Digg corrupted?
There’s a small firestorm going on over at digg about a story on forevergeek about how digg is hierarchically edited instead of peer edited. Very interesting stuff if true… and, adding fuel to the proverbial paranoid fire, the story on digg reporting this has been buried. (That’s me in the second comment… neat!)
One of the main things that attracted me to digg in the first place was the idea of a truly semi-automated, peer-reviewed selection of stories which, on the face of it, seemd more fair than Plastic and Slashdot which have more editorial control. Sure this leads to some really, really dumb digg stories… but they don’t get dugg onto the front page and quickly get lost in the random noise of the site. If a story was interesting enough then it would get voted up by those who cared, cream rising to the top.
But, of course, like any system digg is eminently hackable. And it seems as though we’re seeing it right now…
Or are we? I think it’s a little premature to say that there’s some vast conspiracy destroying this pretty cool site. I want to see what the diggers-that-be have to say about this, let it play out, before I start jumping on the “digg is ruined” bandwagon, or the “digg’s been compromised” conspiracy theories.
One thing that would help this process enormously is some visibility into the process by which a digg story is buried. How bout it, digg? What’s the trail here? Why is this story getting buried?
April 20th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
“One of the main things that attracted me to digg in the first place was the idea of a truly semi-automated, peer-reviewed selection of stories”
Then you should check out http://www.youpickthenews.com
April 25th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
I think You Pick The News is a good idea, but it’s presentation needs some work. I think it needs more than three categories, too… “Funny”, “Worldchanging”, and “Unbelievable” aren’t quite enough.
However, kudos for taking on digg and Slashdot and Plastic. ( =