DISQUS

Tony · 3 years ago

Hey Mat,

I think the article was dead on with its insights -- but incorrect in that the weight of its own internal corruption will doom it. People will continue to carry on with Digg -- I would say the majority of Diggers pay no attention to the comments, and only a tiny percentage even submit articles. People will often digg up articles based on the title alone without reading the articles. I suspecct they use Digg the way people use Techmeme ... to scan interesting stuff which has the weight of thousands of registered users.

Of course "interesting" is relative -- but they have an incredible amount of inertia right now ... for it to fail, people would have to stop going to Digg outright and posts about Digg's corruption will do little to the current readership, particularly when its something none of them want to hear i

For example, downloadsquad.com's post was submitted ... then buried.
The prosecution rests, your honor ;)

Carson · 3 years ago

Of course Digg stinks a little bit. How could it be otherwise? Why would anyone anticipate anything other than cliquishness and silliness? Digg is also valuable and informative, if you know how to approach it and enter it with an understanding of its weaknesses and the surrounding context.

When you reminded Gomes that some books are lousy, too, it was an understatement. Most books are lousy. Even most of the books by really, really bright people are lousy. Most television shows are lousy. Most magazines are lousy. Digg is lousy. The majority of peer-reviewed academic journals are lousy, too.

So, we have a choice. We can either give up and allow ourselves to wallow in our own (and only our own) little thoughts or we can accept the strong likelihood that most of what is produced is fairly rotten and work to develop a means to find needles of wisdom in the haystack.

Sometimes, that wisdom comes from WSJ writers. Sometimes it comes from members of a mouth-breathing fraternity. Sometimes you stumble upon it elsewhere.

Mathew Ingram · 3 years ago

Thanks for that, Tony -- the Digg Bury Squad strikes again :-)

And you make a good point, Carson. We are all looking for filters, and some are better than others. For my part, I'm glad there are more emerging every day.

engtech · 3 years ago

Yup, it's all about finding good filters. Is Digg a good filter? Not really. Is Digg a good source of traffic? Yes and no. I find that both Digg and Slashdot can bring in a swarm of commenters who are there for a flamewar more than anything else. The only time I didn't get a bad taste from comments was that Great Firewall of Canada post. Maybe it's me. :)

The traffic is great, and blog links that come afterwards are great... but maybe it's a good idea to turn comments off for the initial part of the flood. I find the later commenters are much more respectful than the initial wave.

Mathew Ingram · 3 years ago

Thanks for that, Engtech.

Eric Berlin · 3 years ago

Digg has its issues and challenges, but from what I can see Mr. Clarke is poking around in the wrong places.

I personally don't care for the tone with digg comments some of the time, but does that mean that Digg doesn't have value or is rotting from the inside? Hardly. I can happily enjoy digg's content without bothering with the comments if I like, or use its best-of-breed tools to help filter out the din. And the notion that sites will block digg as a referrer is ridiculous. Some traffic is better than others, but traffic is still traffic -- everybody loves it.

In my view digg's (and all social news sites') biggest challenge is the value of diggs/votes themselves. Should all votes be equal, how do you encourage participation while discouraging gaming, etc.