June 13th, 2006
Buried Story Shenanigans At Digg
Here’s more evidence that Digg is not the product of “collective intelligence” but rather a tightly controlled site run by a handful of people.
Yesterday, I wrote about LostCherry, a would-be MySpace killer. Someone posted the story to Digg, and it began rapidly garnering “diggs” and a slew of comments from enthusiastic LostCherry users.
Apparently, the Digg Nazis didn’t like this. The story was “buried.”
Here’s what one Digg Nazi said:
Ahhh….. digg has been invaded by lostcherry fan boys and girls.
Go away, digg is for tech, not slutty websites! Shoo!
Did the story violate Digg’s terms of service? Who knows, because there’s no information on Digg about “buried stories.”
As you can see from the screen shot above, a counter-slime story about LostCherry — with far fewer diggs — is still active on Digg.
There was an incident a few months ago involving ForeverGeek, at which time Digg’s Kevin Rose promised to clean up the act:
Missing stories: A common question we receive is the confusion surrounding missing stories. Once a story has received enough user reports it is automatically removed from the digg queue or homepage (depending on where the story is living at that time). The number of reports required varies depending on how many diggs the story has. This system is going to change in the near future.
If you look at the comments on the story, the ratio of Digg user objections to Digg user enthusiasm was pretty low.
So Kevin — what’s the deal here? Does majority rule, or is Digg still totalitarian?
Topics: Digg
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I hope you’re just insinuating that some *users* were the cause of this, as opposed to Digg itself. It’s fair to ask Kevin how he plans to deal with consistently negative users or “false reporters”, but to suggest that this action was the result of any foul play amongst the Digg staff is a bit unfair in my opinion. This coming from someone who runs a company that is an alleged competitor to Digg (which we aren’t).
Anyway, back to the point. This is almost certainly the work of a group of users who saw fit to “bury” this story en masse. Who knows what the reason was. Could have been no reason at all. This stuff happens. The mechanisms within Digg to officially “bury” stories are there so that users use their power for *good*, not for evil. For instance, if a spammy submission made it onto the site and, say, 20 users buried it because it was spam, that’s a *good* use of collective editing. But 20 other people might decide to bury a story for a much less legitimate reason. It’s VERY difficult for a system to automatically tell the difference between a legitimate bury and a foul one.
The only way to fix the problem in the long run is collect statistics on what people are reporting/burying. If you have an abusive reporter/buryer, the system should begin to pay less attention to that person’s reports/buries. That’s what we do at Newsvine and although we don’t experience the magnitude of Digg’s burden yet, the system seems to adapt quite well.
Food for thought: If Microsoft announced something on Vista and a bunch of Microsoft employees vouched for it, would digg.com bury the story? I think not. It’s the subjectivity of the discretion (or lack thereof) that is the fundamental issue here.
Mike, I have no idea who is responsible for my perception (and that’s all it is) of “foul play” burying. With the ForeverGeek incident, their were accusations against Digg staff — I have no evidence that Digg staff were involved, and I make no such accusations — but then I don’t have evidence that they weren’t involved.
But that’s besides the point because the way Digg works is a reflection of their staff, which is why I addressed the question to Kevin. Unless shown otherwise, though, I can only assume that Digg staff are still facing a challenge with managing the system and not that they are acting in bad faith.
You’re absolutely right that it’s very difficult to set up mechanisms to prevent the abuse of self-policing systems by the community — but given the community ideal that Digg is supposed to represent, I think they’re on the hook to make it work better.
My perception here is that the burying of the story went beyond healthy self-policing to a handful of users overriding what the majority of the community found valuable.
The real question, as I posed it to Kevin, is whether Digg is a true democracy or has de facto “hierarchical editorial control.”
Mike, Newsvine’s system seems to work terrifically.
There’s some information about Digg’s system here: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/20/debating_diggs_metho.html
No system is perfect. But the fact is, as an online community grows, certain negative pressures on it are inevitable.
Clay Shirky wrote *the* piece on the subject.
Many of his suggestions are implemented, one way or another, on each of these services, to their credit.
“My perception here is that the burying of the story went beyond healthy self-policing to a handful of users overriding what the majority of the community found valuable.”
Not if Kevin and his staff can judge the age of a user account of someone commenting/digging, and use that as part of it’s weighting system.
It would be *very* instructive if the accounts commenting/digging on your post were created after you put that on Digg Scott.
Geez, I wish I could edit my comments here. That last line should have been:
“It would be *very* instructive if the accounts commenting/digging on your post were created after your story was posted on Digg Scott.
As for “The real question, as I posed it to Kevin, is whether Digg is a true democracy or has de facto “hierarchical editorial control.—
It’s not that simple for any of these services and can’t be boiled down to such black and white terms. I bet that’s true of Digg as well. Again read the Shirky piece.
FromScott Karp: Yesterday, I wrote about LostCherry, a would-be MySpace killer. Someone posted the story to Digg, and it began rapidly garnering “diggs†and a slew of comments from enthusiastic LostCherry users.
Wait, let me get this right: Scott likes collective intelligence, except when it becomes biased and works against his favor?
I heartily recommend Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power.
Steve, you know that’s not an unfair and inaccurate reading — I raised a flag here because it appeared that the burying of the story did not reflect the wishes of the majority of the collective but rather that of a powerful few — i.e. it was NOT “collective” intelligence in the ideal sense. And let me be clear that my interest here has nothing to do with the short-term traffic bump I got from being on Digg but rather the opportunity to read more of the effusive comments in support of LostCherry, which are very useful in understanding the evolution of the social networking space.
In short, I got annoyed because they shut down the conversation, not because they shut down my traffic.
The conversation isn’t shut down however. It’s taking place here and elsewhere on the web.
When you say “it was NOT ‘collective’ intelligence in the ideal sense†- well whose ideal would that be?
How’s this for the ‘powerful few’…
I had no idea that “Lost Cherry†existed until you posted about it.
And if you observe the conversation flow, across Memeorandum, well it looks like you have just given this service a tremendous hype boost when there are plenty of other MySpace competitors out there.
You’re now a blogging ‘power user’ Scott. Power laws are inevitable in participatory media - one way or another.
I’d wager that the commentors on Digg were brand spanking new users, who thru someone - somewhere - found out about your story being posted there - and then decided to support their community - ON SOMEONE ELSE’S.
It’s like pissing in someone’s living room. I’m not a fan of Digg really, the hype turned me off a while back, but if a group of ‘power users’ there took these LC support comments as some kind of spam like activity, well I have a hard time blaming them.
Of course, I’m just conjecturing since I have no idea how the Digg system works.
Here goes a LC story that would fit Digg’s community however…
An article over it’s novel use of Ajax and Javascript.
I’d bet *that* wouldn’t have gotten so modded down. But then again, such a technical article probably wouldn’t have attracted so many LC RULZ commentors.
In case, here’s a simple work around everybody should use: Never understood those ‘buried’? so I don’t rely on it. It’s been long since I allways search using the burried checkbox on.
[…] Publishing 2.0 » Buried Story Shenanigans At Digg […]
This is more likely the result of people marking the story as “lame” than any major consipracy as your making it out to be. I am guessing most people on Digg are tired of hearing of ‘Yet ANOTHER MySpace Killer Story” that seems to get posted almost daily these days.
[…] Publishing 2.0 The Convergence of Media and Technology « Buried Story Shenanigans At Digg | Home | […]
[…] (via publishing2.com) – Digg claims: “rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.” Not the case, it’s a totalitarian society that still controls the content and even chooses to slander other companies on a whim. (2 hours and 43 minutes ago) […]
Here’s more, which I won’t get to write on because I have to leave now because my girlfriend expects me home at 7pm sharp: Netscape wears Digg’s clothing - but underneath it’s still a portal… anchored to Calacanis’s comments. another bit of interest:more Digg allegations Netscape Now!… anchored to Calacanis’s comments. Yeesh I gots to split. I feel like I have more to say about this (believe it or not) I may end up writing a little more tomorrow as I mull this project over. Or as I go back and read what I actually
I’ve been a victim of digg censorship too, and I’m fighting back. Help me build a list of censored digg sites, and build a community fighting for freedom of speech on the net…
http://travelingforever.com/blogs/?p=14
Summing collective ignorance Digg, spam, and most popular lists Digg and the So-Called “Wisdom of Mobs†Suspicious Digging Blog Sensationalism Why is Digg Censoring an Article on Defeating Censorship? Buried Story Shenanigans At Digg Gaming Digg: the KoolAidGuy saga
I suspect the burying may have had to do with misuse of the system. As pointed out by one of the early commenters, a lot of the digg’ers seem to be new users, created the day of their digg/comment. If I started a company, and had all my employees “digg” a story, that seems to be a gross abuse of the digg system to advertise my company.
Summing collective ignorance Digg, spam, and most popular lists Digg and the So-Called “Wisdom of Mobs†Suspicious Digging Blog Sensationalism Why is Digg Censoring an Article on Defeating Censorship? Buried Story Shenanigans At Digg Gaming Digg: the KoolAidGuy saga