If you’ve read even a couple articles here (really that’s all that exist right now), you’ll probably have picked up on the fact that I have a few bones to pick with Digg. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the site, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’m on the site daily, I’ve submitted nearly 1500 articles, and I think it is one of the defining sites of the Web 2.0 movement. But, as I said, there are some issues Digg desperately needs to address. The first is the issue of buries and that data that we have already covered. The second issue of course (and the real reason behind the first issue) is that of censorship and moderation. We’ve touched on this issue before as well, however as you may have heard, Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, again addressed the issue in an interview with Search Marketing Standard (If it doesn’t show up here soon, I’ll post a scan.). The only problem is, he once again contradicted himself.
Rose had previously admitted both that Digg has moderators, and exercises editorial control over the content on its site, specifically the front page. This should not come as news to you, especially since one of our previous posts pretty convincingly proved that Digg was censoring their front page content to prevent any articles critical of Digg from hitting their front page. However, in this latest interview, Rose reverses course and claims that “Digg does not use any moderators other than the 700,000 registered users that participate in Digg.”
WHAT?!?
Look, you don’t have to take my word for it that Rose is pulling a patented political maneuver on this one. Just take a look at these compilations of Kevin Rose quotes on the issue of Digg moderation. As I’ve said before, what separates Digg from the rest of the crowd is its lack of moderation. Many Digg users migrated to Digg from slashdot precisely because they were sick of the moderation going on at that site. They wanted to have a say in which stories were promoted and which issues were discussed. Rose likely thinks that Digg would face a storm of criticism and negative press if they admitted the front page was actively monitored, and at times edited to suit ownership’s agenda. And, it’s possible that they would. But it’s got to be better than continually losing credibility by talking out of both sides of your mouth…
My user ID, namely 1389, was banned from Digg within MINUTES after I posted these three comments:
http://www.901am.com/2007/has-digg-really-unbanned-those-banned-sites.html#comment-3992
AFAIK, a single Digg admin has the power to bury (or promote) any story unilaterally, without anybody knowing. Of course, nobody will know either way. As long as Digg admins have this much power, Digg is NOT the grass-roots, “democratic,†community-run, site that it purports to be.
Since there is no audit of what Digg’s admins are doing, this is a perfect opportunity for blogola/Diggola as an “inside job†- with nobody being the wiser. A little money or other recompense to Digg insiders can do wonders for anybody wanting to promote stories that favor their client and bury stories that don’t. Hmmmm…
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http://digg.com/tech_news/1_Miiiiiillion_Users#c5594565
Does this mean that Digg will show its respect and gratitude for these million Digg users by:
1) Providing a “Who buried this?” tab;
2) Taking away the ability of Digg admins to bury or promote stories on their own, without regard to what the Digg voting public wants;
3) Decreasing the weight given to a bury as opposed to a digg, so that stories with a large enough proportion of diggs to buries will stay in the upcoming stories queue;
or perhaps even…
4) Taking away the bury button entirely, and replacing it with a button to report spam to the admins,
so that they can review it later, and decide whether or not the site is so egregiously spammy that it should be banned.
No? You mean that you folks at Digg don’t really care enough about us to consider doing any of these things?
Didn’t think so.
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http://digg.com/software/Digg_Search_Much_Improved_Can_We_Have_More#c5594665
Okay, Kevin, now that we (maybe) have a tiny bit of your attention, how about doing something about the major problem on Digg that so many people have been complaining about recently, namely burying? How about:
1) Providing a “Who buried this?” tab;
2) Taking away the ability of Digg admins to bury or promote stories on their own, without regard to what the Digg voting public wants;
3) Decreasing the weight given to a bury as opposed to a digg, so that stories with a large enough proportion of diggs to buries will stay in the upcoming stories queue;
or perhaps even…
4) Taking away the bury button entirely, and replacing it with a button to report spam to the admins, so that they can review it later, and decide whether or not the site is so egregiously spammy that it should be banned.
If you don’t do something effective about this problem, people will draw the conclusion that you don’t really care about the many new Digg users who have just now put your site over the million-user milestone. So how about it?
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I have done NOTHING that violates the Digg terms of service.
The only explanation that I have for my being banned is the fact that I questioned the right of Digg’s admins to bury and promote stories at will and with no accountability. The very instant I did this, one of these selfsame Digg admins panicked and banned me!
Ironically, my being banned in this manner PROVES everything what I have been saying!
Aggravating, huh? Digg has banned our domain!
They say they did it because of Terms of Use violations, but that’s absurd… among the three of us, we only submitted 20 posts over the three days we were live. We suspect they actually banned us because of the content of our posts, which were mainly excerpts from a book by one of us debunking human-caused climate change.
We’re calling on every blogger we know to support us in our drive to be reinstated in the Digg index. I would deeply appreciate it if you and your readers would visit our site, read our story, and take whatever action you deem appropriate.
Regards,
Jason G. Williscroft
The Dead Hand