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My involvement in all this is just to make sure that Digg become more transparent. For me - and I think everyone - the algo change is a distant second.
the pot and enrage the masses :-)
reason Digg is the hotspot, and so a lot of the issues that are coming up
have to do with them. Digg is the new black :-)
be-all and end-all of social media or news aggregators or whatever you want
to call them. But it still seems like where a lot of action is when it
comes to the issues of user vs. editor and how you manage those conflicts.
Think about it: newsgroups were always *open* to whomever wanted to join. But they only became "social" to you if you were accepted by the group. The groups always had overlords--moderators who were involved with the group depending on the level of love for the topic--and would sometimes outright ban others or "douche" various members from the system for "infractions" that were sometimes never explained.
Now, these things are automated. Rather than a human hand sending a popular person into the Internet ether, we have bots. And algorithms. Don't blame the site administrators for maybe having big egos--it's just the impartial algorithm that's making things happen ;-)
Digg always seemed to me to be more of a community than a news source--and perhaps that's also a huge error on the part of those observing the phenomenon, who may know very little about older forms of social media and have no reference points to understand communities like Digg, who saw Digg as a news service rather than a community. As for the idea of "collaborative news filtering"--well, that used to go on in newsgroups, too. And it's going on in other places than Digg. Only just not with the same hipster cachet as Digg. And while you're right about Digg being a big social media petri dish, we shouldn't forget about the petri dishes that came before....
remember the early days of Usenet and even IRC and other forums have seen
these types of behaviour before -- in many ways the same themes keep
repeating themselves. But I think each time it happens there are more
people exposed to it, and more people involved, and perhaps we learn a
little more (hopefully). Someday maybe people will put some of those
lessons to use :-)
These little groups and cliques that have prospered for so long are now in turmoil and they're in a pissy mood. Do you really think that a few top blogs and news sites produce the best content all the time? Think again. I'm not a conspiracy theorist here, but there Digg "rings" and "circles" out there. These groups pledge together and vote items to the top. My guess is the new algorithm recognizes voting patterns and a LACK of voting diversity, hence the reason some submissions aren't making the front page...
Just my two bits on a lovely Friday :)
Cheers,
Aidan
www.MappingTheWeb.com
I've had some minor interaction with three of the four top Diggers who were part of the protest letter and they seem like decent people. I think they got frustrated because, once again, the rules were changed without warning, adding another log on the fire of frustration. After all, they're just people like the rest of us - they want to be heard when they have a complaint.