Digg: Difference between revisions
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== Criticisms == |
== Criticisms == |
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[[Image:Demhoi.jpg|right|300px|thumb|A typical example of spam on Digg]] |
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<!-- I went gung-ho in pruning criticisms here. Cases can probably be made for most of the ones I commented out. That's why I didn't delete them. --DCrazy --> |
<!-- I went gung-ho in pruning criticisms here. Cases can probably be made for most of the ones I commented out. That's why I didn't delete them. --DCrazy --> |
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<!-- * Many headlines and descriptions make exaggerated statements and make use of all caps and/or excessive exclamation. Typically, any story submitted with a description applauding Digg, Google, Microsoft, [[Firefox]] or [[Apple Computer]] is quickly promoted to the front page. Many people use this to their advantage to get links promoted, even if the relationship to Digg is tenuous at best. {{citeneeded}} --> |
<!-- * Many headlines and descriptions make exaggerated statements and make use of all caps and/or excessive exclamation. Typically, any story submitted with a description applauding Digg, Google, Microsoft, [[Firefox]] or [[Apple Computer]] is quickly promoted to the front page. Many people use this to their advantage to get links promoted, even if the relationship to Digg is tenuous at best. {{citeneeded}} --> |
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<!-- Although this often occurs, it is not considered acceptable by the community. --> |
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<!-- * Excessive or erroneous capitalization and punctuation are considered acceptable by the community as a means to draw attention to an otherwise unremarkable story. --> |
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<!-- Requesting a website over and over for the purpose of causing damage is called a DoS attack. With multiple users, a DDoS attack. These are facts, not POV. Hence, if Digg users "flooded businesses' websites" they participated in a DDoS attack. Period. --> |
<!-- Requesting a website over and over for the purpose of causing damage is called a DoS attack. With multiple users, a DDoS attack. These are facts, not POV. Hence, if Digg users "flooded businesses' websites" they participated in a DDoS attack. Period. --> |
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* If a specific URL receives multiple complaints from users, it is added to a URL [[blacklist]] and can no longer be submitted to Digg. Sometimes, this can cause every web page on the same server as the blacklisted page to also be blocked. |
* If a specific URL receives multiple complaints from users, it is added to a URL [[blacklist]] and can no longer be submitted to Digg. Sometimes, this can cause every web page on the same server as the blacklisted page to also be blocked. |
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<-- Claims are not verifiable. --> |
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* Even though Digg is depicted as a user-driven website with non-hierarchical editorial control, there have been [http://forevergeek.com/news/digg_corrupted_editors_playground_not_userdriven_website.php recent complaints] of intervention by editors to promote certain stories, bypassing the choice of users. The same editors are accused of hiding these facts by censoring stories which mention them and by banning users who have posted them. [http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/20/1538256 slashdot article] |
<!-- * Even though Digg is depicted as a user-driven website with non-hierarchical editorial control, there have been [http://forevergeek.com/news/digg_corrupted_editors_playground_not_userdriven_website.php recent complaints] of intervention by editors to promote certain stories, bypassing the choice of users. The same editors are accused of hiding these facts by censoring stories which mention them and by banning users who have posted them. [http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/20/1538256 slashdot article] --> |
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<!-- Not a criticism of Digg, but rather a criticism made by Digg users of other Digg users. --> |
<!-- Not a criticism of Digg, but rather a criticism made by Digg users of other Digg users. --> |
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Revision as of 22:43, 20 April 2006
 | The neutrality of this article is disputed. |
| Digg main page | |
Type of site | Community |
|---|---|
| Owner | Kevin Rose |
| Created by | Kevin Rose |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Free |
Digg is a website with an emphasis on technology and science news. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ (such as the popular tech site Slashdot).
How Digg works
Readers can view all of the stories that have been submitted by fellow users in the "digg all" section of the site. Once a story has received enough "diggs", roughly 30 or more within a certain time period, it appears on Digg's front page. Should the story not receive enough diggs, or if enough users make use of the problem report feature to point out issues with the submission, the story will remain in the "digg all" area.
Articles are short summaries of stories on other websites with links to the stories, and provisions for readers to comment on the story. All content and access to the site is free, but registration is compulsory for certain elements, such as promoting ("digging") and submitting stories, as well as commenting on submitted articles. Digg also allows for stories to be posted to a user's blog automatically when he or she diggs a story. As of December 2005, there are over 100,000 registered Digg users.
Stories can be submitted in sixteen different categories which include; deals, gaming, links, mods, music, robots, security, technology, Apple, design, hardware, Linux/Unix, movies, programming, science and software. A separate category titled Digg News is reserved for special announcements relating to the site, and can only be used by Digg administrators.
Site features
Problem reporting
To help remove duplicate, spam or offensive story submissions, Digg.com allows users to report such posts. When a story has been reported enough times, it is automatically removed from the queue and/or buried by the Digg software.
Story reporting options include: duplicate story, bad link, spam, old news, ok this is lame, inaccurate.
Comment rating
On March 4, 2006, Digg switched to a threaded comment system. The new system allows users to reply to another users comment, without having to quote someone by copying and pasting.
Much like the popular Slashdot and modeled after the reddit commenting system, Digg users are able to rate other users' comments. This ensures that spam and/or offensive comments stay virtually invisible. User comments are under a 'digg' system much like the stories on the rest of the site are. User comments can be 'dugg' which can make a comment more visible, and 'buried' making a comment less visible.
History
Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson (who serves as CEO), all of whom currently play an active role in the management of the site.
"We started working on developing the site back in October 2004," Kevin Rose told Richard MacManus of ZDNet[1] "We started toying around with the idea a couple of months prior to that, but it was early October when we actually started creating what would become the beta version of digg. The site launched to the world on December 5th 2004."
Although the domain name of Digg is registered under the name Jerimiah Udy, he is not one of the original founders of Digg, but rather a friend of Kevin Rose's. The domain name was registered under Jerimiah's name because Rose did not want others to know that he was associated with Digg. He wanted Digg to stand on its own and not become a message board for all things he personally stood for.
Kevin Rose's friend David Prager (The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech) originally wanted to call the site “Diggnation”, but Kevin wanted a simpler name. He chose the name "Digg", because users are able to "dig" stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called “Digg” instead of “Dig” because the domain name “dig.com” was previously registered by the Walt Disney Company.
“Diggnation” would eventually be used as the title of Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht's weekly podcast.
The original design was free of advertisements, and was designed by Dan Rice. But as Digg became more popular, Google AdSense was added to generate revenue. The site was updated in July of 2005, to "version 2.0". The new Digg featured a friends list, the ability to "digg" a story without being redirected to a "success" page, and a new interface designed by Daniel Burka[2], of the web design company silverorange. After the redesign, some users complained about the lack of the simplistic, minimalist layout used in the original version of Digg. The site developers have stated that in future versions a more minimalist design will likely be employed.
Digg has grown large enough that submissions sometimes create a sudden swarm of traffic to the "dugg" website. This is referred to by some Digg users as "the Digg effect" (a play on "Slashdot effect"), and by some others as the site being "dugg to death".
Timeline
- 2004 - December: Digg.com launches.
- 2005 - October: Digg receives $2.8 million from venture capital groups and investors to support its continued growth.[3]
- 2005 - November: Digg.com breaks the 100,000 registered users barrier.
- 2005 - December: "Digg Spy" updated and enhanced to Digg Spy v2 with new features including a live and dynamic behind-the-scenes peek into story submissions, diggings, comment submissions and the like. The right-hand navigation bar also received a new look.
- 2006 - February: Digg is listed on Alexa [1] as one of the top 500 websites on the Internet.
- 2006 - March: The Digg Team releases new, threaded comment system to digg users.
Criticisms
- In several cases Digg users have, presumably in acts of vigilante justice, flooded [2] internet websites and businesses with DDoS attacks in response to stories posted by single users. When one user posted a story about the business practices of an online camera store, some Digg users responded by placing simultaneous phone calls to the store and flooding its website with requests, impairing the company's ability to function. [3] [4] Some Digg users also flooded EBaum's World, a website which had been criticized by Digg users for copying its content from other sites without attribution. Many users encouraged this activity and some posted comments instructing others how to participate in such an attack.
- Because Digg is not staff moderated, stories featured on the front page may suffer from spelling, grammatical, or factual errors. In one high-profile example, a front-page story suggested that games publisher Stardock "want[ed] people to pirate" their recently-released game Galactic Civilzations II [5]. Shortly afterwards, Stardock issued a denial on their Web site; this rebuttal was reported on Digg's front page under a misspelled headline which confused the title of the game with the publisher's name [6].
- Submitting links to one's own blog is highly discouraged by a sizable portion of the community, as it is often seen as a mechanism to generate advertising revenue on the part of the submitter. Such posts are derided by many users as "blogspam", but some popular links of this sort receive enough votes to make it to the front page.
- Digg's user-moderated nature can be seen as open to abuse for purposes of spreading false, malicious information or rumors. This kind of attack is especially effective when it uses the community's pride to make the intended victim out to be an enemy. In one such case, O'Reilly writer Steve Mallett was accused of having had stolen source code from Digg by an anonymous blog[7]. The story was promoted to the front page and visible to all visitors for several hours. Later, a story denouncing this claim did make it to the front page but some damage had already been done.
- Like with any internet forum, stories' comment sections, which are intended to provide a means for constructive discussion about a topic, often serve as a medium for confrontation and spam. Digg's decentralized moderation system for comments was implemented to help curb this, but some users use the feature to demote comments which they disagree with, thus amplifying the problem rather than alleviating it. The anonymity of comment promotion and demotion may contribute to this.
- If a specific URL receives multiple complaints from users, it is added to a URL blacklist and can no longer be submitted to Digg. Sometimes, this can cause every web page on the same server as the blacklisted page to also be blocked.
<-- Claims are not verifiable. -->