
Digg Finally Admits the Auto-Bury Exists  - burento
http://www.brentcsutoras.com/2009/02/20/digg-finally-admits-autobury-exists/
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jwesley
Digg is such a mess. The 1% of users who control the content and make up 50%
of pageviews are completely at odds with where the owners want to take the
site. There is so much payola going on behind the scenes. Not just on Digg,
but Reddit, StumbleUpon, and any other social site that sends traffic. I'm
talking armies of Indians and Eastern Europeans who do nothing all day but
exchange votes and push stories. Eventually, they might just have to ban them
all and deal with the huge drop in traffic and engagement that would result.

~~~
katz
"talking armies of Indians and Eastern Europeans"

The problem with Reddit is the army of intolerant atheists and the anti-GOP
circle jerk. If you just take a look at the front page you will see that this
is true. American politics is really not that interesting after the 10th GOP
bashing blog-spam article.

~~~
jwesley
Most web communities are politically polarized in one way or the other. If you
do not like the political stories, Reddit allows you to unsubscribe from the
politics sub-Reddit. Or just don't visit the site.

~~~
katz
The problem is that most stories about atheism is not posted in the atheism
subreddit. Most of those stories spill over into worldnews or math or science.
Stuff about conservative american commentators gets labelled 'funny'.

"Or just don't visit the site."

That was the solution yes. YCnews is fairly tame and people are well mannered.

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gamble
Unmoderated forums quickly become dictatorships by the most insane. The fact
that the links that float to the top on Digg are consistently bland, general-
appeal, and uncontroversial despite the YouTube-like sophistication of its
users suggests that the ranking algorithm is pretty far from democratic.

~~~
endtime
_Unmoderated forums quickly become dictatorships by the most insane._

That is a pretty accurate description of reddit...I'm glad that HN has active
moderation, even though it's rarely needed.

~~~
cookiecaper
It's not far off of Wikipedia either. A large number of participants in my
Wikiproject, including myself, were eventually burned out by dealing with a
few too many highly obsessive and misinformed users.

Seriously, go try to edit one the few somewhat-prominent WP articles that
aren't locked and see how quickly someone comes up with a BS reason to revert
your perfectly good edits. This happens especially often if you edit something
political or religious in nature. It's a mess.

~~~
endtime
Haha, I don't have to try it to know not to mess with politics or religion on
Wikiepdia. I don't bother reading those articles either, for the same reasons.

~~~
jrockway
+1.

I edit Wikipedia fairly regularly, and have never had anything reverted.

Actually, there was one time when I edited John Dvorak's page to call him a
"gasbag". That was reverted pretty quickly, but he did mention the incident on
his podcast (which was the point of making the edit). (Also, he _is_ a gas
bag. Thankfully I haven't heard about him for a few years now ;)

But really, no _legitimate_ edits of mine have been reverted :)

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emmett
This guy is a known spammer (to pretty much everyone who runs a social news
site), so take what he's saying with several large grains of salt.

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mattmaroon
A brief list of things more interesting than this story:

Belly button lint. What I had for breakfast. The first half hour of
Waterworld.

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tptacek
Why is there drama about this? If pg had an auto-kill script for stories
posted by me, would you care?

~~~
ojbyrne
Not if he disclosed that fact.

~~~
jrockway
I personally wouldn't care even if he kept it a secret.

I mean, it's a social news site. You have no _right_ to be heard here. (You
should hear the complaints I get when I delete comments from my blog. "Free
speech!!1!!1". If you want to call me a dumbass, get your own blog. I hear
they're free.)

Anyway, if the super-secret auto-kill ruins the site, I will go to one of the
other one hundred million (or so). Otherwise, I don't really give a damn.

~~~
ojbyrne
HN has never advertised that it's "democratizing media" though.

~~~
jrockway
True, although Digg's "democracy" is no worse than the US's "democracy". (Let
me know when I can vote on proposed FCC rules, or the DMCA, for example.)

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zafarali
this is atrocious!

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Devilboy
About 30 minutes ago this story hit the front page of Digg. Now I can't find
it anywhere...

 _X-Files theme song_

The main thing that keeps me from loving Digg is that there's no way to block
users and their submissions. If only I could block the small number of spammy
accounts making up 60% of the front page - and then see the next most popular
stories instead!

~~~
brandnewlow
Can't you just make a new Digg front page with their API + some RSS + hackery?

A user creates an account and can then create filters for the stories that
appear on this new front page you make, otherwise it's a total mirror content
wise. heck, direct the links over to Digg instead of the original sites to
head of criticism.

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TomOfTTB
In the spirit of this news, I'd like to make an admission of my own. I...Post
on Hacker News.

(The game is still "admitting painfully obvious stuff that everyone already
knows" right?)

~~~
jrockway
Clever, but Digg is that way ------>

~~~
TomOfTTB
I think you missed some irony

In my original post I was trying to amusingly (emphasis on trying) point out
the fact that people don’t admit things like this until everyone already knows
them which in turn makes the admission a moot point. I thought it would be
funny (emphasis on thought) to do so in the "Digg-Style" sarcastic tone that
most of the posts there are in.

But the real thing that makes Digg an unpleasant place is not the sarcasm but
the mean spiritedness that the place can often take on. My comments were
illuminating an idea so I really wasn't attacking anyone. Which is when you
attacked me.

So really your comment is far more "Digg-like" than mine was

