What is Digg?51 Comments
- fyre2012, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"one of Diggs competitors"
why does everything have to be a competition?
/. is a different community, many /.'ers are also Diggers, and vice versa.
They both have their ups and downs.
as much as the mods/editors/submission system at /. suck, i'm not there for the good news, i'm there for the good discussion.
It's hard to get the same type of discussion here due to the way the comments are structured, no threading or reply to.
And last i checked, /. had over 900,000 unique users... the Digg effect will never touch that the way it is for now IMHO... But again, why the competition? Why does Digg need 900,000+ users? Who cares?
Just enjoy it! I do! - Zoobster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Digg's comment systems suck. Hard.
Digg's pages are full of bloat, 50+ javascript files, slow loads.
Slashdot has extreme fanatics for *nix systems.
Slashdot won't ever host a decent MS article.
Digg likes to pretend to hate MS, too.
Digg's editor-free system brings some real turds floating to the top.
Slashdot's moderated system keeps things clean (but *moderated*)
Digg is full of brain-dead, script-kiddie-wannabes.
Digg's recent spikes in activity, that will not sustain.
Slashdot is a good source for *nix stuff, that's it.
Digg is a good source for 500 CSS articles, 324 Photoshop tutorials, that's it.
Digg steals slashdot articles.
Slashdot steals digg articles.
Fark steals from both.
Both steal from Fark.
All three get them elsewhere.
Nobody has it right yet. - Luftwaffle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Haha... digg effect slashdot? You really think digg is a serious threat/competitor to them? Don't get me wrong, Digg has its charms... but just look at all the stupid headlines, descriptions, and mistakes and stuff you get in digg stories. It'll never stand up to the quality that is Slashdot.
Now, a hybrid of the two systems... maybe that could be a threat. Or an improved Digg system... - rm999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2OK I just read the interview and the headline is flamebait. Yeah the interview was interesting, but the headline was obnoxiously misleading (or a jab at slashdot?).
- ForumTroll, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Another Slashdot story on the front page.... The fact that you thought they were just going to roll over and die proves that this article was submitted by a blatant idiot. For the most part, Slashdot and Digg have two very different target audiences and they can and will co-exist with each other. Slashdot is mainly geared towards a much older and more technical crowd. For example, this site will never have computing legends like Bruce Perens, RMS, Tim O'Reilly, Bruce Eckel, Linus Torvalds, Miguel de Icaza, Rob Malda, James Gosling and many others posting comments and having discussions. This site just doesn’t have the same substance and community that people like that are interested in. I like Digg, but the target audiences are very very different.
- cruci, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree with the peeps saying Slashdot is very different from Digg.
I subscribe to both, but with all the other feeds I also subscribe to it is very rare that I see a story on either of them that I haven't already seen linked to by someone else.
When I see something I am interested in on the Digg feed that I haven't seen elsewhere, I will probably visit it and read the first few comments.
If I see something on Slashdot that interests me I will visit it - regardless of whether I have already seen the link or not. Why? Because of the discussion. Sure, there's a lot of junk to wade through sometimes, but their moderation system works. A large number of the posters there are intelligent and/or funny, and some really interesting back-and-forth goes one, not to mention jokes that grow on themselves.
Digg by comparison is a link with a chatbox.
Until Digg gets decent discussions going - which without threads and moderation just isn't going to happen - it will remain (to me at least) just a way of catching up with any links I missed from elsewhere. While Slashdot maintains its worthwhile discussions, it will always be more valuable to me. - zonk3r, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2BTW, Jeff "Hemos" Bates isn't the founder of Slashdot. Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda is. Jeff is a cofounder but Malda started the site...
- vperez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Go to them both as well. I really wish digg did have nested comments. Digg does have a crapload of worthless posts, but sometimes they keep me occupied when I'm bored at work so I won't complain. :)
- jmz668, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Digg seriously needs better posters, better grammar, better spelling and a better comment system.
- pennywisdom2099, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I read both /. and digg through RSS feeds on my google homepage. There are much fewer stories posted to /. and digg has many more links to techy type websites with cool stuff on them, not necessarily news. That being said, /. has much more intelligent discussions which are seen with the nested viewing and moderation. digg is basically a glorified blog as far as comments go.
- vanadaar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1/. and digg are not in competition, I check both every day. I often think of /. as more of a controlled review the facts news site, while digg is more of a force as much news at you as we can, good/credible or not. I like them both. Slashdot is in need of a site revamp though imho.
- addisonj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1its silly to assume ./ would ever "die" its still a tech news powerhouse, and their always will be places for traditional edited news
- rydawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why can't we all just get along!
I have a dream that one day the web community will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all blogs are created equal." I have a dream that one day in the wide world of cyberspace the sons of former /.ers and the sons of former Diggers will be able to sit down together at an online forum of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the Monster called Microsoft, a gargantuan beast, oppressing the world with the heat of injustice and faulty software, will be transformed into an oasis of news, discussion, and proper testing. I have a dream that my fifteen children will one day surf on a discussion forum without crashing their browser, where they will not be judged by their membership to web communities but by the content of their comments. I have a dream today!
I could go on, but that's enough. : P
I hope this isn't plagiarism or copyright infringement or something. Just in case, see Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech - 76ers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just like jalefkowit (and many others), I DONT visit slashdot for information simply because the design of the site SUCKS. Its hard to read text (everything italics) and navigating around is a pain. The colors just plain suck.
I know most developers dont care much about looks/appearance but the information but still, If you are going to present good quality information, atleast present it in a decent way.
If the site looks whack then first assumptions pple get is that the information is whack as well
Slashdot gotta be re-designed else I'll just stick to digg - jalefkowit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Digg could replace Slashdot, at least for me. It has everything Slashdot has and a lot it doesn't.
EXCEPT for one thing: a better comment system.
I don't read Slashdot for the stories that get posted. I read it for the comments the stories generate. There's almost always a fresh and interesting take on the story in there.
Slashdot's comments are so good because their comment system allows moderation -- so good comments bubble up and dumb ones bubble down.
Digg, for all its charms, isn't nearly as good with comments. There's only one thread, and the moderation system is far more primitive. So thoughtful or funny comments get buried under a pile of "OMG THIS SuXXXoRZ!!!"
C'mon Digg, I *want* to stop reading Slashdot. Give us better comments and I might be able to! - 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Slahdot rolling over and dying? Um, that sounds a little like unjustified self-flattery. Slashdot might not be as aesthetically keen as digg is, and the editors might not always exercise an appropriate level of care, but it's far from dying- at least as far as I'm concerned. It's still one of my favorite sites- in some ways I prefer it over digg because the conversations are moderated, meta-moderated, structured, and often contain useful and interesting information. It's also a hell of a lot easier to let someone know just who/what you're referring to in your response. Digg is ok, too, though. I see room for both of them.
- ForumTroll, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@heartless
Notice how I said "substantial affect". Slashdot isn't losing a substantial amount of traffic nor is it gaining a substantial amount. The keyword is “substantial.” Slashdot has remained fairly consistent for quite sometime now. Every once and a while Slashdot releases it traffic reports and they’ve been fairly steady for quite sometime now. Of course, they have some effect on each other but it's not substantial enough to warrant asking questions to the creators about it. Lots of people visit both sites and I’m sure will continue to do so.
Furthermore, the two questions you just sited, IMO, are not good questions to ask in an interview like this. Usually, these interviews only get a fixed number of questions they can ask. Digg has not had a substantial influence on the team behind Slashdot as the programming behind Slashdot is open source and also has been widely known for a long time. Want to know how I know this? Because I’ve personally contributed code to Slashcode as have many others through Sourceforge. All of Slashdot’s current renovation plans have been planned since before the inception of Digg. Perhaps, you should go take a look at the mailing lists for Slashcode to further solidify my point. Both of the questions you’ve posed in your above post have blatantly obvious answers. Think about it, what do you think he’s going to say? As for the 2.8 million dollars, that’s awesome for Digg, and I’m happy for them, but for a company like OSDN that’s nothing.
P.S. If this site would release its source code I, like many others, would also contribute to it. *cough* nested comments *cough* - prairieson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"As Digg has grown since August so has /. Is that because of Digg or is there something else brewing for tech news websites?"
Yeah, I believe it's probably called "school started". Websites that I've managed over the years typically see a bump in august, and the stats indicate that it's primarily a result of the new school year. - mork571, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What a poor summary the poster used. Why is this a competition to you? That's pretty childish.
Also, don't kid yourself into thinking the /. folks are staying up at night worrying about Digg.. not yet anyways. the two are orders of magnitude apart in terms of volume and traffic.
The quality of discussions on /. is also a lot higher - and another thing that makes slashdot better is they'll never have a story on their front-page like this, "here's an interview with a competitor of ours.. they're running scared.."
roll over and die? Give me a break. - heartless_, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Very good interview. The question that I wish they would of asked would obviously deal with Digg and how it affects /.
That is the question people would of really cared about, but none the less this is some good insight for the more casual readers out there. For the hardcore /.rs this is nothing :P - heartless_, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Actually there is traffic reports out that show both Digg and /. growing together with Digg growing more % wise since August. August was also Macworld and is attributed to the increase, but the school point is also valid.
My questions are perfectly valid. Even if it is not *the founder* of /. he was very influential in its creation. To think he has no comment regarding Digg is ridiculous. /. got where it is because of how it was built for people. The same principal that is driving Digg.
I understand how interviews work, but with Digg being a recent topic of discussion due to the investment it would of made sense to ask about it. For all you or I know... they could be sitting up there looking at something Digg is doing that they like, but haven't been asked for their thoughts on it.
You are simply taking it that I am trying to doomcast /. when in fact I just want to know what some FORMER PIONEERS think of a new and exciting way to produce the same sort of news. - Anth, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"It'll never stand up to the quality that is Slashdot."
HAHAHA!
Dupes?
Bogus Science stories?
Misleading headlines?
Not that DIGG is much better, but we're 100% editor free. Which has its advantages and disadvantages. I'd like to see some better QC of what stories get dugg to the FP. - wingo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0for me /. is totally different. i didn't even /. because of the gui and the hundreds of comments. what it was/is good for is if you google firewall and /. then you probably find a /. thinghy with url's to other/better/plugins to a firewall. have not seen that happen here on digg.
- heartless_, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Ahh ForumTroll but how do you know? Are you the man behind either of the sites? No. So shut up and get in line.
Digg and /. have a very large cross over population... to say they don't have some sort of effect on each other is just ignorant. You are just assuming I meant that Digg is having a negative effect on /. Assuming is bad... and you look like an ass doing it.
I for one would like to know how much traffic is shared between the two. As Digg has grown since August so has /. Is that because of Digg or is there something else brewing for tech news websites?
I would of asked "Has Digg had any influence on the team behind /. and do you view them as a competitor or a friend?" or maybe "Whats your view on the recent investment ($2.8 mil) in Digg.com?" - thing-fish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very silly, the idea that Slashdot has to "roll over and die" because of Digg. Digg doesn't replace Slashdot, imo. Neither Digg nor Slashdot replaces Fark. They're all different and serve different purposes because each has different headline subject matter and different ways of handling comments.
Here's a site for you: for headlines, it that lets you link to stories on any subject matter (tag-based), allows for both a headline and a summary for those links, is user-moderated and perhaps editable so that bad tagging/grammar can be corrected. For comments, it has a threaded, user-moderated/rated comment system and the users can set toggleable thresholds so they can see preferred comments or all comments. For the "front page," each user creates their own based on subscribing to tags and/or stories dugg by certain users and/or number of diggs (setting my own criteria for promotion). Users could also see everything submitted.
Do all that and then you've got a site that can maybe replace all three. And by the way, a site that attracts users outside the tech sphere. Re-reading this, I guess I'm asking for a combo of Digg, Slashdot, Fark, del.icio.us and a wikki. In the meantime, I'm happy to pull rss feeds of all those sites together and dip into each of the communities to assist with digging, moderation, meta-moderation, and just posting content and comments. - ForumTroll, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@heartless
You wanted them to ask how Digg affects Slahdot? Talk about a waste of a question... Digg doesn't affect Slashdot at all. Like I said above the target audiences are very different and people will still continue to read both sites. The reason that Slashdot doesn't discuss Digg is because Digg has absolutely no substantial effect on Slashdot and likewise Slashdot has no substantial effect on Digg. It's completely pointless to ask such moronic questions when anyone with the slightest form of intelligence already knows the answer.
These constant front page stories about Slashdot speak very poorly about the intelligence level of the people that read this site and Digg these type of stories. - Nullifidian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I see very little difference between Slash and Digg, the same extremists that rant away on /. are also here. I'd actually say there are more here than there. imo
- pbojovic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0rm -rf /.
:-) - Dotnaught, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0There's a podcast of the interview here:
http://www.lot49.com/ - bignate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0quote:
but just look at all the stupid headlines, descriptions, and mistakes and stuff you get in digg stories. It'll never stand up to the quality that is Slashdot.
--
Are you serious? /. is notorious amongst its users for posting duplicate stories and stories that are intentional flaimbait/traffic-whoring (see anything from i,cringely). I actually switched to Digg from /. for several reasons:
1) The damn +5 funny modding of all the cliche jokes. 123,profit, ms sucks, beowolf cluster, etc. Yeah I get it. Those jokes have been on /. for about, i don't know, a HUNDRED years already. They're not effing funny anymore.
2) It always felt to me like the slashdot crowd was a bunch of old school CS professors and mainframe admins.
3) The colors are BURNING MY EYES. The damn video game stories have a blue inner bevel/gradient theme. ahhhhhhhhhhh
I am very pleased with Digg. Seems like a younger crowd, there's more stories, and a better mix of fun with serious stuff. The layout is superb, and there's a great Podcast that goes along with it. I'm down. - Smokezz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0myskja: And Digg has such a quality userbase? All I see on Digg lately is people flaming other people, people flaming Slashdot, people flaming Microsoft, Linux, or Apple every time their name comes up... Every time there is a post, the same bunch of people find something to flame the poster about. Then if its a dupe, holy *****, you have to get at least 10 people to post that its a dupe. Yeah, Digg is full of such quality people too.
- Badfysh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0When Kevin Rose interviewed Rob Malda, I didn't see any bitterness or resentment - They seemed to be getting on very well. This whole idea of one against the other and picking sides is ridiculously childish.
- binarypower, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0/. is /crap
it's a pain to navigate and looks completely ugly... - avg_bear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0For those who actually read the article:
InformationWeek: What makes a good Slashdot post?
Bates: It's being able to state things well, actually being able to write and form coherent sentences, which is a surprising task for many people, far more challenging than one would think it is. But also having good links ... not just having one link to the story but if there's supporting information. This is the World Wide Web. Let's use it for that. ... The other major characteristic is trying to remove, or make obvious, bias. ... Because what we're trying to encourage is the discussion. ... I don't want to host a flame war, I want to host a discussion. - molotov, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I find the title "The future of /. ..." to be very misleading. This interview is more about the past and present than it is about the future.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Linus Torvalds hates Slashdot. 'nuff said.
- emiles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Article seems good - I wouldn't be all that proud of being the father of blogs, however. Yeah, I guess there are a few cool blogs out there though, but why do they have to be called "blogs"?
- OhBrian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I thought the article was very interesting. The interview was well done.
I read both digg and /. daily.
It's funny reading through the comments here. One of the things I dislike most about /. are the "trolls". Too many /. comments are just plain crap.
People here in these comments have commented on the "quality" of /.! Where is the that quality? More ads? More ""first post" messages? How many /. accounts does each reader have? I know that I have at least 3 due to unrecoverable passwords or other issues? Do accounts there ever age out?
Who cares if /. is based on open source development? - jediboytj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Slashwho?
;-) - sfacets, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Why oh why doesn't Slashdot update that rediculous (not to mention ugly) design? Yay, what's the point of using css if your not going to change the appearance?
- ham_man, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Competition is a beautiful thing... :-)
- maverick999, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Slashdot always has old news. I can usually find the same stories on digg two days earlier...
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http://www.caseypicker.com - davymac, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1quality of slashdot? i'm sorry.. i love slashdot.. but their stories are full with just as many retarded ass ***** typos as the digg posts. Just cuz there are digg has 20 times the amount of stories slashdot has, doesnt mean you dont get any good submissions
- rm999, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Why would they "roll over and die?" I was under the assumption that they are still doing fine...
- stanleyfresh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1....Has anyone dubbed Kevin Rose "The Slashdot Killer" yet?
- echimu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0heh slashdot is slashdot and digg is .. i love both and both comes with its pros and cons
- dss88, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Ignore Heartless he doesn't have a clue and honestly thinks that the Slashdot community thinks about Digg on a regular basis.
- glitchbit, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0phef, I think slashdot is over rated, sure I heard of it like once sometime probably around 2000-2003 but never even went to the site but maybe 2 or 3 times 2004-2005. It means about as much to me as the over rated blog. I find sites like neowin and shortnews to be digg a lot more interesting and the site layout at slashdot o0 lol probably has not changed since 1997. No telling how much wasted cpu cycles are going on in their server room.
- myskja, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0"It'll never stand up to the quality that is Slashdot."
Quality? Slashdot...? Slashdot is basically a rat infested pit of hell, that's what it is. "+5 funny" and "Bill Gates = borg" related stories day in and day out year after year after year after year. There is nothing "quality" about that, it's tired insanity IMO. HOWEVER, in between all the garbage there is a few moments of gold. But IMO it's not worth the effort of maneuvering between all the extremist nerds, article posters and forum posters. *shudders* - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0wow dude crazy and heres a link for a xbox 360 sign up comp a offer legit site
http://xbox360s.freepay.com/?r=23432821
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