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356 Comments
- kevinrose, on 12/31/2008, -18/+497I just want to thank all of those that posted constructive suggestions on the recent homepage stories. We're going through it all now. Anton and his team have some great changes coming. Rest assured, we know there are issues and are working on them. Thank you.
- SantaClauz, on 12/31/2008, -33/+381Digg this up if you want Digg to implement anonymous submissions.
- justjeninsf, on 12/30/2008, -21/+344I'm pretty stoked for the changes to our dupe detection mechanism that Anton and his team are working on - especially tracking users who habitually submit duplicates despite being shown the duplicates screen.
As always, though, Digg is dependent on the community playing nicely; submitting dupes goes against the spirit of Digg and we’ll be looking more closely at those users who ignore the duplicate detection portion of the submission process.
Feel free to contact us via digg.com/contact. If you’re reporting duplicate submissions, we’ll need to have links to both the original submission and the duplicate.
thanks -
Jen - skeen07, on 12/31/2008, -2/+220That's great - I do hope, for the sake of Digg, that some kind of a limit is imposed on how many stories you can digg, and or submit per day. It just makes sense, and it's not unreasonable, either. There's just no possible way that people are honestly digging 300 articles per day, for instance.
The main issue is: nobody in their right mind even bothers submitting anything. When I come across something on the web, it doesn't even enter my mind to submit it - I know for an absolute fact that no-one will see it. It will never reach the front page, no matter how good it is.
I have to assume that pretty much everyone else feels the same way. I truly do wonder what it would be like if everyone actually had a chance. What kind of new stories would we see? Digg might be a totally different place. As it is now, you may as well remove the submit button - it exists for almost no-one. This is sad, considering this is completely anti-Digg. But Digg has become the very undemocratic site that it sought not to be.
I sincerely hope this will be fixed now, once and for all. I was very patient for a very long time, and so have many others, but it truly is reaching the tipping point now where people are raising their hands, and saying, "it's no use, what's the point?"
Thanks for your continued work Digg team - let's make this site what it once was. - jvincent08, on 12/31/2008, -5/+198The algorithm is fine. Just get rid of the shouts and friends list, make submissions anonymous until they hit front page, and the amount of stolen stories will decrease drastically.
- skeen07, on 12/31/2008, -3/+189Good stuff, but it's not duplicate content that is the issue here per se. These power users are digging hundreds of articles per day. They cannot possibly have viewed all that content. A limitation is necessary. I have no doubt that if you imposed a limitation on the amount of articles you could Digg in a day, homepage diversity would change immediately.
The issue is distinguishing real activity, from bogus activity. People aren't reading all the content they're Digging, and they're not reading all the content they're submitting. When these numbers are in the hundreds per day, you know immediately that this is false activity, and it is decaying the diversity and fairness of Digg.
It's just not that complicated. I understand you have a great algorithm to get stories to the front page, but it's lacking very basic fundamental ideas. No-one is reading 300 articles a day. Basic limitations are what is needed.
I appreciate all your work Digg team. - benologist, on 12/31/2008, -2/+138Yes. Shout spamming and digg exchanging being the defacto standard way to get to the front page is a much larger issue, and it's the only reason the "power users" are able to resubmit dupes and have them popular anyway.
Good to see that vague responses are still the standard. Now we can rest assured that at some time in the future some change may address some element of some of the problems!!
It's really not rocket science - if someone is digging hundreds of stories a day ban them. - Senturion, on 12/31/2008, -4/+128Dupe detection doesn't mean ***** if people just ignore it and submit anyway, which is exactly what is happening now.
- jvincent08, on 12/31/2008, -9/+122The solution is simple, really. There's nothing wrong with the promotion algorithm, and if the team attempts to fix/improve it, they will only be wasting time and pissing off more users.
So here's me regurgitating what everyone has already said once more, in a constructive way:
1. Eliminate shouts and friends.
2. Restrict the amount of articles a user can digg to around 15 per hour, one digg every four minutes.
3. Make submissions anonymous until after the user diggs or buries the article. Also remove the undigg feature so they can't just digg it to see who it was and then bury it.
Kudos to all the staff for at least making an attempt at listening. Some sites/companies wouldn't even do this much. - brainnovate, on 12/30/2008, -10/+92Better dupe detection will be great!! Also important would be a way to "endorse" or "adopt" another users submission so that if its truly great content and deserves to be on the FP, it still could be pushed that way. Mixx allows this. As you are aware, there are many many users who could submit something awesome, and it will never make it the FP, no matter how good it is.
- xXRobbyXx, on 12/31/2008, -4/+76Great, now get rid of shouts and add anonymity to submissions so we can get back the digg that we used to love.
- mickstephenson, on 12/31/2008, -3/+72Not enough, remove shouts it's the only way. I know it feels like removing a feature, but it has been an abused and unnecessary feature from the start.
- ABadPerson, on 12/31/2008, -20/+85Digg this up if you want credit to the submitter be given after a story was dugg.
- honeymustardn, on 12/31/2008, -6/+68What a lovely cop out by the Digg staff
- therainmaker, on 12/31/2008, -3/+57Simple solution. Limit the number of submissions to five a day. While the dupes and lack of diversity is a huge issue, a lot of it is caused by the fact that certain users submit every page on the web they come across. You literally have people who have submitted 50,000 stories in 7 months.
Digg is supposed to be about submitting interesting, unique, and cool things you found that you think others might like. There are people who are not doing that but instead posting every AP story that is released. That is not what Digg was about.
This solution woud dramatically reduce duplicates. It would increase the overall quality of submissions and reduce the noise. It would also help kill off a lot of the power users who simply submit hundreds of stories a day. Simple solution to this problem. I don't think you'll find many people here comlaining about a 5 submission a day limit. - inactive, on 12/31/2008, -3/+55The more things change, the more they stay the same. Two years and a day ago:
http://digg.com/programming/Solving_The_Duplicate_ ...
Ironically, that was a dupe of this story:
http://digg.com/programming/Solving_the_Duplicate_ ... - rolfeman02, on 12/31/2008, -15/+65Hi Kevin,
Thanks for not being a dick when a bunch of people are being dicks to you. - monkiboi, on 12/31/2008, -19/+68Let me sum this up: Blah, Blah, Blah.
Nothing has changed. - darlingt, on 12/31/2008, -4/+49So I have the Digg toolbar for Firefox, and one of the perks is that I get notified each time a story becomes popular. I've checked the last 7 stories, as a random sample, and all 7 of them were submitted by "power diggers" -- people with lots of friends, lots (all 10K+) of diggs, and very few comments. These people are the ones who make submitting a story an exercise in futility for the tens of thousands of Diggers out there who comment as much as they Digg.
- AncientWeird, on 12/31/2008, -1/+45Agreed. This is not facebook. We do not need shouts here.
- brainnovate, on 12/31/2008, -3/+43This is why an ability to "merge" your submission into the chronologic first one would be so useful. And then let both (or all) users share in the spoils by getting their popularity ratio increased.
- brainnovate, on 12/31/2008, -2/+38Also - could you please point out to your development team - http://digg.com/tech_news/Dupes_ongoing_updates_to ... - (the url for this submission) - isn't a valid URL because it contains an apostrophe. Something broke in the permalink maker I suppose...
- KSUdesigner, on 12/31/2008, -0/+36"And if your actual problem with Digg is the friend system, I should suggest you leave Digg because that is one of the most fundamental thing about Digg."
Actually, there was a point in Digg's history where the whole friends system and shouts didn't exist. Ask anybody who's been a user of digg since way back then and they will all tell you that digg was a MUCH better place before they implemented that system. - dburka, on 12/31/2008, -5/+40It's really not that simple:
1. Eliminating shouts and friends would do little since many users share stories through other means. IM, email, message boards, blogs, are all used to share stories with large groups of friends. Keep in mind that shouts and friends are two ways of sharing that Digg can actually keep track of... the others are harder to identify.
2. Sure, though many people would disagree with you and say that they can easily Digg more content than that. What seems reasonable to you may not seem reasonable to someone else.
3. Anonymity only goes so far. Even if Digg didn't list someone's name, they could still easily promote a story via IM, email, blogs, etc and push their story to a large group of people. Names also serve as factors for trust and removing them would make it harder for you to track who is sniping other people's content.
These are all interesting ideas, but I just wanted to point out that the problem isn't as 'simple, really' as you claim it might be. - bloodhound01, on 12/31/2008, -12/+47Reported as inaccurate - because they won't do jack ***** and it will be the same as always.
- AshamedAmerican, on 12/31/2008, -7/+40Id like an answer as to how this submission
http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Digg_is_Rigged_Video_pro ...
vanished off the top 10 after more than 2k diggs. - gamebittk, on 12/31/2008, -1/+33The problem isn't only with dupes, its also about lame content hitting the front page on a regular basis. Some established users really submit good stuff, but others game the system and get garbage to hit the front page. I've been a user since late 2006 and never used to have my submissions become popular, but recently my stuff began to get dugg. Others (users who regularly appear on the front page) began asking for diggs on their submissions and telling how to game the system. I bought into it at first because while they weren't on the site for too long, these were established users, and I figured this is how things were done. I soon realized it was pointless and dumb, and undermined the whole reason I joined the site in the first place -- to find and discover genuinely interesting stories and great content. Remember when something hitting the front page was a sign of great content ahead? Now I don't even bother checking some posts out. The site revolves around the front page, so whenever you see the front page full of crap, you know the integrity of the site has been compromised.
The problem is that the system seems to reward blind-digging and the accumulation of an absurd amount of friends. I only digg stuff I like, but there are lots of users who I've noticed blind digging all of my submissions. So-called 'power users' merely have a fair chance at the front page, but there is a resulting disproportion between the users who exploit the system and those who digg as they should. - steveoco, on 12/31/2008, -4/+36Anonymous submission makes a lot of sense to me. (At least until it gets front page then the submitter can get some glory)
- filovirus, on 12/31/2008, -4/+35How will someone with only a few friends ever be able to compete against the power diggers? Digger please.
- mickstephenson, on 12/31/2008, -0/+30@sgtbutterscotch, you are wrong, commenters like me a benny are the people creating original content on this site, and we are selective about the things we digg, so commenters are important, I do occasionally submit to digg, but the problem is that there is so much in upcoming that when I submit there is no one looking at upcoming, and in a matter of minutes my stuff is 3 pages in upcoming.
No one looks at upcoming because everyone is spamming and blindly digging. You take away the spamming and stories can only ever make their way out of upcoming do to the quality of content, when I first joined digg this is how it worked, articles were judge by quality, not the "popularity" of the submitter. - Ghoztt, on 12/31/2008, -0/+30But... but.... I can't masterbate to my name on a story I didn't write!
How dare you!
/s - dumpyhumpy, on 12/31/2008, -4/+31Still going to be impossible for somebody with *gasp* under 100 "digg friends" to get a FP story.
- skeen07, on 12/31/2008, -2/+29I realize it isn't that simple, but clearly limitations are the way to go. Forums don't let you post a thread every minute, so why should Digg allow people to submit or Digg content 300 times a day?
I agree that working on the promotion algorithm is not the key to solving this problem. And duplicate content is a rather minor issue at this point. The actual problem is not really being addressed - that being that there are power users.
Digg shouldn't want power users. It's the very opposite of what Digg is supposed to be. Do not allow people to submit, and Digg so much.
Sure, it may be that some people feel they can submit, or Digg a little more content than the imposed limitation, but that's how it is with every limitation. You have to set reasonable limitations.
What gives power users their power? Their ability to submit and Digg so much, of course! Digg should not encourage people to be power users, by having top lists and the like. That is *not* diversity.
Isn't it about the content? You've made it all about the karma! If I have a good story, and it is front page worthy, it should have a chance. As of right now, there isn't a chance in hell I could get my story to the front page.
Please don't ignore the solution of imposing reasonable limitations. The only people you're going to piss off through doing this is the power users. Don't be afraid of losing them - when people get wind that they actually have a chance to get to the front page, you'll have more than enough submissions to offset the loss.
As of right now, just remove the submit button for everyone but the power users, because for everyone else it's useless. All your guys' efforts in promoting new stories, making recommendations, etc. - all this hard work you've done to bring different content to people based on their histories, and so on, it's all in vain, because it's all about the power users.
The power users are the one thing that are preventing Digg from doing what it's trying to do, and they can very easily be eradicated with very reasonable limitations. It will work. - sarge96, on 12/31/2008, -2/+29Don't feed us that *****. We're not idiots, or sheep. All this blog post was some vague crap attempting to show that you see the issue. You said a lot of things without actually saying anything. What I wanted to see was promises and a plan. A good plan? Eliminate friends and shouts. All they are is a way to spam the system and they allow a select group of users an undue amount of power.
Give us a plan and a promise, not some vague nonsense. - ZigVicious, on 12/31/2008, -1/+27No, they were quality tech articles at one point, not pictures of cats and lists of things.
- nshady, on 12/31/2008, -7/+33Typical. Submitted by a power user, this story hits the front page in under two hours.
/s - Branchex, on 12/31/2008, -3/+25This is why people don't want Digg bought, a response to an issue brought up within a week. If Yahoo, MS or News Corp. owned Digg it would take at least 6 months before they acknowledged it partially and then come up with some half-assed solution. Google would only be a little better.
- inactive, on 12/31/2008, -4/+25I was really disturbed when I saw that submission disappear. The top-user bury brigade, most likely.
@SRSco: it's time did not expire. There were older articles with less diggs in the top 10 at the time; I checked it myself. - jakash, on 12/31/2008, -9/+29It's good to see that the guys at Digg are actually listening to us through the comments, despite having to put up with all the (generally unconstructive) complaints and rants about power users.
- Ghoztt, on 12/31/2008, -1/+21I hope they do a good job. But I think they need to carry a little bigger stick.
Com'on guys. Some users are just abusing Digg. Anyone else had friends requests from shady people across the world who have over 9000 friends requests in the last 5 minutes, and only 'LOL MY CRAPPY STORY DIGG 4 DIGG' shouts being sent out?
I have. And I want to see the BAN HAMMER being used.
HECK! A one month temp ban would be the best thing ever to happen to some of these idiots. - MavRevMatt, on 12/31/2008, -0/+20True, but something that would help is making the bury -> duplicate actual do something. I don't see anything to suggest that that choice changes anything. If enough people bury something for being a dupe the submitter shouldn't be allowed to submit when dupes are found, whether it's good or not.
- IronTeardrop, on 12/31/2008, -1/+20Hang on, that blog post by Anton is little more than PR speak. Distilled down it amounts to:
1. We finally acknowledge the magnitude of complaints about power users because a large number of you dugg it up and called us out. We will address it as primarily being about duplicate submission detection [ed. note that the submission that sparked this has disappeared off the top].
2. We have no idea how to fix the duplicate submission problem, but stay tuned.
3. Okay, you were also upset about power users abusing the system. We have chosen the weasel-phrase "home page diversity" to try and sugar-coat it.
4. We have even less idea on how to fix this (or don't really care... you figure it out). - wissler, on 12/31/2008, -2/+20Really, it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a fair algorithm. There's politics going on here that we're not being told about.
- inactive, on 12/31/2008, -0/+18The credit for the article should be given to the website that made it. Who cares whether or not the person that submitted it gets to feel special because his name is on the front page? That is not what digg should be about.
- unrealfan, on 12/31/2008, -2/+20not of any measure tho....the amount of blantant dupes from power users vs. poor titles from non power users weighs more on the dupes from power users
- jakash, on 12/31/2008, -4/+22On a more serious note, no, thank -you- Digg, a response and hopefully some action is what a lot of us have been waiting for for some time now.
- KSUdesigner, on 12/31/2008, -11/+28I think putting a cap on the number of articles you could digg in a day is the wrong way to go in my opinion. Get rid of the damn shouts and make submissions anonymous and that will solve the problem right there.
- terrapurus, on 12/31/2008, -2/+18How about a duplicate button next to the comments button. If the count gets above a threshold (10 people report it as duplicate content), then your detection mechanism can compare and contrast the submitted articles against a time frame. If it is found to be a deliberate duplicate within a short time frame (re-submitting after 6 months should be fine as you always get new users who might not have seen the old story), then the duplicate is penalised and all diggs are transferred to the original article.
- ttamshadbolt, on 12/31/2008, -0/+16Although I’ve never had a submission hit the front page I still continue to submit just for those 3 or 4 people who might find it interesting. I also like to read my (legitimate) friends submissions even if they only have <10 diggs...
Don’t stop submitting good content just because it doesn't hit the front page - the real digg users appreciate it -
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