The Digg Effect

Users of Digg may or may not recall the phenomenon of "Karma Whoring" that threatened Slashdot years ago. In brief, a certain subset of Slashdot users were essentially spamming the site to get "karma", a (limited) form of social recognition on Slashdot. Slashdot responded, eventually, by introducing arbitrary limits to the amount of karma any user could receive, both in total and for a single comment or other contribution. In changing Slashdot's community dynamic, the site angered and alienated many of the users who had spent lots of time building up legitimate karma, arguing that they were being lumped in with others whose contributions were of a low general quality. I had forgotten all about that piece of history until the current top-user behavior "crisis" hit Digg recently. Techcrunch has a good wrap-up of the issue that you should read if you're unaware of what's going on with Digg these days.

I have three thoughts regarding all this.

1. Social web sites, gasp, resemble society!

The main complaint of those who are crying foul over this latest issue cite a "top-30 cabal" as being destructively influential to the site. Who is shocked by this? Why are so many people amazed to find out that certain elite users would (whether by malice or not) associate with other elite users? That these users' contributions and "diggs" would count for more than those of the unwashed masses is a feature uf Digg and isn't their fault.

Cliques form, online and in life. People who are upset by this are out of touch with reality. Digg made a choice in making their weighting algorithm, and the results speak for themselves - it's not the concern of the top users to moderate themselves to meet the desires of others whose feelings are hurt because their stories didn't make the front page.

Anyway, if cabals are so powerful in Digg, why aren't we seeing "top 31-60" cabals and "top 61-90" cabals? It would be interesting to see if these partitions start to form as a response to the influence of the top diggers.

2. Digg needs to learn lessons from those who have been there before.

Kevin Rose was inspired by Slashdot and was doubtlessly aware of many of the emergent social phenomena that have been featured on Slashdot over the years. It therefore makes me wonder why certain of the lessons that Slashdot learned very publicly many years ago are being re-learned by Rose and Co. today. Users have suggested fixes to address many of the Digg issues, and unsurprisingly many of them reflect the current state of Slashdot. I understand that learning from personal experience can be very rewarding, but the Digg crew needs to be sharper than this if they really expect to stay ahead of the competition.

Speaking of staying ahead of the competition, it is interesting to look back in hindsight now and see the actions of Netscape's Calacanis in the present light. Calacanis sought to draw top submitters from Digg to Netscape's clone site by actually paying them (Revolting! How dare he try to compensate people for doing work!). However, given what is now known about how some of the submitters may have gained their top perch, it might seem that Calacanis could have been better off going in another direction, because...

3. Influential top users aren't a good thing.

The Techcrunch article makes an excellent point that is this - if site content is generated by a few rather than by the many, what's to differentiate Digg from the New York Times? Users in effect are simply trading one group of editors (professional) for another (amateur).

Digg is/was differentiated because of the range and volume of content submitted. Anecdotally, I've witnessed Digg being transformed into another form of RSS aggregator as top diggers simply post forwards to top blogs and sites like Techcrunch and Wired. This prevents lots of content that is interesting or more difficult to uncover from rising out of the noise, as the weight of the cabal overwhelms the lesser contributors.

So, despite all the huge volume of work being done by many of the top diggers, in reality their efforts are counter to the public interest. By carrying "weight" in their efforts, they have become a force to skew Digg, and that's not Digg.

So what's the thing for Digg to do? Digg doesn't need to topple the top users, but they definately should make it so that the voice of the top users don't carry any more weight than any body else. Digg has grown enough, has a large enough base now, that there is no longer any benefit in that practice.

The top contributors will still remain the top contributors due simply to the fact that they submit whole raft-loads of content. Their "promoted" ratios will fall, though, and this will be good for everybody.