What is going on with Digg?
Saturday, September 09, 2006
What is wrong with Digg? Everyday I get on digg.com to do my regular digging and I see a new story about someone complaining that the only promoted stories are from top digg users or how Digg is becoming corrupt. Recently Kevin Rose posted on the digg blog about how a new algorithm for promoting stories will be released to prevent users from gaming digg. It seems that some people think that the top-digg users have converged in a group to promote other top digg user's stories over normal user submitted stories. So how have the top digg users reacted to all this? Well, many of them has removed their avatars in protest and have left digg. Also, in the last few days and weeks, more and more top digg users have started to move away from digg, and are going under contract with Netscape. But really, can you blame them? When I first joined digg last March, none of this was going around. What has happened? Is digg promoting its own demise? Personally, all of this stuff is kinda turning me off from digg. Ever since top digg user schestowitz left, I have noticed a lack of good Linux stories promoted, I don't want that to happend for the rest of digg. Is it so bad that top digg user's stories get promoted? I mean, a good story will get promoted regardless, and if it just so happens that top digg users submit more interesting stories.... can we blame them? Recently, Wired interviewed a top digg user Derek van Vile (BloodJunkie). Here is his response to Kevin's latest announcement:"I was quite surprised by Kevin's announcement. Personally I thought all the controversy was a bunch of hot air. It all started because a user by the name of digitalgopher stayed home sick from work a couple days ago and spent the day submitting even more awesome content to Digg then usual. Naturally, this resulted in a lot more of his stories being promoted to the front page than usual that day. This caused a couple of users to panic and before you know it we have people calling for the heads of the top 100 users."
He goes on to say how he is surprised that Kevin didn't defend the top digg users and:
"I am not yet convinced that the changes they plan to make are going to improve the content that gets promoted to the front page of Digg. It sounds like it will take longer for stories to be promoted than it currently does and there are already so many great submissions that miss the boat because they exceed their 24-hour shelf-life."
Really, I am not either. I have some friends on digg that are top digg users, and I digg their stories because I think they are interesting, and I want them to be promoted... not because they are top digg users. I don't want digg to all of a sudden be at a lack of good stories just because top users can't get their stories through anymore..... At any rate, I am not very pleased with digg at the present and I hope that people stop complaining and just keep digging... In the end, digg is still user driven, and isn't that what matters?
UPDATE: Top digg user p9s50W5k4GUD2c6 as to why he left digg! Read more @ OmniNerd.
