More Splogs on Digg?

HMTKSteve

I only go to Digg about once a week now and I can't help but notice the high number of splogs showing up there.

One splog that made the home page several times last week is something like nintendowiifanboy.com. I probably spelled the name wrong. When I went to their site I noticed much of their content is just ripped from the press area of press.nintendo.com and their site has more screen space devoted to advertising than content.

This also bugs the heck out of me 'cause so often you hear that diggers hate splogs yet, here is an obvious splog that is being dugg up! WTF? I just don't get it.

I'm currently moving over to a new social news site called Plime which looks to be good so far. I had a few issues with the user community when I first checked them out but I am working through those problems.

Thaed

I agree with you. It shows the weakness of social network news sites. Despite Rym's best efforts, there is a lot of crap. I always use www.popurls.com as my news aggregation source.

kenjura

I'm beginning to think Digg is headed for failure, though I doubt it's users will recognize it.

The aggregate opinions expressed never change; company A is always evil, company B is always good. That isn't news. Not to mention the incidence of broken links; at least half the stories I click are down, and it's usually because of crappy content management systems (I'm looking at you, frontrowcrew.com). Duggmirror is almost useless now; a couple months ago, it never failed to cache the page, and now it rarely succeeds.

Digg has other problems that aren't the fault of anyone there, of course. I do most of my reading at work, where digg.com isn't blocked, but half the sites it links to are. As far as the firewall is concerned, if a given domain has ever had "bad" content on any page, the whole domain must be bad. I've never seen overt pornography linked on Digg (at least not on the front page), yet I've lost track of the number of sites I've had blocked for that reason. Duggmirror used to come to the rescue, but, as mentioned, it's hardly helpful anymore.

More and more, Digg is becoming an unpaid Nintendo/Apple marketing engine. While I like opinionated, unpaid marketing in some arenas (film critics, firingsquad.com back when it was cool, etc), I don't like it when it's completely unilateral. Though the 21st century has proven that 100% of the conventional media are completely corrupt, and their concept of "objectivity" is a thin veil over partisanship, that doesn't mean subjectivity is necessarily the answer. A mix of subjectivity and objectivity seems best.

Not to mention that Digg sucks as a medium for social commentary. It's posting system is far less sophisticated than Usenet, a 28-year-old technology. No threads? No way to view your own posts and follow previous discussions? No way to take back a mistaken digg or bury that was the result of a misclick? And it's been making *how* much money hand over fist for how long now?

I'll check out Plime and Reddit and some other alternatives, but they're going to have to differ significantly from the Digg model, I think, if they are to improve on it.

Apreche

Wow, you people expect so much from Digg. You know what, no site will ever be what you are asking for. There's no such thing. The only way to get exactly what you want would be to do it yourself. Subscribe to ever RSS feed in the universe and then manually filter it according to what you want to see. Then use the forum software of your choice to create discussions on every item you approve.

I go to Digg for one reason. I want to find out what new information and entertainment has made its way onto the Internets. Digg accomplishes this. The fact that it lets me Digg items so I can remember them for later is just a side bonus. It's democratic voting is the underlying mechanism, not its purpose. That mechanism, while not some ideal democracy, succeeds in producing links to new and interesting content very frequently.

Digg is as useful to me now as it has been since I discovered it. As for all this stuff you guys complain about, why do you care? Does Digg not aggregate links to the hottest information and entertainment on the net? If Digg was secretly only a fake democracy and it was actually the work of a team of editors, would it be any different to you? If I take a train from point A to point B, do I care if the engine runs on gas or diesel?

kenjura

Well, I'd be a little more forgiving about the social networking failings if the followers didn't claim Digg was the bee's knees. But I can forget those points in favor of the pure practicality--I do every day.

What I can't forget or forgive is their technological failings. Apparently, someone decided that Web 2.0 means "minimalism to the point of deliberate exclusion of extremely useful, easy-to-implement features". Threaded discussions and the ability to track your own posts wouldn't slow down their server, and wouldn't make their pages bigger. They can't lack for talent, since I could easily do it, and I'd work for them if they'd have me--so I assume there are 100,000 better people closer to their office who they'd hire if they needed the help.

I think they're leaving out these features for the same reason a "modern art"ist leaves out the actual art from his blank canvas made out of elk liver and onion paper: pretentiousness.

Apreche

The commenting is secondary to Digg. If a forum or discussion-oriented site had a bad commenting system, then you could complain. Digg is a link site that happens to have a discussion feature. Complaining about Digg having a shitty discussion system is like complaining about a car having a shitty sunroof. Most cars don't have them, and no car needs one. Be glad you have one at all.