What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.263 Comments
- ECas123, on 01/18/2008, -9/+327*Comment Removed*
- Dumbledorito, on 01/18/2008, -19/+223You mean without them, there would be even MORE stories about Apple and Ron Paul?
...the horror... - milezteg, on 01/18/2008, -10/+174They have always used human editors, nothing wrong with that. What is lame is the fact that you cannot see who is burying your stuff. When that happens we will finally see the extent to which a lot of websites essentially control what is 'popular' on digg via cabals of their users and staff.
- notque, on 01/18/2008, -12/+153Every article we've had on banned diggers gets banned.
Digg won't let you discuss banned diggers as a thread topic.
Emobrat, Polymath22, Greg Davies, 0boy, Jennifer4Truth, all banned.
And you don't know about it unless you go to their profile and find it gone. They just disappear. - czernel, on 01/18/2008, -27/+109From The Article - What does this say about Digg? First, that it has failed to match its aspirations as a perfect democracy of news. And second, that as a business, it may be less attractive than some think.
- kevinrose, on 01/18/2008, -6/+74Unfortunately ValleyWag never contacted us for the real facts.
FWIW, we have one site administrator on duty at any given time. Their main responsibility is to monitor and review stories the digg algo/backend has flagged as pornography or SPAM. With 20M+ monthly unique visitors and tremendous traffic implications, gaming Digg is something that is attempted regularly.
So, as we have since the beginning, we'll continue to build tools and maintain staff that detect and remove spam/spammers - but most importantly, we rely upon you, the Digg community, to Digg your favorite stories and bury the ones you don't like. - notque, on 01/18/2008, -6/+70But Digg bans any topic talking about banned diggers. That isn't right!
- uremomsnitemare, on 01/18/2008, -2/+59did anyone else notice that 7 out of the top 10 stories at one point yesterday were about apple or macintosh
jesus h - AmazingAndrex, on 01/18/2008, -2/+56The worst thing about censorship is ****** **** *******.
- efelleman, on 01/18/2008, -3/+55Ron Paul and Steve Jobs are the editors.
- mordochai, on 01/18/2008, -26/+72Because, unfortunately, we Diggers are "the masses." And masses are usually wrong.
Digg isn't a community of individuals, it's a swarm.
So yes, moderators are necessary for good function. - Schneckehaus, on 01/18/2008, -5/+45Democracy is a mob rule.
The ideal istitution for the people has democratic tenets, but is not a pure democracy.
In a 'perfect democracy', 49% of us get the shaft. - ncdave101, on 01/18/2008, -1/+40"Spammers would get nowhere because the community would be fully invested in the site's success"
You're forgetting that spammers have no sense of ethics and would quickly inundate the site with posers digging their stories. In essence, the community would be the spammers themselves and quickly alienate us more sensible users. Digg would then die. With editors the most egregious offenders can be stopped quickly, and we the end-users benefit by having more quality stories to consider. - hellogoodbye, on 01/18/2008, -2/+37I had no idea "the Digg" employed moderators.
- trnelson, on 01/18/2008, -6/+35Are these the guys that always delete my comments? I have tons of comments that mysteriously disappear, for no good reason. They even show in my profile, but when I click "view comment" or even expand the entire comment tree for the article, it's nowhere to be found. Even doing a ctrl+f and searching for it ... gone. What gives? Maybe this one will disappear too.
- notque, on 01/18/2008, -7/+35Leaders aren't rising here, they are chosen by a small set of people, probably one. Kevin Rose.
- scrappyvintage, on 01/18/2008, -1/+28I've always wondered how many sociopaths out there create 2,000,000 different accounts and just bury the ***** out of people they disagree with. Will we ever know?
- iofthestorm, on 01/18/2008, -2/+28Yeah, moderation and karma are some of the reasons why slashdot has much better discussions than digg. Another is the much better comment system, and perhaps the average age of the members, but I digress. Digg has more/better stories though, even in the bunch of spam and stuff I don't care about.
- Crath, on 01/18/2008, -1/+27The moderator of "Industry News" isn't doing their job!
- sockpuppets, on 01/18/2008, -1/+23You can pick your friends and you can pick a rose but you can't ban kevin rose.
- notque, on 01/18/2008, -12/+32There is a such thing as democracy. You do not need some sort of unjustified authority. Further, authority doesn't make rational decisions.
- wukillabee, on 01/18/2008, -14/+34and if there is moderators why the hell do they let the same apple story twice hit the front page withing hours of each other, i smell bs
or maybe all digg moderators are gay apple fanboys - TRUEPATRIOT, on 01/18/2008, -6/+23who?
- cusoman, on 01/18/2008, -0/+16Precisely why I turn off the Apple category.
- xpose, on 01/18/2008, -3/+18As a digg moderator, I'd advise you guys to drop the subject.
Edit: (im kidding digg, im not violating the TOS and impersonating you ) - JigoroKano, on 01/18/2008, -3/+17I would give up and go elsewhere eventually.
- inactive, on 01/18/2008, -1/+13"They just disappear" ? You mean like when somebody types "Candlejack" and th
- RobotBuddha, on 01/18/2008, -1/+12Karma was also the bane of slashdot back in the day as people whored themselves with lame jokes and copy/paste routines. The difference is that the community as a whole insisted something be done about it, and changes were thought up to preserve the freedom while creating a social system that discouraged that bad behavior while promoting intelligent discussion. Digg could do the same, but it's clear at this point that it's not wanted, for whatever reason. Not really complaining, digg is what it's always been. But lamenting a bit.
- thetrav, on 01/18/2008, -5/+16Looks like Valleywag just needed to run a story. The blog post Owen Thomas links to is from November 2006. I think we all know that digg employs moderators. Frankly, I think the site wouldn't last without them. Algorithms can only do so much.
And how does employing 10-20 people make it less attractive to investors? That's really not a lot of people when you compare it to traditional news sites. - inactive, on 01/18/2008, -1/+12I remember seeing and digging some of emobrat's stories... why was she banned?
- merreborn, on 01/18/2008, -5/+16"First, that it has failed to match its aspirations as a perfect democracy of news"
I don't see how anyone could run a purely democratic site, and still keep it free of spam and illegal content. When the "democracy" promotes illegal content to the front page, *someone* has to take it down. If the democracy fails to do so, then it falls on the employees of digg to do so. - Ajajadude, on 01/18/2008, -1/+11If there's money to be made in spamming, then spammers would be able to overcome the community, in all probability driving away the users with greater common sense (as ncdave said). There is no such thing as a perfect democracy. The human element is what makes it imperfect.
- darkheartlor, on 01/18/2008, -9/+19This is nothing to complain about. Kevin and the people at Digg need to cover their asses. It's not the users that have to pay the lawyer bills if they get sued.
- Schneckehaus, on 01/18/2008, -0/+10notque: "Wow, I'm so witty and cool! I'm risking serious recursion of commentary by starting this avalanche."
- inactive, on 01/18/2008, -1/+11When you look at the front page of each section and see two or three stories by the same users, and you see that a lot of them are duplicate stories that they have been allowed to resubmit instead of digging the original, when some of these users have over 25% of their stories promoted to the front page regardless of the quality, it makes you realize that something is wrong. I don't submit many stories. None of them has been dugg to the front page. I visit Digg fairly regularly and enjoy it, but it does frustrate me to see this obvious abuse. I can only say that continuing to allow these supposedly nonexistent superusers to abuse Digg like this may be one of the reasons the conspiracy theories are so easy to believe.
- legendxx, on 01/18/2008, -3/+13A person is smart, people are stupid.
- notque, on 01/18/2008, -5/+15Bamborzled: "Wow, I'm so witty and cool! I'm completely different and non-conformist. Now let me insult you in lieu of an argument with several buzzwords."
- metrofeed, on 01/18/2008, -18/+28There's nothing wrong with editors, although I think the site would ultimately be more interesting and stronger without them. Spammers would get nowhere because the community would be fully invested in the site's success.
- tattertech, on 01/18/2008, -3/+12They become unpeople?
Kevin Rose = Big Brother? - mlostracco, on 01/18/2008, -2/+10If there weren't mods, every second story making it to the frontpage would be lolcats and ***** inbox jokes, just like it was a few months ago. Sometimes you can't trust the masses. Just look at who elected the current President.
- havesometea, on 01/18/2008, -1/+9I have noticed this too.
- inactive, on 01/18/2008, -0/+8Really, who goes to Valleywag for news?
What I took from the article. "I have no ***** idea what I am talking about. I heard some guys talking about this waiting in line at Starbucks and it sounded like the rest of the ***** we run at Valleywag so I went with it." - cardboardbox, on 01/18/2008, -3/+11Their most damning "evidence" is when they say "they can adjust the criteria to make it easier or harder for a story to make it big".
Is it just me or is that incredibly vague, and not enough to warrant calling the moderators "shadowy" with the ability to exercise "editorial judgment". They make it sound as if the digg moderators burned the reichstag and brought Hitler in to power. No offense, but that site "Valleywag" sounds like a ***** joke (not the name of the site, but the content)
However, I would like to know more about what these moderators do (but not from valleywag) - notque, on 01/18/2008, -2/+10And the community of participants should at least then get to veto the Digg Administrators decisions.
- insomniac8400, on 01/18/2008, -0/+8Now I know why some of my comments just disappear completely. Removing comments is just sad.
- MacEnvy, on 01/18/2008, -1/+9If the system worked you would have been banned days ago for spamming the same comment in every thread.
- kindrobot, on 01/18/2008, -5/+12Each and every time a community has multiple moderators, there's always a spoiled one in the batch and no mechanism for controlling, exposing or correcting him or her.
It's always been that way, it always will be. It's unfortunate and definitely a broken model. I have NEVER seen a community get rid of a rogue moderator. (unless said moderator pisses off the site owner/admin's girlfriend or best friend accidentally) It's the same as the bad cop problem, in many ways. They support each other, even when they are wrong and everyone is scared of challenging them. I've seen a moderator on one site ban people for sharing a differing opinion with them for YEARS, sometimes banning long-standing, contributing members. Best of luck with your "battle", folks. Personalities clash and power always corrupts. Always.
Edit: And if you care, you need to "get a life", right? It's just a site, right? BS. Watch that person NEVER stand up for themselves with a moderator. Wimps. - ChileanGoD, on 01/18/2008, -1/+8Are you in a quest against Notque or something? By looking at your comments you're in a quest against socialism. Ohh.. and looky here...
"Thanks for reciprocating my friendship on Digg.com. My 2008 New Year's resolution is to study for a Cisco certification. For a month or so I may not send or receive any shouts. I look forward to communicating with you in the future. Thanks!" ...
Good luck on your Cisco certification, it will surely make this world a better place. - bratterscain, on 01/18/2008, -2/+9What's there to police about digg? We bury what we don't like and digg what we like? The users police. If it's acceptable by the majority of us, why not allow it? That's a true democracy.
- chaosium, on 01/18/2008, -0/+7I think that's just an issue with the comment system.
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