually eliminate all of the complaints about people seeing things they don't care for.
I have another request, but I'll submit that as a separate comment so people can digg/bury each of these independently of one another. - jayadelson, on 05/08/2008, -8/+34I really want to hear Kevin and Jay talk about the smell. I've noticed that Digg's odor has changed from the floral, fresh scent we were all used to into more of that old library book smell. People really need to pay attention to the smell of web sites, and perhaps I'd use the site more.
- GeekyGerge, on 05/07/2008, -2/+27Totally. I often submit stories (Granted, they may or may not be of interest to everyone) and I hit a barrier with the amount of Diggs I can get. But because I don't want to "cheat" the system by adding hundreds of friends or sending out masses of shout spam, the stories go nowhere and die.
- lascamp, on 05/07/2008, -5/+30Digg has been getting overrun with spam, propaganda and rumors. It's just not as much fun to read any more. I've asked many times before in the forums about having more selections in the "bury" list. It would be a lot more helpful to have more data on why something is being buried, and might help in filtering stories. Maybe if there are several submitted stories from "(sitename).com" that are repeatedly buried under certain categories (like spam), then in the future, stories submitted from that site could be put up for moderator review before being posted on the actual Digg lists.
- Rikushix, on 05/07/2008, -6/+30I have a question: Is there any way to direct traffic so that clicking on a link in the top 10 stories on the front page, or the top 10 hottest stories in upcoming, doesn't link you to the digg submission page itself, but to the story that was submitted? Oftentimes, I will want to read a top 10 story that is maybe a day old...as a result, if it is very popular, it can be several pages back but also have several thousand diggs, which is usually accompanied by a great deal of comments. Having to open the submission page, which can take a while to load if it is a popular story, is very annoying when I just want to read the actual story.
Maybe put two links in each bar in the Top 10 Most Popular sidebar on the front page? For example, clicking on the title of the submission would link you to the story, just like any other normal story on the front page or upcoming, and then maybe a smaller link below that saying "submission" or "comments" that could be clicked and direct the user the the submission page. - Hefelumpman, on 05/07/2008, -5/+29A "report comment as spam" would be awesome. I've noticed so many comments lately which are completely unrelated to the original story.
- ralphthemagi, on 05/07/2008, -10/+31The "problem" you identify is actually one of democracy itself. A truly democratic system is ruled by the majority. That's why you see so much Ron Paul/Obama/Raw Story/Huffington Post spam (I can't really explain Divine Caroline spam though).
There is arguably no "good" solution for this. There are only two solutions that come to mind: 1) some incredibly complex algorithm that seeks to identify the hidden relationships between "the mob" and what they are digging, and then discount there votes; or 2) some kind of editor control, whereby editors' votes count more (in effect discounted EVERYONE else's votes).
The problem you outline isn't rooted in Digg or its userbase. It's a fundamental property of democracy. - piratearggghhh, on 05/07/2008, -6/+25Community can often mean tyranny of the masses. With the shout and buddy system, groups with political, commercial and other agendas push stuff to the front page. Increasingly rare is the everday member who submits a story that eventually becomes popular. Because of this, its lost a lot of appeal. Digg needs to find the right identity - if you're going to legitimately compete (or be a form of) against mainstream media, this biased format can't go on but if you're going to do quirky and tech stories this can be great. Digg is going through a identity crisis and is stuck between the desire to go mainstream and remain a niche for geeks. Right now, anyone who doesn't know about Digg clicking on the main page finds half of it political stuff (I can't even call it news) and weird stuff - not very appealing to anyone. Sadly, digg will be one of those things we'll say years from now that starts with "Remember that whole thing about web 2.0..."
- cadmiumpaint, on 05/07/2008, -6/+25How bout the one post per link. I.E. preventing post stealing. This will make sure that the super Digg users won't get to steal all their stories from others. Someone posts a link once, and that's it. No double posting of the same content. If you like it digg it up.
- perkonis, on 05/08/2008, -5/+21I would soooo really like the ability to delete more than 1 shout at a time. Right now I have 64 pages and there's not a chance I'm going to read them again or delete them 1 by 1. I am giving serious consideration to disabling shouts just because I have no effective way to manage them.
- TheAmbushAhead, on 05/07/2008, -7/+23Or filter by keyword. All this Obama and Clinton spam is ruining the front page.
- WanderingGuru, on 05/07/2008, -5/+21Digg needs the option for the users to be able to vote to have the title or summary of a story changed. I have seen too many times where the title, summary, or both were misleading or just totally inaccurate (while the article itself is completely legitimate), yet the story will still hit the front page (often due to the sensationalism of said title or summary).
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is also allowing the users to vote to have the URL of a story changed. More often than not we have blog spam hit the front page while the source article does not. The source article may even be linked in the blog spam, yet it still gets dugg to the front page. This is most often with the case of some unknown or lesser known user submitting the story before a power user, then when one of those power users tries to submit the story, they then submit blog spam instead and it gets to the front page. Or perhaps, if enough user votes are given, all diggs for the blog spam could be transferred to the original news source and the original poster. - Scigrex14, on 05/07/2008, -4/+19In addressing this issue, I think maybe digg should be split three ways, upcoming section, some mid range section that has articles with between 10 and 80 diggs, and the front page. This would allow users to better promote stories and keep us from going through pages of upcoming stories to find the good ones.
- BigManOnCampus, on 05/07/2008, -5/+20It is just as ridiculous to imply that bias trends are ok when digg was started to avoid just that in traditional media.
- evanstapler, on 05/08/2008, -2/+16I would really like a "Report User" function on each user's page. I see spammers constantly who I am entirely willing to report, but I don't want to fish for each individual comment, and report a single comment at a time.
- Slydevil01, on 05/07/2008, -2/+15Better way to highlight comments that point out errors in stories, please. Or possibly have the ability to give reasons for a bury, that would be displayed somewhere. I personally think either of these is an absolute must with the bias and misleading information that pours through.
And you've made a vital flaw just in the description of this story. Choosing to pay attention to the most dugg up comments is flawed, since the ones higher up will always have the most diggs. You're missing out on a large amount of public opinion down here. - legom, on 05/07/2008, -4/+17Could we get a separate section from the comments where users could post links to mirrors of the articles? I hate having to scroll through all the comments to try and find a link to a mirror. This is especially try for articles that are just a bunch of pictures.
- inactive, on 05/07/2008, -5/+18Digg should block sites that have taken control of or gamed the the entire Digg system. There are several political sites that have spammed their way to the front pages of Digg at an alarming rate. A maximum of three stories per day should be allowed per site and that is it....a hard limit to guarantee diversification of thoughts and ideas. Block by root domain so that they cannot game the system.
A new filter needs to be made available that does not filter by category. The filter should be able to filter on the web site.
Again, stories are not diluted enough, we get too many stories from the general area of politics. The major areas are Technology, World & Business, Science, Gaming, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Sports, and Offbeat. For each of the major categories there should be one new story every five to ten minutes. Every time that the clock ticks off a segment of time another eight stories should appear. The three areas of Political News, Political Opinion, 2008 U.S. Elections should be placed into one area, Politics and the area should not be able to command the stories coming out of World & Business. - inactive, on 05/07/2008, -9/+23How about banning the "SUPPORT US, DIGG THIS" box that is on the Huffington post site.
- TROY7, on 05/07/2008, -6/+18This sounds great.
- ThinkBox, on 05/07/2008, -2/+14I have to completely agree, but I want to add something.
Your observations are accurate, but the real problem is - this is a result of the freedoms we have.
I want a democracy, yes, but there are ways to make the site better. The way its structured there could be a serious fear that any change to the system will cause a riot and revolt or whatever, the "top users" fiasco was just an explanation of the algorithm, which is something that most diggers dont really know too much about. (most diggers being the 3 million users, not the 300,000 people that comment daily).
When you reach a certain amount of hits per day, or plateau, dollar signs are spinning in your eyes. Anything you do to improve the site generally has to respond with an increase of users. - DIGG HAS INVESTORS TO PLEASE- so, when I recommend a solution, or an idea that hints at a solution, you have to realize that in a very basic level, I insist that more people ≠ a better site. THe problem right now is that clicking the DIGG button is worthless to people, its an inflated currency - people will just about digg anything that flashes their attention. - PLEASE check the percentage of users who click the link and those who click it. Find a correlation of story data and display that on the age. Give users more tools to create a better community (AND THAT DOESNT JUST MEAN COMMUNITY TOOLS)
The development of a community revolves around the members willingness to give up to completely self govern for the interaction of a functioning economy. - So focus on what the "right" kind of diggers value, quality stories, and find a way to encourage that.
****Let the users vote on story tags - let a RANDOM amount of varied background people vote of tags that describe the story. Insightful, Funny, Chilling, and maybe a Star system like youtube.
I know you dont want people to be shouting ou saying "mod it 5 stars, digg it and mod it insightful"
Here is a little idea for a solution - dont let the STARs or the tags influence the algorithm AT ALL! And make sure people KNOW that. Spammers will use the feature a little less.
Also, improving the culture of the comments section will provide us with more insightful comments, versus what makes a 12-13 year old laugh (or someone with a 12-13 year olds idea of humor).
Culture is what needs to change. Digg can influence thatwithout shifting the idea of deomcracy, and I hope they arent afraid to turn people away, or let users leave.
A site with 1 million amazing users with a real culture and understanding, it better than 3 million users of our current state.
reward insight, not memes - sl9sl9, on 05/07/2008, -8/+19Brilliant idea. The Huffington Post would go right to the top of my list too.
- dtele, on 05/08/2008, -3/+14We NEED a breaking news section.
By the time a news article reaches FP (if at all) it is usually 24 hours old. - ell0bo, on 05/08/2008, -2/+13Damn... while you're at it, any way you can make it easier to make friends? No one seems to like me.
- chrisaug18, on 05/07/2008, -3/+13Shhh Jay and Kevin read this
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