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How Digg Gets Everything Backwards.. And How to Fix It

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mouser:
With the recent announcement by digg that they are going to try to tweak the algorithm to catch and circumvent the action of manipulative digg groups, this article has some quotes which point out the folly of this approach:
http://wired.com/news/technology/0,71750-0.html?tw=wn_index_2

"If 30 or 20 or 50 or 90 people want to digg each other's stories, let them," Chrisek, a Digg user in the site's top 60, said via e-mail. "I digg my friend's stories. I also report my friends' stories as inaccurate or as spam when need be. Am I more prone to digg stories from my friends? Of course."
--- End quote ---

the problem is that this unwanted behavior of a group of people conspiring to inflate a story onto the front page is completely indistinguishable from friends and strangers digging stories they like.

and let's share some laughs at netscape:
Jason Calacanis, head of a rival social news service at Netscape.com, scolded Digg for punishing its core contributors. "Frankly I think Digg is tripping over itself here," he wrote on his blog. "The top users earned their spot and they should be rewarded for their contributions -- not penalized. One person, one vote -- that's the rule. You can't change that or you change the fundamental premise of democracy."
--- End quote ---

Forgive my cynicism but i doubt Jason has the slightest bit of interest in the fundamental premise of democracy at netscape or on any other website - his concern is the business model and scratching away whatever market share he can from digg. so spare me.

mouser:
a game theoretic analysis:
http://www.shmula.com/197/digg-as-a-game

mouser:
Someone has brought up slashdot and asked how my suggestions relate to slashdot.

First of all let me say, I'm not a fan of slashdot.  I think it's become irrelevant, slow, and displays in general bad judgement about what stories are good vs. bad.

Which is a bit distressing since slashdot uses a model quite close to what I'm proposing, i.e. a crowd-suggest , expert-filter model.

A key difference though is that slashdot has very little transparency.  It's not clear who is selecting which stories and why.  The biases and conflicts of interest of editors is hidden.

I suggest that having transparent accountability of the domain expert editors is very important.  Users should be able to see exactly who made what decisions about what stories.

The idea of a representative voting system for the experts means that users can vote on (or rate) experts in much the same way they currently rate stories has a number of benefits.  Voting on experts based on their long term editing choices seems more rational and likely to lead to considered decisions as opposed to instantaneous mass voting based on a glimpse at headline titles.

alex3f:
IMHO, this is not Digg wonderful idea. This is an idea of collective decision making (includes collaborative filtering). It was originated long before digg, and long before the Internet, and allows different implementations. Digg's implementation is not the first and also quite poor, too vulnerable to abuse and information cascades.  http://www.shmula.com/197/digg-as-a-game has a good analysis and two good suggestions for digg. On the other hand, the suggestions are pretty much strightforward and were implemented at my site right from the beginning and long before digg registered its domain name. But maybe  the popularity of digg, at least partly, is related to its present design that is so prone to abuse and decision errors. It seems that the goals of attractiveness and quality might be in conflict in this case. I wonder, if digg was better implemented and protected from abuse from the beginning, would it be so popular?

mouser:
I wonder, if digg was better implemented and protected from abuse from the beginning, would it be so popular?
--- End quote ---

That's a fascinating question, and one that could be asked about other products that get popular.. I wonder if there is a name for this in marketing circles.. A product which attains popularity because it is hackable..

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