Digg Makes Well Intentioned Changes But More Needs To Be Done

Today came a post in Kevin Rose's blog notifying users of Digg's change in its algorithm. The main change is that it will now take into account voting patterns and will promote stories to the main page (a really valuable web real estate) depending on "diversity of voters who have voted for the story". What this essentially means is that, firstly, stories will take longer time or more Diggs to make it to the front page. For instance, a few days ago stories with a Digg count of 60-70 often made it to the front page while there were instances of stories with 145 Diggs still present in the upcoming section. Secondly, and more importantly, it is an effort on the part of Digg to lessen the influence of top diggers in its community who presently contribute at least 10% of articles that make it to main page of Digg. Each of the top users have a fan following on Digg and their stories automatically get 70-80 diggs and they receive a boost over new joinees in terms of stories they want to submit. This change aims to make Digg a level playing field for old powerful users and new users.

This step of course hasn't gone well with top users with many crying foul over how this algorithm change suggests that top digg users are gaming digg. In the words of Derek, a power user on digg:

"I was quite surprised by Kevin's announcement. Personally I thought all the controversy was a bunch of hot air. It all started because a user by the name of digitalgopher stayed home sick from work a couple days ago and spent the day submitting even more awesome content to Digg then usual. Naturally, this resulted in a lot more of his stories being promoted to the front page than usual that day. This caused a couple of users to panic and before you know it we have people calling for the heads of the top 100 users."

And obviously top users are upset, since this algorithm directly hits on their well earned reputation and fan following. Also, it is taking longer for stories to make it to main page which make them cry about good missed content. Visit this site and you will notice concerns that many people have with digg and which has been inflated with algorithm changes. The situation went so bad that Kevin and Jay, its founders had to talk to top digg users in an attempt to quell their fears. Note that its users have already been upset with digg about issues like banning of accounts without any reason and digg not replying to mails that are sent to them.

However, I think that in one respect that what Digg really needs to change is in terms of transparency. Users want to know if there is a feature called "Auto-Bury List" in digg which automatically buries stories that belong to particular URLs. Kevin and Jay have mainly avoided this question till now. Also in question are digg editors who scan stories and bury which seems inappropriate to them. These features are not necesserily negative, but the problem is the lack of transparency and digg users being kept out of loop. Digg should remember that many users submit stories to digg because they feel themselves to be part of the digg community as contributors. If they are kept out of the loop and their account banned due to TOS violation without giving any reason/warning to them, these users will tend to go look for other options. I had noted in an article about top social media sites that many digg users have left to join mixx, another social voting site with richer facilities than digg. What digg must remember that its value lies only in its community of contributors and thus be nicer and open with them. Many of the users there contribute because they love digg and digg should also love them back so that good stories keep coming in.