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Valleywag
Why do some stories abruptly disappear from Digg? Duncan Riley of TechCrunch suspects "super users." But there's a much simpler explanation: Digg's shadowy moderators. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose has admitted that the social-news site, a supposedly democratic venue where users pick the headlines, employs moderators: "We have site moderators that ban spammers, remove illegal content, and keep an eye on things. Always have, always will." But what, exactly, does keeping an eye on things entail?
According to someone who was approached about a job as a Digg moderator, Digg uses one moderator per topic, and their duties go far beyond patrolling the site for spam. While they don't have the power to launch a story straight to the homepage, they can adjust the criteria to make it easier or harder for a story to make it big. And in so doing, of course, they exercise editorial judgment. When you submit a story to Digg, it's not just in the hands of the users; it's also at the mercy of unnamed Digg editors.
What does this say about Digg? First, that it has failed to match its aspirations as a perfect democracy of news. And second, that as a business, it may be less attractive than some think. The craze among investors these days are for startups where users generate the content, for free, while paid workers do as little work as possible. At Digg, it turns out Tom Sawyer is painting the fence, after all.
What should Digg do? As Rose points out, Digg does need to do some policing of the site to deter spammers and criminals. And spelling out what moderators do could make their jobs harder, as people will inevitably use the information to try to game Digg.
But I think Digg needs to err on the side of transparency here. When a moderator gives a story an assist, or holds it back, users deserve to know what's happened, and why. Otherwise, conspiracy theories about "super users" will continue to circulate. Digg has in fact begun to change the news business, making traditional editors more accountable to their readers. It's time Digg's editors were, too.
Comments
One moderator per topic - at what level of topic? It makes a difference whether you're talking about ten or fifty.
They have always used human editors, nothing wrong with that, Google does the same.
What is lame is the fact that you cannot see who is burying your stuff. When that happens we will finally see the extent to which a lot of websites essentially control what is 'popular' on digg via cabals of their users and staff.
Great scoop Owen, although it raises even more issues, doesn't it. So much for the greatest democracy on the web.
Democracy sucks. Even the good old USA is not a true democracy but it may be the best example there is. Free speech comes with limits like inciting violence and treason. Pornography is controlled and movies are rated. Digg can not truly allow the free world to create its site. It would suck too much. Spammers and other bastards would ruin it. Good for them for realizing that to keep it good they need some control.
AT&T can write them some filtering software to handle the illegal content, I'm sure.
Nothing wrong with messing with the numbers - as long as they start tanking that annoyingly endless torrent of Ron Paul spam.
Ron Paul is probably an awesome candidate and, for all I know, has values that align with my own. But I have developed a deep, unquenchable, murder-inspiring hatred for the man, only because of his obnoxious supporters on Digg. A vocal minority, to be sure.
*buried* for inaccurate
Wow. Maybe you're right and maybe we should all never visit digg again. I can't believe that they would do this to me. This thought never crossed my mind. It's a good thing you've told everyone. Man everyone is really angry now. Maybe we should remove Digg from the internet forever.
well, as a site gets more popular, more and more moderators come up, and they are strict and unfair. i found a site that has no moderators, and you can swear as much as you want, [www.opentopix.com]
I wish their secret moderators could do something about the number of posts that get to the front page that are nothing more than Ron Paul propaganda.
@Adam Chernow: Yup. You can never say too many good things about Ron Paul, and if it takes some nudging by Digg editors to get it done, so be it.
From Kevin Rose's response to this item on Digg:
"Unfortunately ValleyWag never contacted us for the real facts.
FWIW, we have one site administrator on duty at any given time. Their main responsibility is to monitor and review stories the digg algo/backend has flagged as pornography or SPAM. With 20M+ monthly unique visitors and tremendous traffic implications, gaming Digg is something that is attempted regularly.
So, as we have since the beginning, we'll continue to build tools and maintain staff that detect and remove spam/spammers - but most importantly, we rely upon you, the Digg community, to Digg your favorite stories and bury the ones you don't like."
@hungarian33: Can we bury this spamming tool.
Rose said: "Their MAIN responsibility is ..."
Well, that's also what Valleywag said. Plus, Rose doesn't deny a single thing, juts goes on rambling about "main" responsibilities and wrapping up with an ending more fit for a politician than for a 2.0 star reaching out to gain credibility: we rely upon you ah oh.... Go with that PR BS somewhere else, mister Rosy.
@CVReps: Right; none of what Rose said actually refuted what Valleywag said.
The statement, edited for relevant content:
"...We have one site administrator on duty at any given time. Their main responsibility is to monitor and review stories the digg algo...has flagged as...SPAM..."
Paul Boutin would be pleased.
@Miles.Evans: "They have always used human editors, nothing wrong with that, Google does the same."
Er, no. Google doesn't use human editors on its search index. (Except for perhaps the occasional DMCA takedown or child porn issue, although those aren't "editorial" in the same sense as Digg is supposedly doing.) They do have people who review some portion of the paid ads, though.
What does this say about Digg? First, that it has failed to match its aspirations as a perfect democracy of news.
I mean, really? It only takes about 10 seconds to figure out why sites like Digg need editors to take care of submissions that aren't obvious spam or illegal content, and it seems pretty disingenuous not to vocalize those possibilities here rather than a a diggwhoring OMG DIGG FAIL post.
It seems like it's little more than RonPaulFilter, which pretty much everyone but RP supporters are in favor of. I know plenty of people who have stopped visiting reddit out of frustration of frontpage browsing and seeing like five blah Ron Paul submissions. Digg has done a better job than most of keeping that stuff off the site (stuff which basically amounts to spam).
Meh, this is why I love MetaFilter so much.
@kiranator: Google does use humans on its search index. [www.pandia.com]
@shiwsup: Asshat, I've been an engineer there since 2003. They don't use people there as editors in the same way that Digg apparently does. Obviously Google has people there who need to assess quality of the algorithms, but human beings do not sit around ranking websites to determine where they fit into the overall rankings. You grossly misinterpret Norvig's statement: yes, of course google uses humans to affect its search quality in the sense that google is powered by software written by human beings who care that it actually works.
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