December 8th, 2006
A Digg On Digg Has Become Meaningless
As Digg increasingly confronts the spectre of spam and gaming of the system (Tony Hung has the latest round), Kevin Rose and Co. have been forced to add increasing complexity to the Digg algorithm, to the point where the value of a Digg on Digg has become so opaque as to be rendered utterly meaningless. Which raises the question — why even bother to show the number of Diggs? Here’s a sample from today’s front page:
And just below those stories…
Anyone coming to the Digg homepage for the first time would have no idea what these numbers mean — even insiders, despite all the speculation on Digg’s algorithm, don’t really know for sure what these numbers mean. So what’s the point really?
A “democracy” that has to forgo transparency in order to avoid becoming undemocratic has already ceded its democratic ideals.
I wonder what would happen if Digg stopped displaying the number of Diggs — the loss of transparency would only be superficial. And what if they removed the record of who Dugg what and the Digger ranking? What if all incentives for power and fame were removed, and the only incentive was to help your fellow Diggers find useful information? You know, community.
Of course, Digg would never do that because the “community” would eviscerate them.
Digg has been a fascinating laboratory — the stories of gaming Digg are actually far less interesting than what Digg has taught us about the dynamics of “social media.”
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The top ones are the most recent, not the most popular. As time passes each listing moves down the page.
Aaron, thanks for the clarification. Nonetheless, the value of one Digg for getting a story to the homepage — without which it would never receive the volume of Diggs that drive the long-term rankings — still remains unknown.
I think removing transparency and digg rankings would probably cut down on a lot of gaming for status, but greatly aid gaming for spamming.
I don’t think you can throw in a “nonetheless” clause on this. It seems that you don’t have an understanding of how digg actually works.
Look at this: http://digg.com/view/all/popular/thismonth
You can’t tell me that the most popular stories in a month are based on nothing at all.
GreenLantern,
None of those stories would have made the long-term popular lists without having made the front page first — cracking the front page is when the Diggs really “count,” if you will. Check your stats for your recent experience with Digg — where did most of the referrals come from, the front page or the long-term popular lists?
Yes, but the frontpage is the seperation between all stories and the best stories (according to digg users).
I’m a member of other sites like reddit and del.icio.us, but it’s hard for me to find a “good” story at those places. I probably end up looking at 5-10 pages before I find one that is useful to me. At digg, the members sort out the best stories for you. Now I”m not saying that bad stories don’t make the front page, because they obviously do, but for hte most part I like how it works.
GreenLantern,
Yes, and the value of one Digg for crossing that dividing between “all” and “best” is unknown — I’m not saying the Digg algorithm is not effective for surfacing stories that users value, because it clearly is for a lot of people. I’m saying that displaying the number of Diggs as if they all counted the same for is misleading and that displaying then at all is perhaps unecessary.
You’re focusing too much on the promotion algorithm.
Everyone knows what those numbers mean: it’s the number of votes a story has received from individual users. Of course, what you’re questioning is the relationship between those numbers and the presence of each story on the front page, but that’s hardly the kind of meta-consideration occupying the minds of every Digg visitor. I realize that as a media pundit/professional, it’s *your* interest in Digg, but you are not necessarily representative of the user base. I personally find niche stories pretty interesting on the site, and as a reader I *don’t care* whether they manage to cross the magic boundary or induce a torrent of traffic.
Michal,
This is not a critique of Digg but rather a musing on whether elements of Digg are necessary for this kind of social media model. Once you get beyond the young male techie demographic that Digg has captured to, say, your average AOL or Yahoo news user, I think the inscrutability of the system is very much an issue.
Scott,
I think you’re absolutely right - digg should remove the already meaningless digg score on each vote, but never will.
You also touched upon the fundamental problem with Digg’s format: the stories simply get dugg to the top of the list. All someone has to do is buy enough votes to get onto the front page - voila! Loads of traffic.
The number 2 site in the social news world, reddit, has a natural defence against this abuse because the front page is a constantly rising and falling list of links. For someone to really game the system, it would take a seriously prolonged effort of constantly up-voting the link. It’s why I think reddit is where it is today and with a spam-free front page.
Sandra, yes, exactly, you said it much better than I did.
Sandra: that, and the fact that Reddit’s lower popularity makes gaming it less valuable. I’ve heard “Slashdot Effect” and “Digg Effect”, but never “Reddit Effect”.
Scott: that’s true, and it depends on how the site is presented to those new visitors. The tyranny of the front page may lessen with each new non-techie user if they have the tools they need to find their appropriate niche area in the larger Digg universe. Every “Digg This” button on blog posts or news stories helps this effect along, because it leads new visitors to the specific story page on Digg rather than the entry page.
If your bored and just lying around on this Sunday afternoon, here are some links that might interest you: When iPods Die Eboy Posters A Digg On Digg is Meaningless Insanely amazing housing
A Digg On Digg Has Become Meaningless (Publishing 2.0)
van esélyed, hogy megjelenj a NY Times cÃmlapján. Karp szerint tehát a Digg nem forradalmasÃtott semmit, csak kicsit más szereplÅ‘kkel újra feltalálta a hagyományos média modelljét. Hát, ez Ãgy elég lehangoló. Adalék: A Publishing 2.0 korábbi Digg-kritikája 3 kommentár | 2007. január 8., hétfÅ‘ | Eszközök | pollner
Scott,
A year has passed since you posted this, but I figured I’d submit my non-spam comment anyway
I posted a follow up on this issue a short while ago, after a recent post by Muhammad Saleem. I’d be honored to hear your thoughts.