You can’t really blame them. The guys over at Digg were attacked hard in the past when it became apparent that their site sent a lot of traffic to pages that hit their homepage. The thing is - they’ve turned an issue into an obsession.
Digg has people scared
Whenever they talk during Digg Town Hall Meetings or interviews where the question is brought up, they exude a passion about their desire to not get gamed. They tell stories of what seems like entire little countries logging on to spam their site with Diggs to worthless blogs. They talk about measures and counter-measures to detect gaming that are too secretive to discuss openly. They don’t want to get gamed. They don’t want to get gamed. They don’t want to get gamed.
Guys, we get the point.
The problem is this. You’re Digg. You’re going to get gamed. Making it harder to get gamed isn’t the solution, it’s becoming part of the problem. You see, unless you hire editors (and we assume that it would take dozens of editors on 24 hours a day to go through all of the stories) and foil your intentions of being socially driven, you’re going to get gamed. It happens. They key is in encouraging a community of users who work with established groundrules and police themselves.
It works elsewhere. Reddit might get spammed, but they are quick to down-mod any spam that hits the front page. Newsvine is tremendously quick to respond to spam or attempts at gaming. Mixx and Propeller have their own issues, but nowhere near what you have at Digg.
Before anyone jumps in and says “But Digg is bigger”, remember that Digg IS bigger. They have the resources to make this happen, to adjust the site in a way that is more community driven and harder to game. The ways they are using now to stop gaming are futile. Banning people who can easily switch IPs and hop back on only encourages them to find new ways to game the system.
Build your community. Stop with the stupid tactics.
For more stories about Digg, check out some of these posts:
- Digg Trying to Be Too Smart to Make it Work?
- Banned on Digg
- A Newcomer’s Take on Digg
- What is Digg Planning?
- digg.com social media fail
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
dotlizard 10.12.08 at 9:28 pm
you’ve hit the proverbial nail right on the head. if Digg would utilize the resource of its ‘power’ users to provide quality control, like every other large social site on the internet, it would be far more effective against spam and gaming. once you reach a certain size, there is no practical way to have totally hands-off, algorithm-driven control. algorithms can be fooled and gamed, and the harder you make it, the harder they’ll try, it’s no-win. the *only* way to have any sort of reliable quality control is to have human oversight, consisting of users savvy enough to recognize gamers and spammers when they see them - the power users.
i think that Digg staff was buying into the nonsense their abusive trolls were spewing, alleging that the top users were somehow getting rich or powerful or laid or something due to their awesome front paging powers. why else would they do the exact opposite thing, sanctioning and arbitrarily banning their best people, rather than using them to make the site better?
Happy Duck 10.22.08 at 2:24 pm
“Digg would utilize the resource of its ‘power’ users”
That’s the problem, a small percentage of Digg power users are in it for profit. They take money in exchange for diggs. I know of one ex-top Digger (no longer using Digg)who got caught with his pants down in a sting where he quoted his rates. The blog post made it to the frontpage, top digger got banned, but went to another social site where he now has a lofty position as a moderator and gets paid to do it.
Since then things have gone into secrecy and in tight marketting cliques you can get a top digger to get your stuff to the front in exchange for some pretty big amounts of cash. Of course you have to know someone in the know to vouch for you to even be considered. Big companies are dishing out money and swag to them, so don’t think that they actually will be objective.