There’s a small civil war beginning on Digg.com. If you don’t know what Digg is — there is no way to finish that sentence — everyone knows Digg.
In the past couple of days, a bunch of stories have made it to the front page of Digg demanding change. The stories claim that “power diggers” have taken over Digg and it is no longer a fair playing ground for all users.
The claim is that the stories themselves no longer make it to the front page of Digg. If identical stories are submitted by a regular user and a power digger, even if the regular user submitted the story first, the power digger’s story will make the front page. Some users are stating that they won’t even submit a story to Digg because they don’t think it will ever reach the front page.
The biggest solution that has been championed is using anonymous submissions. The argument goes if no one knows who exactly is submitting stories, the stories will be dugg based on their merit and not on the basis of the submitter.
I was looking around on Digg competitor site, Reddit, and stumbled upon a graphic for “Support No Digg Day” to take place on January 4, 2009. “Don’t let Power Diggers manipulate your Digg experience” is emblazoned on the top of the image. There is no need to go into the Digg/Reddit rivalry here, but that is one interesting graphic.
It has gotten to the point where Digg founder, Kevin Rose, has responded to the concerns in a comment to one of the Digg stories. He is “disappointed in the tone taken towards the staff here at Digg. We have 70 or so engineers, designers . . . trying to create a better site for everyone. Does Digg have issues with promotion/diversity? Of course . . . it’s something that we have a team constantly tweaking/evolving to stay ahead of gaming. . . .”
Digg’s own popularity is causing their problem. Yes, I have seen plenty of stories by certain diggers on the front page. When Digg started years ago, every digger was a nobody and stories reached the front page if enough people dugg the story. I, myself, have had several front page stories years ago.
I am sure that Digg will change one way or another. They have always been very responsive and do what they can to remain an excellent source of information. After they fix this psuedo-oligarchical problem, something else is bound to come up.
Read [Digg]
Read [Kevin Rose's response]
Read ["No Digg Day" graphic]
Read [Digg petition]
This is nothing new. I remember when the problem with "power diggers" first came up, or at least made public a few months ago. MrBabyMan, unarguably the top "power digger" threatened to leave if Digg did anything. Now he says we're the ones being hypocrites.
Digg eventually got rid of a lot of accounts, but none of the big ones. MrBabyMan, badwithcomputer and other power users are still making it to the front page everyday, stealing stories that are hours if not days old.
It HAS hindered my experience quite drastically to be honest. With the addition of the new algorithm, I've stopped using Digg as frequently as I used to. I never submit stories anymore, rarely Digg stories or comment on them. I used to be quite active.