Wednesday, January 10th, 2007, 2:28 pm
Digg, Slashdot and Maturity
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My two stories at the very top of Digg.com (click for full-sized image)
IGG has possibly made a mistake by opening its doors to a wider crowd by augmenting its sections and encouraging short and lame postings. I was at times modded down because my comments were “too long”.
A friend of mine tends to agree that Digg was much better over a year ago. Even Slashdot is orders of magnitude more mature than Digg nowadays. Slashdot’s trolls have moved elsewhere and someone must ‘absorb’ them. Also, Digg is increasingly becoming people’s blog aggregator (just seen someone submitting 10 links to his blog in one day). This lowers the overall quality and raises ‘noise’ level. Maybe Digg is a victim of its own traffic-generating reputation, as well as ‘democratic’ nature (making it possible for inaccurate news to hit key pages).
January 11th, 2007 at 2:01 am
I couldn’t agree more. I haven’t been at digg long, but a year ago, the maturity level was definitely a bit higher. Now, you see so many just plain dumb comments, that in no way contribute to the discussion of the article. I personally find your comments quite interesting. Yes, long, but also very informative! They add to the discussion, not take away! The hundreds of spammers and trolls you see commenting on stories, really ruins a lot of the interest I used to have in digg. I still use it as a good site for news, but I hardly bother reading the comments anymore. Just not worth it.
Digg just isn’t the place it used to be…
January 11th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
This may be a gross over-simplification, but AFAICT Digg has simply become a haven for Windows oriented people, whereas Slashdot is still more Linux friendly.
Many of the Troll comments I read are just vicious unprovoked attacks on submissions about FOSS/Linux news or Microsoft problems.
Also I think the journo’s have got it wrong WRT popularity. I still see considerably more hits on my various sites from Slashdot than Digg, by an order of magnitude. In fact I get more hits from YouTube than Digg!
I can only conclude that Digg has been overrun by paid Microsoft shills. Pity, since the submissions are many and varied, typically of a higher quality than elsewhere, and extremely enlightening.
I only hope that Digg sorts itself out, as Slashdot did, and purges the Trolls for good.
January 12th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Not so long ago, Bruce Perens launched technocrat, which he characterised as “Slashdot for grownups”. I wonder if Netscape is to Digg what technocrat is to Slashdot (before they did some ‘house cleaning’).
January 16th, 2007 at 7:24 am
You forget the fact that you troll in every Microsoft post like it is your duty to do so. I’ve used both Linux and Windows and I love both, but I simply can’t agree with your zealotry.
Maybe if you stayed in the Linux area and kept posting your FUD there, you’d be happier with the number of positive diggs your comments received.
Stop trying to throw your FUD at everyone and you’ll find that Digg is a friendly place.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Digg is turning into what most people feared it would become around the release of Digg v3.
I started visiting Digg around one year ago and joined Digg a few months after that (around march.) I thought I had found an awesome community with users I related to and submissions that I liked, so I stayed.
After the release of Digg v4, the quality of comments (and submissions in some cases) has greatly deteriorated.
Some of the comments are so stupid and painful I either Digg them down or block them. I rarely find more than a few insightful comments in a submission.
Seriously, what happened to Digg?
(Sorry about the quality of this comment, it’s around 4am where I am right now.)
January 16th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Anonymous,
You make a fair point. In my defence, I regularly see people attacking us in ‘our side of the picket fence’, so to speak. Not only in Digg, but also in UseNet. When I criticise something which is Windows-related it is never intended to anger anyone; it usually results from the frustration of seeing basic freedoms taken away by large and unethical companies. I really apologise if my comments have offended or annoyed you.
Whoblah,
Yes, I agree. As [H]omer said earlier, Slashdot has improved significantly when it comes to comment quality; Digg, on the other hand, has sunk. Submission quality likewise. No more ‘fp’ and LOTR spam at the top of every Slashdot story. Instead, one finds long and informative comments. I try to leave elaborate comments in Digg, but I also know that short ones are favoured. Digg’s power remains its speed — news emerge quickly. But there are also many ‘false positives’ and floods of blog SPAM.
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
@[H]omer … While I agree with this blog post, I’d have to disagree with your take on it. There’s just as much hate on Digg now for MS/M$ as there was on Slashdot 10 years ago. There are plenty of teens and college kiddies who think they’re “l33t” because they were able to install a flavor of Linux with user-friendly graphical installers — probably almost as many pseudo-Linux fans as there are Johnny-come-lately Apple fanboys. The real problem lies in a) going beyond tech-only postings and b) simply becoming more popular — known to, and therefore frequented by, a broader audience. When /. first opened its doors, it was 99.9% gurus and real geeks. It went through a hefty troll period as broadband always-on connections at home became commonplace, as universities delivered megabit+ speeds to dorm rooms, etc. etc. Nowadays, while I’d say it’s not as much of a guru haven as it once was, Slashdot has normalized/self-regulated. I think Digg has potential to do the same — no guarantees however. The Kevin Rose Club of fanboys is, at its core, Web 2.0/podcast kiddies.