DISQUS

maggie fox · 3 years ago

Part of the promise of social media is the storage of institutional memory (something also often lacking in newsrooms, in my experience). Leaving the story up and flagging it as inaccurate allows Digg to remind and us to remember. By deleting it and "pretending it never happened" (which is not possible, and often results in more attention, rather than less) they remove the reference point and details - paving the way for the same thing to happen in the same way, with no learning, again, and again, and again...

Mathew Ingram · 3 years ago

I think you are probably right on that score, Maggie. I know that the Globe's policy on corrections, for example, is to attach the correction to the story, so that it's obvious what the mistake was and where, rather than correcting the story and pretending that it never happened. Thanks for the comment.

Ryan Coleman · 3 years ago

The "social momentum" has always been a concern for me with sites like Digg.

Earlier in the year I had a problem with my Gmail account and did a blog post about it - at first I thought it was a bug.

Of course the prospect of a Gmail bug got "Dugg" - 1 hour and 4,000 hits later (it hit the front page of digg in about 20 minutes) I realized what the issue was (It was not a bug but rather a - i think - stupid feature). By that time the damage was done though and there was no mechanism aside from my one vote to undig & bury the story to do anything about it. I edited the post to correct it and emailed digg admins but at that point all I could do was sit back and watch. It eventually got force buried by the admins but it's still on the site. Even after the post was corrected & numerous comments were made saying it was incorrect it still kept getting dugg at a furious pace (almost 900 total) - people just didn't seem to care or read it, they saw Gmail, Bug and Dugg it.

(Heck it got slashdotted two days later even though it had been corrected for over 48 hours - so clearly they don't even read the stories sometimes)

I don't know why they would have outright deleted the story though , doesn't make any sense... unless Sony's lawyers had a word about them. Those Diggs, even when buried still get found all the time (I still get 10-20 hits a week via that link)

Mathew Ingram · 3 years ago

A Gmail bug? That's a great story! I just dug your post too :-)

Seriously though, thanks for the comment, Ryan.

Rob Hyndman · 3 years ago

That organ thing was ... an urban legend? D'Oh!