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117 Comments
- trghpy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+36Digg is what digg is, and digg is good.
Keep it simple and don't waste efforts chaising after the fad of the day. - Ibox, on 10/12/2007, -4/+33"Another way the wild growth of Digg might affect the community is user interaction."
I don't think adding a chat line and a Myspace feel to digg will help anything. I think the anonymity is what keeps the comments real and unedited. - Billiam627, on 10/12/2007, -6/+28Unfortunately the growth of digg is leading to an increased presence of special interests who are banding together off on their own websites and then coming here to try and advance their own viewpoints (LGF, Ron Paul, and 9/11 Truth immediately spring to mind). Luckily the majority of digg users can balance against these obnoxious idiots...
- BrokenClock, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27Hasn't Digg's growth already affected the community?
I remember when I started using Digg. There were tech stories with well thought out comments and debates. Now I see a lot of "LOL @ u n00bz0rz!" - BunnieLebowski, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23I'd be interested to see how many of these 1 million users are active users. I bet most of them are one time users who came here to push their blog or story and never came back again. The core of daily diggers is what makes this place great.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20You're lying, there were never tech stories with well thought-out comments and debates. Yes, all stories were tech-related at the beginning, but the comments thing? You're way off base here.
The Digg community began as a group of Kevin Rose fans from his Tech TV / G4 / Whatever days. These guys aren't the Slashdot crowd, they're the "hip" geeks. As such, this site was like a computer geek version of Fark from the very beginning.
This website never had what you claim it had. It's always been like this. The only difference now is that there are more stories (more varied, too) and more comments. - marshall007, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22anybody else remember the first episodes of diggnation...
when 1,000 diggs on a story was insane? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15you know whats interesting, is when I read the comments I never (almost never) look at the name of the poster... and if I do, I forget it in about 10 seconds... adding to the anonymity
- marshall007, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14"The primitive profiles that Digg users sport don’t offer much information about who they really are, as well."
I don't know about this, I think it is just fine. We don't want digg turning into a web site that is more dedicated to viewing other peoples profiles than digging, submitting, and viewing stories. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Just imagine in future stories with 10.000 DIGGs on the front page. :)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Billiam you couldn't be more right. Those people are entirely ruining the whole digg experience for me.
If anything, people pushing their ***** political agenda has been digg's Achilles heel. Get rid of the politics section, and we're back to the good ol' days. - fkr3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I don't think digg has a million users. There's ~2500 stories submitted a day. Does that sound like a million users' effort? A *really* popular story gets 300 comments and a few thousand diggs - again, does that sound like a million users?
The estimate of a million users was very generous and must have included a whole lot of inactive and duplicate accounts. Let's not kid ourselves about this figure any longer - there just isn't a million people participating on this site.
The community changes are bad I think. Digg's trying to diversify under one umbrella when what they should be doing is launching seperate, parallel sites with a common membership system. Digg.com has completely lost it's focus and is essentially "i-am-bored.com" now, and obviously there's demand for that, and there's demand for a video clip version of digg, and a politiical version etc etc.
Trying to cram in vastly different topics which interest very, very different audiences on the one site just isn't going to work forever - either the news & intelligent discussion users, or the political guys, or the ADD kids will eventually be pushed out of the site.
It's already not working to a great extent I think. Who still comes here for actual news, rather than to get the latest gossip / viral video / etc? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12what community? the usage of this website is an anonymous one, for most of its users. the concept of digging is anonymous and collective... kind of contrasts a community, which is a set of *individuals* (with established and well known identities).
- quick5pnt0cobra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Digg's growth already has affected the community. This site was an awesome place to come for the latest tech news. These days however it's mostly filled with political, and religious BS and top ten lists.
- NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I don't see why it's necessary for Digg to keep reminding me I have no friends. The reminder on the right was bad enough, now they have another one at the top. I'm looking forward to "Hey, other people on digg have lots of friends, where are your friends?" popup windows in the near future.
And what about that "LAMP 4 LIFE" bit you see every time digg can't hold its ***** together? Sounds like something a poser would say... aka Kevin 'I can't code HTML' Rose.
So yes, growth will affect the digg community, if you haven't already noticed. Largely due to the maintainers of the community. - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9"what community?"
The community that diggs up any story that bashes sony, or supports the wii, ubuntu, apple, atheism, or boobies? The fact that these things are constantly dugg attracts more users with similar tastes. If you built an exact clone of digg, and a different community took to it (say, middle aged women), a totally different set of stories would be popular.
Digg is the definition of a community driven site. To suggest that it has no community is absurd. - ArmyOfFun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Unfortunately, filtering out politics doesn't affect digg spy. If you use digg spy and click on the upcoming tab, I'd say 80% of the activity is related to politics, with LGF activity taking up the lion's share. I tried posting to those types of stories in the past, but if you're being contrary to the opinion of the regulars, you just get dugg down and yelled at. Few diggers want an actual discussion.
- Allanon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6For me Digg is about content, I use Digg to read the latest stories and I read the comments to learn what other people think about the stories. So I agree a better search engine, tags, and improved comment section would improve Digg. But I don't come to Digg looking to make friends, there are better sites for that. So I don't agree adding a message system or better ways to make friends would improve the site.
- Sc0rian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6i agree with you..
i've been a digg user now for 2years and 4months, the website has seriously changed.. the one thing that digg really lacks is search..
also WHY did they take away search in your profile? so you cant search your dugg stories.. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr - dreicher, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Are we on the same Digg?
- SIDSI, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I sure hope digg's growth is benign and easily removed. Its a reminder to all of us to do monthly checks.
- TheNik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It's fairly annoying, I agree. I don't give a ***** who invited who to Digg, or anything like that.
They should at least give us an option to turn it off, if not just remove it entirely. Maybe once we put an email address in our friends field they will start sending periodic spams reminding that person to register now(!!!). That would make Digg real cool. - Wonkanobi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Digg has seen tremendous growth thanks to it's brilliant simplicity.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. - dreicher, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Digg has been estimated to be comprised of 50% atheist/agnostic. I think that quite a few of those are just "rebellious" teens trying to goat people into an argument, but I (as a Christian) don't find them overwhelming. Certainly, I deal with more atheistic viewpoints on Digg than in the real world, but (once you sort out the obvious flamebait) it helps to continually cause me to question my faith...and I don't think that is a bad thing.
- baltimoretim, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Yeah, I've turned off politics and other categories that political stories sometimes slosh into. The political threads are infuriating, particularly the ones about the Middle East, which turn into "My god is better than your god" flamefests almost immediately upon posting.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Less than 40,000 had dugg more than 1 or two stories"
Ever heard of the lurker phenomenon? The vast majority of a site's users never even register, much less log in and comment.
http://www.well.com/conf/vc/16.html
On *any* community driven site, the top 10-20% of users contribute 99% of the content. The other 80% only consume content. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It is far less than 250,000. Maybe that many are not actual duplicates/multiple. But about 1/10 of that 250,000 actually visit more htan once a week, if not once a month.
That 750,000 is not taking into account people who signed up because they had a strong opinion on one story, and then never came back.
When the total number of sign ups was around 650,000, I looked through the user list, sorting by comment. Out of 650,000 users, less than 40,000 had 2 or more comments. Same with sorting by number of stories dugg. Less than 40,000 had dugg more than 1 or two stories. Going up the list to find where there were more than 5 comments or dugg stories brought me all the way up to about 24,000.
So less than 6% stayed on Digg for more than one day. And about 3.5% were at all "regular" visitors. And that doesn't take into account duplicate accounts from people who either left or got banned after several Diggs.
If anything, this trend INCREASED as Digg grew more mainstream, as the more mainstream people are more likely to hit and run any site. - dogstar0125, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It would be nice to see a broader demographic on digg. From the stories that get dug up, it seems that this site has a very specific demographic -- specifically young techy single males. Plus some special-interest communities that manage to influence popularity of specific issues.
- Odweaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Digg was already affected by user growth, just take a look at my block list and topic list.
- skwead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You say community a lot. I don't think it means what you think it means.
- JoeBaynham, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5More users means more stories on the homepage so stories will be at the top of the homepage one minute and then 20 minutes later on page 4 and more people means slower loading speeds.
- origclubsoda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What community? All we do is attack eachother all day long.
- SailRacer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It will change because the makeup of its users will change. Evolution baby!
- quantumHobbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well sometimes we join together against Microsoft and the RIAA. Sort of like Greece during the Peloponnesian War. Then like Sparta and Athens we will beat the crap out of each other.
An overly heroic image of Diggers who sit at the computer all day eating Doritos. - dreicher, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6No, actually they tend to turn into "No god is better than your god is better than my god"
- dwight0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3the crowd was full of smart people, and now its starting to get fuller of idiots.
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You're trying too hard.
- fkr3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah ... most of them'll finish puberty in 4 or 5 years and then it'll be a grownup site!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5kelly:
Two points:
1) If there was a theology section on Digg, every single article there would be flame bait, and every single discussion would be a giant flamewar. Why would you ever want to see something like this?
2) What the hell does science have to do with religion? Science is the description, through observation and experimentation, of the world we live in. Religion is a type of philosophical faith which requires no observations or experimentations because it's something completely different. - looksliketrent, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@LonesomeFighter
In the context of the billions of years of existence, a month could be seen as "soon." - CourtesyFlush, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5There are a great many activists on digg who attempt to bias things toward their viewpoint.
I'm more of a fulcratic thinker. Balance is the name of the game. For this reason, I won't bury a story by forming judgments based from whence it originated. I judge on accuracy.
From my experiences on digg, the leftish blogs are just as guilty of pushing inaccurate propaganda to the front page than any other group on digg. They are also just as apt to maliciously bury stories that shed unfavorable light on their pet agendas.
I consider people such as this to be close minded and dangerous to intellectual freedom.
Frankly, I don't like partisan diggers blindly mobbing the digg count and deciding what everyone should read. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I hate when things get fuller of idiots.
- bigapple666, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What Community??? Commenting on submitted stories doth not a community make. There isn't even threaded posting to keep conversations going. I STILL have no clue why I could possibly need or want to see what anyone else has Dugg, so what's the point of adding a 'friend'?
Digg is not about community. I think a community aspect would be great, but it isn't here yet. Something as simple as wanting to pose a statement or question a community as knowledgable about technology as the Digg community is not possible unless I start my own blog, ask the question on the blog, submit it to Digg and hope that it gets dugg up high enough that people start commenting on it and answering my question. - laserblazer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You're right.
- fkr3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I would be surprised if digg has more than about 25,000 active users. Generously there's maybe 100,000 people who visit and participate irregularly but with the # of comments, submissions and votes there's nothing to suggest a very high number of people are around.
For example, when a popular story is elevated to the front page it gets a whole lot of diggs quickly - a whole lot being several hundred - and typically a 2 digit number of comments. That strongly suggests there's only a low 4 digit number of members on the site at any time, and outside of work hours it feels like a lot less. Granted a story is only going to interest some percentage, but if there's a million users then each story must interest on average about 0.5% of members which doesn't sound feasible. - AllnightChemist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@hdtvdust, et al
I have to agree, that the core active user base is small. The fact that I can go into certain threads on certain topics and recognize several of the one hundred or so people commenting by their usernames (and not just Zaibatsu and Supernova17) and know what they'll say and what they've dugg tells me--other than that it tells me I spend too much time on digg--digg isn't a million-user megalopolis, it's more like a medium-sized suberb. - CourtesyFlush, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And....it appears multitasking as gotten the best of me.
I misread the post and hopped tough when I shouldn't have.
I'll get back to what I should be doing and apologize profusely for being a total dick. - CourtesyFlush, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"To object to people doing exactly that is to object to digg's one strength. If you want news that's filtered to represent your interests, go read some moderated blog somewhere."
It appears I'm not free to express my opinion here as long as it isn't favorable to the agenda of the activist mob.
How about you go ***** yourself and stop trying to tell me where to surf?
And I'll gladly continue to speak out against partisan diggers who game the system and bury stories based on nothing but pure bigotry and spite. - commandos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+31 million users ? or you mean 1 million fake user ? i dont think there is even 150k users .
- quantumHobbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21) If there was a theology section on Digg, every single article there would be flame bait, and every single discussion would be a giant flamewar. Why would you ever want to see something like this?
At least with a religion section the flamewar would be confined to one section and out of my way. I go to LSU where we have a section of campus called free speech alley where basically anyone can say anything they want to on soapbox. Half the time it's filled with crazy Fundamentalist preachers telling everyone that they are going to hell and atheist students telling them they are stupid. Once in a blue moon rational debate emerges. The rest of the time I can avoid the insanity by taking a different route to class. Maybe Digg should have a free speech alley for the Religion flamewar. -
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