Work Ranters

Another Digg Crusader Caught As Lion Hypocrite

2008-12-31T15:47:00.000-08:00

The recent Digg revolution started when Raisedinhell alleged that her submission was stolen by "power user" Pavelmah (see her side of the story here). Understandably many Digg users rallied to her cause. While 99% of the Digg users expressed genuine sympathy for Raisedinhell, there's that shady 1% who used this as an opportunity to further their own agenda.

ConeBone6t9 for example submitted a video showing the stats of the Digg users who frequent the front page. Lots of people voted for ConeBone6t9's story because they were pissed at how Raisedinhell's story was stolen by a Power User.

ConeBone6t9 also ignores duplicate checks

Here's a screenshot of what happens when I tried to submit one of ConeBone6t9's submissions. It turns out, he ignored not one, not two, but THREE duplicate pictures. Here's a larger version of the screenshot with the middle parts edited out.

Before he submitted his protest video, ConeBone6t9 has submitted only six stories. Three of which came from the same obscure site Termu.com, and all of them are older than Ted Stevens:

Double standard?

So let's review.

Ignores dupcliate checks.
Submits a significant amount of stories from the same site.
Rides the coattails of controversey to get his one and only popular submission.
Leaves the same comments over and over again to promote his submissions.
Only joined 2 months ago (10/08) and suddenly has a strong opinion about the "future of Digg"? Sonds more like the reincarnation of a pissed-off banned user.

Some of the very same Digg purists who supported Raisedinhell may consider this to be the actions of a shameless spammer.

But do I think he's a spammer? Not really. He's just some Joe with a new website who saw an opportunity to exploit a good pitchforking. It took a lot of balls for a story stealer to jump into the middle of a controversy started by story stealing. Hats off to you sir.

Digg Can't Change Unless You Do

2008-12-31T14:16:00.001-08:00

The general consensus on Digg is that it can be great again by becoming more like Reddit. A compelling argument to be sure. Reddit does seem to have fresher stories and virtually no complaints about "Power Users."

I think Digg can learn a lot from from Reddit. But due to its size, there are certain things that will be almost impossible to change:

Sheer size of Digg traffic crushes any small site

The most charming thing about Reddit (and early Digg) is that you can find these amazing stories from no name blogs that will literally change your life.

But most of these blogs won't survive a nano second under the scrutiny of Digg popularity. In fact, many small website owners have learned to block Digg completely from their servers.

Digg will never break news

99% of the time it takes at least a good 10 hours for a Digg story to go popular. Since Digg gets a lot more submissions than Reddit, Digg's algo requires more votes before promoting something to the front page.

Power Users don't have bad taste... we do

Many Digg users complain that great stories are being stifled by Power Users. This is a ridiculous claim.

The truth is, Power Users love great stories as much as anyone. Let's say argument sake that some Power Users are paid spammers. Even if a Power User is some sort of paid spammer, he still has to submit a large amount of legitimate content right? Woudn't his job be a lot more fun if he gets to read unique stories instead of the same crap from HuffPo, 4Chan, XKCD, etc?

But he can't submit unique stories because YOU WON'T VOTE FOR THEM. I think this Reddit classic sums it up pretty nicely.

If Digg users stop digging up XKCD comics, Power Users won't bother submitting them. Power Users respond to market forces... and guess what... YOU are the market. Of course, it is a lot more fun to blame a Power User than the nameless anon XKCD fan.

Digg will always be the sandbox for Reddit

Due to Digg's current popularity and more appealing visual design, it will always attract more social bookmarking newbies than Reddit. This means you get a lot of new users making mistakes, complaining about things they don't understand, and generally clogging up the tubes. (Nothing against the new users, of course. We were all new Diggers once.)

Once the new users get a good sense of how social bookmarking works, they learn about other options like Reddit, Mixx, and Delicious, and depending on their personal preferences they may move on to those sites.

Digg is the sandbox for Reddit, but unfortunately sometimes that means we're the litter box as well.

What Kevin Rose can't tell you

Kevin is no dummy. He knows all this stuff but he can't really say it explicitly. Because so many of these problems are inherent to a community of this size, there aren't any magic bullets.

That's why whenever the Digg community gets mad, he'll be the nice guy and come in to say some kind words about the development team. He'll promise to deal with the problem and might even ban some Power Users.

What else is he going to do? Admit that these are problems that will never truly go away while the company is looking for new sources of funding? Of course not. In his heart of hearts he probably wish we would grow the fuck up.

Ultimately the responsibility is on us to change things. Not just by signing petitions or conducting witchhunts (though those are fun don't get me wrong). Let's be active about burying stories we don't like. Let's venture beyond the homepage and look at as many new submissions as possible. When a new user asks a stupid question, help him out. If a fellow user complains about the quality of the story, engage them in discussion instead of throwing a smug remark like "oh you're just not smart enough to use Reddit like I do."

We keep yelling about how Digg belongs to the people. Well, if you want to be a citizen, you need to do your civic duty. Freedom is not free, and neither is Digg.

Diggers revolt to replace old spammers with new ones

2008-12-30T05:59:00.000-08:00

There's a huge debate going on at Digg right now about limiting the influence of the top users. I support that effort 100%. Many sensible suggestions were offered, such as limiting number of diggs per day, taking away the shout system, or completely discount votes from close friends.

Unfortunately, while 99% of the Digg users are sincere in their desire to change Digg, they have rallied their cause around some questionable characters.

This whole thing occured when user Raisedinhell alleged that her submission was stolen by "power user" Pavelmah. (see her proof here). Understandably, Digg users rallied around Raisedinhell. But is Raisedinhell really that much different from the power users she complains about? Here are some of the most common complaints against top Digg users:

Complaint: Power users add a bunch of friends to form Digg circles

Raisedinhell has over 334 friends, including Mr. Baby Man and Pavelmah. (link / screenshot)

Complaint: Power users use the shout system to get more votes

Raisedinhell sent a shout to 84 people to promote her own story (link / screenshot).

Complaint: Power users steal content from other users

Raisedinhell "jacked" the story first from a Reddit user and brags about it. (link / screenshot)

Complaint: Power users shamelessly troll for votes outside of Digg

Raisedinhell is now airing Digg's dirty laundry in Reddit, and explicitly asking for votes for her story. (link / screenshot)

Now, I'm not saying Raiseinhell's complaints are not legitimate. But remember when Digg banned a bunch of top users and that was suppose to solve all the problems? Well it didn't. The power vaccum that was left attracted NEW spammers who are probably just as bad as the people they replaced. Most regular users simply vote with their feet. If Digg's heavy emphasis on forming useless friendship circles doesn't suit them, they simply move on to Reddit or Mixx. That is a shame, because I think Digg is a community worth saving. That is why I have tremendous respect for Digg users who stand up to speak their minds and challenge the naked emperor.

However, let's not automatically raise every advocate to the status of martyr without examining their history or motive. While most advocates for change are genuinely concerned for Digg, there's always that 1% whose main beef isn't that the system can be gamed, but that they haven't mastered it--yet.

Hey look here's another hypocrite.