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Digg Takes Away Power from Top Diggers

posted on February 1, 2007


Kevin Rose has just announced that Digg is scrapping the Top Diggers list, believing the move will take away the perception that just a few hundred Diggers control the majority of the 5,000 submissions each day.

Some of our top users – the people that have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours finding and digging the best stuff – are being blamed by some outlets as leading efforts to manipulate Digg…After considerable internal debate and discussion with many of those who make up the Top Digger list, we’ve decided to remove the list beginning tomorrow.

While Rose suggests Digg will introduce new ways to connect it’s users, this might certainly alienate the very users that have helped grow Digg. Whenever you take away a level of status, or prestige, from your loyalist supporters, you risk them finding a new place to reside.

It’s clear that Rose is reacting to the ever increasing reports that top Diggers are being approached to submit stories for money, but I’m not convinced this move will fix the problem. Whether you give the label or not, there are still many Diggers that wield a lot of power on Digg, and so, you may end up just pissing them off.

I’m not an active Digg user – although I appreciate it whenever Diggers visit – so I’ll admit to not fully understanding the social dynamic of the community. Still, I suspect there will be some backlash. There always is whenever you mess with what loyalists consider their right.


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  • http://digg.com/users/spinchange/news/homepage Spinchange

    As an avid digger, I have to say that this is kind of bummer! The Top User list gave recognition & a measure of editorial/popular credibility. If you’ve been submitting stories to digg with any regularity, seeing your progress was a tangible way to measure one’s contribution to the community. This in itself is motivation for many to find and digg the stuff the do! I think this move may ultimately break all that and at least in the near term, reduce the number of submissions and activity on the site.

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  • http://seobuilder.blogspot.com Andy Kong

    This is a big change in the mechanism of the system, and it will be interesting to see if this move will stop spamming and gaming the system. Personally, I don’t think it will stop the spamming as spammers will always try to get around and do their stuff.

  • http://expertseogroup.blogspot.com Expert SEO Gruop

    I,m agree with Andy Kong Statemen. Stop spamming is not possible, but every thing is possible. It’g good stuff to change the mechanism of the systems.

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  • http://www.prezzatech.com Brian

    I disagree. Digg is too common now to be taken down or affected negatively by this. You need reinforcement/loyalty systems only at the beginning of such ventures (read how MySpace got started).

    And hopefully the articles will now focus less on geeky stuff and tech. I’m pretty geeky, but I’d like to see more interesting stories that aren’t about gadgets and operating systems and stupid pet trick type jokes. And I listened to a Diggnation podcast yesterday for the first time – terrible. The point is to discuss the top “dugg” stories of the week, but the beginning half was inside jokes about … World of Warcraft, how many times they puked before a show, and well, nothing. (unsubscribe)..

  • http://www.efinke.com/ Christopher Finke

    To show the futility of what Digg is doing, I’ve written a script to display the top 100 users, with the list being updated twice a day. If I can do it in an hour, any company looking to recruit top Diggers could find someone to do it just as easily.

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  • http://www.startupbooster.com Guna the Startup Booster

    Okay Guys. Need your help. I’ve posted this on Digg and within 10 minutes I got 4 digg. Then my story is gone! Gone off the radar. Now tell me what I said wrong and why Kevin believes this sort of pissing off bloggers is a good Game. Can’t bloggers say what they thing is a best approach for Digg? This is not going to work.

    http://digg.com/tech_news/Digg_Shouldn_t_Remove_Top_Users_Big_Mistake_ Mr_Rose

    This story is no longer in the Queue and no one can see it.

    I will have a follow up post on my blog about shame action by Digg. This is truly a bad move. I will check to see if my site is also banned.

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