Yesterday, a Digg user called raisedinhell made an article called "How the average Digg user gets ****ed". It was about the user's article that was made yesterday that made a few diggs, then was copied by another Digger (pavelmah) who got thousands of diggs on his version. How did he do that? He is a power user who found a loophole in the system and abuses it to be in control of the site's front page articles. Non-power users such as myself have virtually no power in submitting stories because we aren't power users. People like pavelmah, however, unfairly became power users. It's completely contrary to the original point of Digg: a democratic-style social news site where the users choose the news.
Soon, a near anarchic Digg article was posted that was essentially a petition to bring this long-known problem into the Digg company's view. It gained over an amazing 20,000 Diggs.
Eventually, Kevin Rose, founder and Site Architect of Digg, made a comment in the comments section:
Over the last four years I've developed a thick skin when reading comments re: Digg - but I'm saddened by what I read in this thread. Not personally upset, but disappointed in the tone taken towards the staff here at Digg. We have 70 or so engineers, designers, project managers, and business development/marketing folks that work 50-60hr weeks trying to create a better site for everyone. Does Digg have issues with promotion/diversity? Of course, we always have, and it's something that we have a team constantly tweaking/evolving to stay ahead of gaming. While we don't respond to every comment thread, do know that we read them - and your _constructive_ suggestions do make it into our project roadmap.
While you're waiting for us to release fixes and new features, do what I do, digg the stuff you like, and bury the stuff you don't like. And, don't take life so seriously, it's just the internet.
In addition, he made a controversial move by taking the article off the front page and off the "Top 10 Articles", even though it was #1 by a mile.
What most Digg users told Kevin was that they really didn't have anything against the Digg staff; they had a problem with the power users who abused the system. Here's are some interesting comments criticizing Kevin for this statement and action:
So when you dont like what you read, you remove it from the front page? Smells like censorship to me. If rude comments were the justification for censorship, every thread on Digg would be removed.
The video has nothing to do with Digg's staff or how "hard they work." The video exposes the fact, that the fundamental idea behind Digg (ie a democratic Slashdot) is broken because thousands of people are using Digg's social networking features to game the system.
Don't shoot the messenger.
Kevin, I know it *stings* a little to hear some of the comments in this article, but as your homepage says, practice some zazen and try to take away the greater message here. If digg users didn't care they wouldn't have been pushing this issue so hard. It's incredibly important that digg stay democratic, and part of that philosophy is hearing things you don't want to hear and letting everyone express themselves equally. I've been with digg since the beginning. I remember logging on after you mentioned it back in the TechTV days, and you had personally paid someone to code the initial site for you. I thought it was a fantastic idea... still is. But something evil is afoot, and I suggest you take a serious look at it.
Show us the future roadmap and let us digg what we want or dont want then ?
Apart from that digg.com is the best site on the web by a mile. The users just want to make it the best thing on the internet.
I agree that it wasn't smart of Kevin to blame the Digg users for pointing out these problems. However, when you see dozens of comments in those threads saying "**** YOU KEVIN", you have to draw the line somewhere. I also think taking the article off the front page wasn't a good move. Kevin, you're the one who had the idea of a democratic news site. But what you don't seem to understand is that democracy involves listening to things you don't want to hear to get everybody's opinion. You can't just take control whenever you get upset by something a few people are saying. Whether or not you bury the article, the problem still stands, and we've been waiting for the team to do something about it for a long time.
-Derek
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