I am working on a site which try to solve many of the problems with digg.com.
You can find it on http://crowdnews.eu.

The main problem with digg is the voting system.
When only top voted stories get on the front page it has
to be a subject that many can relate to,
which result in stories with a low information content.

Crowdnews solves this by using sharing instead of voting.
Every have a personal news page on which they can subscribe to other users and when those users share stories they will appear on the personal news page.

Join me on CrowdNews

Not everyone on Digg is like that, a lot of people are decent. Only a small group of people hide behind their anonymity. The Digg bans are a little weird, but they are warranted for the most part. From my understanding they were reciprocating diggs without having seen the items, by using it they make it so that they add a whole whack of diggers and they exchange diggs, they digg everyone who adds them as a friend and those people in turn feel happy that they’re stuff is getting digged that they return the favor. By doing this automatically it means a lot of spam was getting dugg because the users didn’t read the stuff but just dugg it to get digged back.

Also the digg algorithm isn’t simple, it actually gives weight to top digg users. The top diggers have a lot of value in their diggs. So when they reciprocate diggs all sorts of items get added weight, when top users automate their diggs it means that a lot of bad content gets higher weighting because it has credibility from a top digger. Digg was scared about that.

Okay, this happens all the time. Try leaving a comment, and you’ll see what I mean.

being a banned member for no reason i can understand this post, and the above comment, i posted about that as well, ( article here http://dennisharting.blogspot.com/search?q=digg ) as i too was annoyed with the comments being left for no reason, yet visiting the site, it seems the comments are still there, friends are not really friends they just want you to move their things up the ladder with no regard for what you are posting and finally, it seems digg says you have the right to appeal but they will not answer your emails so how can you appeal ?? i wish you good luck as you try to negotiate the mine field that is digg

Invite hackers to join in

Digg’s to sell the site:

Kill all hackers

It’s all about politics, and banned diggers are merely soldiers that sacrificed themselves for Digg’s founders to make a shitload of money

I didn’t believe in accepting “n00bs” as friends, when I was on Digg, until they showed me a track record of them utilizing the site to something I called a “reasonable degree”. The “Reasonable Degree” all depended on how long they were on the site versus how much activity their stats showed. Every once in a while I would snatch up a newbie who was ‘fresh out of the gate’ and take a chance on them. I had no real criteria of judging who I would grab as a friend – it was mostly a ‘gut feeling’. Odds are this was because I noticed something about them that really didn’t register with me. I’d simply be looking at a profile and the thought would hit “Hey, this person may be a good Friend”.

In general, celebrities and the famous (including politicians) do not fall under the same rules as ‘normal folk’. I think that in recent years these famous people have been trying to change this. It used to be that if you were a famous person, say an actor or politician, then you were pretty much open game. Occasionally a famous person would sue and win a defamation suit filed in court, but for the most part it was a deal of ‘if you are famous, you have to deal with whatever people say about you’.

Digg is a strange place, it’s sort of schizophrenic at times. An example of what I mean is that you could say the nastiest things about a person (Sarah Palin or George Bush) for example, but if you said a comment just as bad about another (say Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama) then Digg or the bury brigade would get rid of the post. The real twist is that this might be true for a period of time, but a few days or weeks later the opposite would be true. It’s sort of like watching Robin Williams when he is doing his “Split Personality” thing.

“Organized Effort”, on Digg, normally means an effort put forth by more than one person as a group. For example, If you and I had 4 or 5 friends who all decided to only digg certain people (or bury certain people or topics) — then that would be a violation. It doesn’t always work out that way, but that is the basic intent of that rule you quoted. It’s the same rule that I’ve found on other sites, basically. The problem is that Digg seems totally clueless in the field of managing a forum on the net. This might be because more than one person is making the decisions and it depend on who is ‘on duty’ at the time the decision is made. As far as the likes of Kevie Rose and Jaybo Adelson are concerned, I think they are so far out of the Digg loop (normally) that when the dam busts – they have to scramble to justify what is going on. It seems apparent to me that Digg needs one “Forum Master” who runs the forum and makes the decisions within the framework of the TOU, all others who could be classified as “Staff” abide by what the Forum Administrator’s policies are — or they defer to the Administrator for a decision.

Everyone else at Digg who is not directly on the Administration Staff and Management team would be told to keep their noses out of the Digg forum business. I’d really like to know if my observations provided a correct, or close enough, view of how I think the Digg site operates… but I’ve been in and running forums since the mid-90s and from what Digg has shown me – I don’t think I am far wrong. lol It seems too messed up for one management team to be running the forum on the Digg site, and if they do have one team running the show then they need new people in those positions badly.

It all depends on how much time you have on your hands and what your objectives are… as to whether you continue using Digg or another site. You might think over putting most of your effort on another site and use Digg more sparingly.

For example, you may only post a couple of items on Digg, give out maybe 5 to 50 diggs a day on the average, make a few comments to items you like, etc. On the other site(s) you would do your best work for it probably would be better appreciated there.

Hey, it’s a thought.

Good post!