Praising the past rather than criticizing the present

IGG, at least as a technology site, seems to be dying. It’s ironic because it actually started as a technology site — the very same part which is being sidelined. Very few technology stories make the front page and those which do can sometimes be described as ‘fluff’, not news. This was pointed out by some other people before. The observation made the front page, too.

The days of my Digg raves remain far behind. Here is one such rave. These were the golden days, or “a honeymoon” as my online friend Derek once called it (he was the number 3 Digger at one stage, if I recall correctly). I seem to recall having 4 or 5 (!!) of my stories appearing in the front page of Digg at the very same time back in 2006. These were news items. They were about GNU/Linux mostly.

I have noticed a decline in Digg’s population, based on active participation. In fact, Alexa rank — as silly as it may be — has dropped for Digg. Jumping the shark? I don’t know. I carry on submitting to Digg, but for the first time in almost 2 years I no longer read Digg. Too much noise, too little signal. I have better feeds to read.

Unless Digg changes and stops being (already becoming?) a link farm to bloggers/submitters, then it’s “so long, Digg.” It was a nice ride though.

Interestingly enough, it’s not the stalkers/shills that drove me away. It’s Digg’s inherent problems. It becomes a dumpster of content. In a a way, I’m happy that Digg had itself ruined because it makes my departure Digg’s fault, so to speak.

At the moment, since Digg as a technology site is dying (and to me it’s a fact), I gradually leave it and I asked for advice on finding rare stories (i.e. those that LinuxToday, FSDaily and Lxer tend to miss). I used to be using search feeds, syndicating hundreds of blogs, and a combination thereof. I’m experimenting with new information pipes.

Speaking of Digg, take with a grain of salt whatever you see in Digg. 4+ people there mod down all my comments systematically and post slanderous remarks about me. They do the same thing in USENET and Slashdot where they exist as “anonymous coward”. It’s the same old tricks from OS/2 days and some of the very same people.

Will Digg ever take care of shills in their site? Will they? They never did. Not even a response from them on the particular subject. 4 people systematically mod down all my comment (example from arbitrary few hours alone). If people do this for months and within a few hours, it’s no hobby or obsession. It’s hard to believe these people aren’t paid to do this. Then it become easy to watch them attacking the messenger. Classic!

Digg has become a junkyard for corporations and users should be rightly concerned.

Digg contains and gives room to notorious characters like “flatfish” (a Microsoft shill better known as Gary Stewart). That’s the guy who is part of the group (in Digg and elsewhere) which spreads false rumours about me, including the lie that I’m transsexual, that I have a criminal record, that I molest children and whatever… you name it, they did it. It’s a smear campaign. One just needs to add these shills to the blocklist and tell the Microsoft buddies at Digg (they are business partners now, having signed an advertising deal) to address this problem which they continue to ignore.

ell, well, well…

It turns out that a bunch of shills might be trying to shut up this Web site for no justifiable reason whatsoever. WebSense has just blacklisted schestowitz.com after someone had been spreading lies in public forums and Web sites. Some anonymous voices spoke about this Web site (and another one of mine) launching DDOS attacks. This is utterly false. It is slander that has been spread in various forums by the same person with different identities or by the usual suspect (Gary Stewart). It’s a character assassination and image assassination attempt.

I’ve inquired to check with other sites, which I suspect suffer from the same people. Those responsible for this are probably long-time Microsoft shills (many observers are convinced). There are prior stories and cases in the past.

Update: It turns out that this happened in the past to other innocent Web sites too. Exact same scenario: “Websense and false accusations.”

If companies keep paying people to do such utter rubbish, then investigation ought to follow. I haven’t enough evidence, but let it all be said in public — for now.

will start with a proposition that I repeat rather often: Alexa ranks are flawed. Usually, for most sites, they are utterly meaningless.

It is difficult to argue this when faced with Alexa-happy people, but the figures cannot be trusted. It is a toolbar that acts in a similar way to spyware which drives these ranks. The A9 toolbar for Firefox used to have the same effect. Recently however, Microsoft grabbed A9 by the balls and forced them to drop the toolbar. No more Alexa manipulation on Macs and Linux boxes. So where do we end up?

Alexa aligns with Webmasters’ surfing habits. Netcraft figures, on the other hand, align better with system administrators’ surfing habits. The two can intersect. The shown figures are, by default, calculated from a three-month average of pageviews. One can view daily reach though to see how it goes willy-nilly when a few regular visitors use the toolbar. The exception to this might be the very top sites, although the definition of traffic still matters.

Manipulation gets harder at that stage where top sites get ranked. Many people game Alexa as well. Do not trust Alexa ranks. Ever. Use Netcraft if you want something that’s not just an alternative, but is also better in the sense that fewer people game it. Here are some example statistics from two top site.

• Netcraft rank for Netscape: 341^st
• Netcraft rank for Digg: 867^th
• Alexa rank for Netscape: 479^th
• Alexa rank for Digg: 79^th

See? No alignment between Netcraft and Alexa figures at all. Not even for top sites. These so-called ‘realistic’ figures collide and contradict one another. Alexa has become one these “everybody steals, so I can as well” sort of thing… grossly biased. While people continue to game Alexa it remains a strange animal.

EMOCRACY has returned to Digg.com, all at the expense of arguably-deserved rewards (power and advantage) given to top site contributers. These latest algorithm changes affect me as well, though I have not been submitting any stories for a fortnight.

Will this prove to be a wise move by Digg’s administrators? Was it well overdue? History will tell. But here’s a sure bet: top users, whose labour contributed the most to Digg, are utterly dissatisfied by the large.

I noticed that fellow Diggers are unable to get front pagers. The frustration and loss or power is likely to discourage further participation. The problem is thus resolved not only by changing the rules, but also by demoralising regulars. It’s somewhat of a scare tactic, which is a bad idea no matter how you look at it. Good for newbies perhaps, but it drives away the “power Diggers”—those who care the most about the Web site, know it best, and submit the least duplicates. A shame really…

This one is an eye-catcher in case you have been following the progression of the Web. This relates to the tiered Web, the divisive (isolated) Web, and censorship.

A bill of rights for the internet age has been proposed at a United Nations’ conference in Athens.

The bill would update and restate rights that have been enshrined for centuries, said Robin Gross of civil liberties group IP Justice.

As an aside, one of the greater threats to the Web are Windows zombies which pollute the Internet with SPAM and DDOS attacks.

Also see: Web developer (Berners-Lee) fears for the internet, Berners-Lee calls for Web 2.0 calm

UPLICATE entries are some of the evil residues of sites where editorial involves many people. There are ways of preventing duplicates (dupes), but none is perfect.

I personally find Digg’s dupe detector somewhat flawed because, by the time the user finds matches based on similarity, much of the entry (and effort) has already been put into it. The user is thus tempted never to retract and concede the submission. Netscape, on the other hand, checks for title and URL similarity (identity only) in-line.

Wishlist items:

• Have matches that are more ‘fluid’ appear on the side while input is entered (not just exact matches)
• Permit the user to preview without entering a channel and without tags. This enables the submitter to check for dupes before giving some supplemental information. I am aware that it requires some parsing of the text, which is harder than using tag-based similarity.
• What would be nice is an option for supplemental items, URL’s, and followup news. Maybe have a hierarchical connector between related items, or at least some linkage that connects an item with a correction, clarification, op/ed, etc.

CCORDING to various sources (including a seminal report from TechCrunch), Digg seeks to be acquired. The reactions are, as expected, largely rants that express dissatisfaction, particularly within the Digg community. I spotted this one comment the other day.

“If News Corp buys it, you can find me a Netscape.com or some other similar site.”

It is just one among many which speak of Slashdot, Netscape, or mention News Corp./Fox as the evil creature that could take over Digg. All in all, this is probably good news to all sites which compete with Digg. I don’t think that any company with the needed resources (and interests) is truly benevolent.

• Google – would pull “democracy” out of Digg, especially if you IP address is Chinese…
• Yahoo – would sell your Digg details…
• Microsoft – would eliminate the Apple and UNIX/Linux sections…