What is Digg?92 Comments
- jayadelson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19I'd prefer you let the content rule. Digg what is good. Bury what you don't like.
- thedove, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20i like how they brought in calacanis...that tool is so obvious. digg has the critical mass so it comes with bigger growing pains. if netscape had the audience digg has they would have THE SAME problem. since they don't have the eyeballs, he just uses that to his advantage and he knows that. this is just his chance to try and entice top digg users to netscape...obviously they're getting good stories submitted, but nobody to "vote" them.
remember calacanis' blog post b/c if/when they hit a critical mass and the SAME users are strong-arming themselves to the homepage every day he might be singing a different tune. - blake10, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19to be honest, i don't what to think....digg is kind of between a rock and a hard place...the masses are crying foul and the top users feel like they're being penalized. and these guys are the ones who spend the most time on the site. it's really a tough call. i really think that both sides of this AT LEAST need to recognize the difficult position digg is in. it really isn't possible to please everybody.
- Octavious, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16calacanis is an ass...a businessman, but he's dirty...the linking schema of weblogs, inc. is very very suspect. they link at the last possible moment to the original source and interlink with older stories.
- flag564, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15"Talk about irony... what's the point of busting your butt to get to the high-level positions on a site like digg, if it doesn't come with a certain amount of prestige? You worked harder than everyone else, and have made contacts with people who respect your journalistic expertise."
Are you serious? You cut and paste stories for God's sake. Your no more of a flipping journalist than a guy carving graffiti on the men's room wall. You didn't write the stories nor research them. You just copied the URL and wrote a brief blurb.
Busting your butt? Dude, get a job. No one hired you to post stories, why on Earth would you expect rewards for doing so? - scottmoss, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14If they had kept on the current path digg would be history in a matter of time....
- flag564, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Just because a select group of people spend their life here doesn't mean that they should get a defacto moderator status. They are able to in essence moderate the site through group digging and burying. Once they reach such a high status, you basically see nothing but their submissions all the time.
That's not what this site was supposed to become. If the "elites" don't like it, then they can get a real job. - cyclo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Yeah what's with ego tripping/self promoting Digg is great Digg is number 1 type stuff? Meantime stories that are somewhat critical of Digg disappear in the black hole. I myself have stopped submitting stories to Digg as I have realized it is becoming a futile excercise... I believe many members who share the same experience are doing the same thing. Digg started great but IMHO has been sliding downwards lately especially after the 2.0 release. Ok you can start modding this down too...
- positron, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Here's a novel idea: democracy = all diggers equal = no 'weighting' = 1 digger, 1 digg. Seriously, what democracy have you ever heard of where some people's votes count more than others simply because they've voted for more winners and/or won more elections? Maybe there's something I'm not taking into account here, but the weighting system doesn't make any sense to me. Sandboxing new users for a short period? Sure, that makes sense but the rest just doesn't in my mind. The system we have now in essence is saying that 'All diggers are equal, but some are more equal than others'.
- gwjc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10http://krose.typepad.com/kevinrose/2006/07/calacanis.html :
"As for the top users controlling digg, yes, on digg quality content rules. If users are consistently posting quality stories, they will make the homepage. Let me give you the real numbers from the database. As of right now there are 444,809 registered digg users. Since launch there have been 38,848 popular homepage stories, of which 11,943 were from the 'Top 100'. That means historically less than 1/3 of homepage stories come from the 'Top 100'." - wilf_brim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Yea, that works if you don't know what everybody else is doing. In this case, you do. Groups of users appear to be acting as a "cartel". This defeats the "wisdom of the masses" that Digg is supposed to have.
- Ikioi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10It's exactly like Google ranks.
First, they ranked everyone the same. Ad spammers took advantage, created thousands of phantom sites all promoting each other. Digg is now facing the exact same problem.
Like Google, they must adapt or die. It's not a question of whether they WANT to or not. They HAVE to.
They talk about submitter rewards. Well, yeah, sorta. And sure, one person, one vote, and all that. But if the same 100 people want to keep reading stories about Ponies, it doesn't mean the rest of us want it on the front page as well. The weight must go towards those who digg stories that others actually like. In a way, you are being rewarded as a voter for digging stories that others like. You are being rewarded as a good editor. And, if you keep submitting stories about Ponies, well that submitter and those editors that think those are "good news" aren't going to see huge rewards because they have an audience of 100.
In other words, this will also promote higher quality news. If Digg ever wants to really put on that title of being better than the New York Times, it really has to make these changes to be taken seriously by the "leeching masses that just want a good quality news source". It's nothing but goodness for me.
Of course, you have the people who will moan and jump ship because their precious little fiefdom is going away. They can no longer push quantity over quality. Yeah, I'm really crying in my cereal here. [/sarcasm]
If you don't have a good story it just won't make front page... unless you can get a group of friends to all support each other and force the crap to the front page or close enough to just need a few more people to edge it on. You are now penalized for this because instead of editting your own crap out, now you force the entire community to wade through it. Good riddence to bad rubbish I say. - gmillerd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9No, just their front page speed.
- gd007, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10move in the good direction.
- chiatar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9...and wired is heard to scream "Me too".
- blackmariah, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11It's like this... if being a "top user" on some random internet site is that damn important to you... you have problems. Go outside.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12All I have to say to the old Top Users is--
HAHA!!! - FlyboyP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Weighting is used in all kinds of statistics to even out imbalances in a population. If a small group here is consistently digging each other's stories to the front page, that's overly influential and it defeats the purpose of Digg. Giving weight to population diversity is the right move. This isn't a straight democracy, nor should it be. Digg is just a way to rank interesting content on the internet.
- CTRLALTDLT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8And alot of the Top 100 joined in 2004 such as me. Most of our stories made the front page back when you only needed 10-20 diggs.
- mikew101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I think Digg should change the homepage. Honestly one of the major problems is that a lot of users simply don't digg upcoming stories, but stay focused on digging homepage stories, and commenting on them. While this is great to find general tech news, and some really great discussions it would be better if the devoted half of the homepage to featured stories that were dugg up, and half to brand new submitted stories to give those stories from mostly regular people a better chance to get promoted.
Honestly I see no problem with the top 30 diggers getting lots of stories promoted they work hard to do that, but the best way in my opinion to get more regular users submitted stories to the featured stories is to shine more light on the upcoming stories. And if a user hates seeing upcoming stories on the home page make it collapsible so that they don't have to look at it. - gwjc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Actually I guess an OT comment vote would possibly help.. maybe the comments could be bounced to a new thread after a certain threshold of OT votes. Or digg could just stick with the existing model and people could thumbs down comments they thought were cutting. Though, I still think a thread collapse would be nice and help reduce clutter.
- gwjc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6 @andrebrown:
The ability to collapse threads would help; it's not exactly a new idea. Also, isn't an OT comment cutting into a thread, to complain about people cutting into a thread a bit hypocritical? - digital1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7One thing that Digg should start doing is put all stories about Digg into its own section. The front page is becoming crowded with stories just about Digg. This also seems to be a source of abuse, anyone lately can say anything about Digg and have it promoted.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6the only reason this story, and the other story which talked about digg getting rigged (which didn't get modded off the front pagge) is that digg had already decided on a course of action, mainly, re-programming of their ranking algorithms. stories that make it to the front page that certin people don't like will still me modded off.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5wired asks Digg's main rival to evaluate the changes Digg is making? hilarious. Can't wait to see when Apple expands their ITunes store to include movies, and they ask Rob Glaser and the Napster dude for their unbiased opinions. "Wow, Apple is making a HUGE mistake...opens the door for us again, thats for sure"
- celcho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5democracy is a terrible system except that it's the best one we've found. i mean this is classic example of it. this is a great system, except that it isn't always perfect, and in this case it probably was critically flawed, but a better equillibrium has hopefully been created now.
- NinjaNoodles, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Agreed, quite well said walkerblackwell.
As an old school long-time fan and promoter of Kevin's efforts and accomplishments, I think this is the next step in the natural progression and adaptation to "growing pains" here at Digg, I'm all for these changes and improvements to the user experience. I'm actually quite excited to see the level of success Jay, Kevin and gang have achieved in all this, three cheers for all Digg team players! ^_^ - CiXeL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5the input of an average person in a democracy drops as the number of people increases
the only real way to save digg since they're hell bent on accomodating every single demographic is to fracture it into multiple sites.
its a proven fact that small groups of scientists get more done. its a well known fact that making decisions by committee takes forever and winds up with half-assed results. tribes in south america split when you reach around 7 people under one hut, etc etc etc - walkerblackwell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Democracy always shifts as countries grow in order to accommodate everyone in an even way. This is just more of the same. It's as if digg just lost a tooth and the next one is growing in tougher and stronger. The top diggers have nothing to fear. If they are up to what they do, their will stay top diggers. Someone has to. As long as they submit quality stories, people will keep them on top. These changes are just a way of insuring that they will continue to submit quality stories.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Digg could use a thousand improvements. The algorithm was the least that was bothering me. The comment system needs to be addressed so that it's easier to read and it's more difficult for malicious gangs of users to mod down comments.
When someone mods a comment down, their name should be listed, the way the friends' +mod names are listed. Or they shouldn't be able to mod something down without writing at least one comment in the topic first, etc.
We also need some way to clear out the numerous inactive deadbeats in our friends list. If you have 50+ friends, it's difficult to manage them right now. - gypsi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+51 user = 1 vote is mainly reliable only when the votes are anonymous
- f00xx0riz3r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Espc. since its a blog on wired. not really wired news..
- afrazkhan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I'm for a solution to the problem, but the proposed solution is critically flawed. It relies on group diversity. To sum it up; if the algorithm finds that there's a group of people who seem to digg the same stories, then their diggs will be worth less (on that story). Put this way, you can probably see where I'm going next.
It's natural that there will be groups of users digging the same story, since there will be groups with the same interests. I'm a Nintendo fan, so I've quite likely dugg the same Nintendo stories as some other Nintendo fans. The algorithm then, would accidentally discriminate against us. That's just an example, but hopefullly you can see what I mean.
Of course I could be giving the programmers far too little credit, and they've already considered the problem I've stated. - MoneyShot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Sounds simple, but that would just introduce new problems. The most obvious is that popular stories would just logarithmically get more popular. Sort of a "tyranny of the masses" thing. And we all know that popular != good. Using a weighted system helps counterbalance that effect. But of course things can be improved, which sounds exactly what is happening. I don't understand all the fuss.
- CiXeL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5we need less stories per day.
its like movies. its a quality verses quantity issue.
disney set out to make more movies for more profit and suddenly everyone realized their stuff was crap and it wasnt 'special' anymore.
id rather have a very few number of good topics per day than a whole crapload of snakes on a plane! or anti-whatever propaganda. - Ademuth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That seems like a solution that would work. However i do see one problem. Users would then watch "Digg spy" for upcoming stories that are gaining popularity and digg (or digg and comment) those stories simply for the purpous of increasing there weight as a voter.
- geekee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The problem with digg is that for it to work effectively, a lot of people need to look through the sybmitted stories and vote on them. Absent this, it's easy to form small gangs to push various agendas to get specific stories on the front page. If it took 100,000 votes to get a story on the front page, all this gaming the system stuff would be a non-issue.
- Ikioi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@Ademuth
Well, the problem isn't the previous weight. The problem is numbers. It's not Donald Trump verses Joe Sixpack. It's Bob Blogger and his friends Jane, Tom, Rick, Mark, Rachel, Michael, and Michelle who all vote on his stories after he posts them. When news gets slower over the night at Digg, you'll see stories jump to the front page with 20 diggs or less. They often linger until the morning, and they get 20 other people who tag along to certain stories.
Just like the example about stories about Ponies, you'll have a core group (working together or by coincidence) who will always digg up stories on certain topics. You see large groups always digging news about Google. This is usually in the hundreds, which goes along with what most follow in tech. On the other hand, you'll see completely worthless crap pop up a lot about topics that nobody but those diggers care about.
The site admins see all this data. If they see a bunch of 50 dugg stories that only got 50 reads to the site, then there's a problem with that story. A 1:1 ratio story shouldn't get to the front page, imho. Now, if you get a 10:1 ratio story of 50 diggs and 500 reads, then you can understand it making the front page.
I don't know what their exact scheme is, but I can see it working this way: If a story gets X diggs, the weight of those diggs is cross with the number of reads of the story (and maybe reads of the stories of past diggs). So, if 50 people digg a story, but only 50 read it, it will not make front page. But, if 10 people digg a story and 100 people read it, then it will make the front page. What use is the digg function then? Well, if you have a history of digging 1:1 stories, your vote weight goes down. If on the other hand you have a history of digging 10:1 stories, your vote weight goes back up.
By this method, they are rewarding editors (the diggers, not submitters) who digg stories other people actually like.
Example: The Wii. Let's assume (and I like the Wii, so just take this as example) 500 follow it religiously here. They digg anything and everything about it. If half those stories are poorly read (1:1), those people get their weight taken away. They don't know how to pick stories others like. They can digg, but they can't as easily push a story to the front page. Others with more weight must also digg the story to push it up.
And, by this example, we would stop seeing 15 stories every day about the Wii, and only those that interest a wider audience will make it to the front page. Again, I like Wii, but I like others aren't actually ready many of those stories unless it's a really good story or hot rumour. We don't read "OMG, Wii rumored by unknown blogger to come with a penile attachment with same movement sensors as the joystick!"
Ok, I take that back, I'd probably read that. ;) - indy500fan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6That's what I said in one of the other threads. One User = One Vote.
- Brahma, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The way the algorithm should work is by giving weightage to relations. For ex: If X is digging a story of Y the X-Y relation's weight is 1. If X again diggs a story of Y the weight becomes 0.95. And so on. So, if X and Y work in group, the relation weightage keeps decreasing for every digg of X to Y. The story with the maximum weightage then should make it to the front page. I don't think that should be that difficult to implement.
- captainlude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4but it failed (to solve this problem) - stories should be sorted by the content and not by the people posting them
- khyberkitsune, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ flag564
What makes you think the "elites" are even old enough to get jobs, considering the quality of some of these stories? - deut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3actually cyclo, I suspect there are a lot more digg users that agree with you than you think.
Like you, I stopped wasting my time submitting articles to digg. Even if I see a fantastic story, what's the point? Unless I get on BloodJunkie's or dirtyfratboy's friends list, it really has no hope in hell of ever seeing the front page.
Shame really. - Darylicked, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4exelent solution, ingenious idea. i would have just done something to require more votes to burry
- hardkoretom, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6god, about half of you who made comments were complaining about how undemocratic digg is being when they switch over to the new algorithm. Well once again you are all wrong.
If they were being undemocratic, they could just take out the ability to make comments on each page. How would you all like that since you don't think they are being fair to you couple who are changing this great site into a mainstream wet dream, like public radio, television, newspapers and everybody that walk around and drive with their blinders on every day!
Thanks to digg for considering everybody else who isn't on the top 99. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You know, that's what the friends list was supposed to help with. You could see what stories your friends were submitting from there, rather than comb through piles of stories in the queue. The idea was you were supposed to pick friends whose stories or comments you liked and you could easily keep track of them.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Speaking of rigging the system. They need to devise a way for people to stop using the reply button to "cut in line". If you don't try to get ahead your comment gets pushed down under everyone elses and pretty soon everyone does it. Maybe if it specifically said "replying to" It also makes it very hard to reply to someone in the top 20 comments.
- gwjc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@khyberkitsune
You're an interesting digger; you've been here for three months you've only dugg 7 stories and submitted one; yet you've made 105 comments. I almost don't know what to make of that, you've presumably read at least 105 stories and yet only felt six of them were diggworthy (I won't count you digging your own), you must have very high standards to find the quality of digg lacking that much. Not surprisingly you've befriended no one, though strangely one person has befriended you. He must be impressed by what a keen judge of quality you are.
Anyway, I think your assumption is wrong, most "elite" diggers, as you call them, work for a living. - j00fek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3we will have to see how "this new system" works when it is implemented. when? kevin never said did he..
- gigamike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's about time and I'd been wondering where "digitalgopher" had been the past couple of days. Submitting excellent content is great but I where the motivation comes from....
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