<![CDATA[How Digg outgrew its top users - Valleywag Comments]]> <![CDATA[How Digg outgrew its top users - Valleywag Comments]]> <![CDATA[How Digg outgrew its top users]]> Nice write up Nick.

Thomas Hawk

]]> <![CDATA[How Digg outgrew its top users]]> I just can't accept that people submit thousands of stories and give up hours a day out of the goodness of their heart and for the love of the community. They do it because they get to wield power over an extremely powerful referal machine, and through competition with other diggers. That means they aim for being in the top 100, or top 10 of diggers.

Conrad

]]> <![CDATA[How Digg outgrew its top users]]> I will be interested to see what the new incentives will be and how they are going to recognize the people who do the best digging. I think that the problem is, no matter what system they set up, there is going to be people trying to game it. I guess you just have to go with the lesser of evils.

John
http://www.monomachines.com

izzyd3434

]]> <![CDATA[How Digg outgrew its top users]]> The top user chart isn't a major incentive.

Digger radicaldementia comments: "As a 'top 100', I personally lost interest in my rank when I got into the top 100... I'm gonna keep submitting stories no matter what my rank is."

Digger Truepatriot comments: "I think the bigger goal and award for people to submit something will always be being on the front page."

Nick Douglas

]]> <![CDATA[How Digg outgrew its top users]]> I think this is heading Digg in the right direction. I hate a lot of the popular Digg stories of the day. Some of them say stupid things like "INCREDIBLE IMAGE!" or "Digg this" and are just fluff links with no real content. Isn't this pandering to the lowest common denominator, and turning people off of Digg?

I sometimes look at the top stories of the day and can't believe that people actually Dugg them.

Here are other things I hate:

1) Duplicate Stories. Digg is just filled with them and it really brings down the quality of the web site.

2) Mistakes and Typos. Some posts have typos that lessen the impact and credibility of the news story. I'm less apt to dig a story if it has typos or seems like it's written by a 10-year old.

3) Biased Articles. Sometimes the submitter decides to re-write a news story's headline and make it totally biased and even non-sensical. Makes me wonder about the average IQ of some submitters.

So let's review: lowest common denominator, crappy stories, innaccuracies...Is this what we want Digg to be?

jalvear

]]> <![CDATA[How Digg outgrew its top users]]> Aren't you missing the point that one of the biggest lures of contributing to Digg is getting to the top of the contributors chart? Just like a high post count in a forum gives some people a weird sort of superiority over other members of a forum, a top digger label would you give immense respect over other Digg users, and great power over where Digg links to.

You can't use the example of there not being a list of "top NYTimes readers" as a justification for removing the top Diggers list. Being a NYTimes reader isn't contributing anything to a NYTimes, but being a top digger is a shitload of work, and I think people deserve some sort of payoff for that -- even if it is something as trivial as being at the top of the list (which automatically gives you a whole lot of new friends, and leverage over Digg's front page).

All that said, this change is (as you say) great for the middle user. At the moment I think the feeling is that they've left a vacuum behind: I don't know why they didn't add the new features at precisely the same time as they removed the top ten...

Also, please don't use Alexa as a traffic reference, especially not in the case of Digg. There are several rumors out there that Digg users use the Alexa toolbar to artificially inflate the websites's standing.

Conrad

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