Eric Odom

I’ve been a member at Digg.com since 2006. I remember the first few months of being active at Digg provided for exciting times and I was thrilled to be a part of it all.

But that excitement quickly faded when I started noticing big changes in the algorithm that were, in my opinion, harming the quality of the site.

First came the bury brigade. Through the massive change in the algorithm, Digg apparently gave a lot more value to a “bury”. What this did was allow for Digg “clans” to play a significant role in controlling homepage content. It wasn’t necessarily that they could easily promote stories; Rather, they could easily keep stories from being promoted.

It was during those days that I felt the site lost its “user generated content” appeal and instead became a site ran by self appointed moderators who operated based on political agendas and favoritism for specific companies or brands.

For example:
If an Apple Fanboy likes Apple but not Microsoft, he SHOULD simply vote for Apple content in the Apple category. Instead, he spends ample time trying to bury Microsoft stories regardless of their quality simply because he doesn’t like them.

This is not what I thought the original intention of Digg was. This is not how a true Democracy works. When you go to the voting booth, you can’t both vote for your candidate and subtract a vote for the candidate you don’t like. That’s absurd!

But that is how Digg works, unfortunately.

And now things seem to be getting worse. I typically stay away from Digg these days. I might visit the site once or twice a week, but it’s totally random and only when I’m bored of YouTube and my RSS Feeds.

But yesterday I was desperate for a good video to watch while eating a piece of pizza, so I figured why not? I dropped in to Digg to find this story on page one.

Microsoft says Vista is more secure than XP, OSX, and Linux

Two things.

1) To say that Vista is more secure than Linux is to admit self ignorance. As an ubuntu user, I can proudly claim that I have never, not once, had ANY issues with security since getting rid of Vista.

Never!

2) How the hell did a Gizmodo story hit the front page with 40 votes and only 1 comment?

I’ve seen stories with 90 votes and 20 comments in less than four hours slip in to the Digg abyss never to be seen again. But somehow a Gizmodo story makes front page without even lifting a finger?

Now this would in no way strike me as being odd if the story had lots of comments, wasn’t being disputed as being inaccurate, and if top Digg users have not started a petition regarding Digg’s decision to up the vote requirement for front page.

The moral of the story is that Digg’s algorithm is all screwed up and doesn’t work in a way that fits the original vision of the site.

Basically, Digg is broken and the damage continues to get worse.

Shame…