Sunday, November 30, 2008

A Night Before Diggmas

The people over at Blog-a-torium has done it again with this Christmas poem about Digg. Run on over there and take a gander at "The Night Before Diggmas".

'Twas the night before Diggmas, when all through the site,
Not a Digger was stirring, not even MediaSight.
The submittals were posted on Digg with great care,
In hopes that Kevin Rose soon would be there;"

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Zombies walk the earth...

... or rather they roam the internet it seems!

The very idea of the dead walking the earth eating brains and body parts of the living is a repelling thought to many, and unthinkable to many more... but are the Dead alive and well and using the internet?

It seems that way, to this reporter, even if it's only in the abstract sense of the idea. It seems that the "Dead", also known as 'The Banned", are returning from the afterlife and returning to Digg.

In an article found on LewP's Weblog, "Can banned Digg friends come back to life?", Lew says:

"Now that Digg has banned half of North America, I am proposing a new game for us banned folks with the number 666 tatooed on our foreheads. Just come back as another person. I’m pretty sure this is being done already, but let me be the first to go out on a limb here and make it public."

Ashmadai, a noted blogger of small notoriety (as well as a blogger who seems to relish picking at digg every chance he gets), stated:

"… it is my `considered opinion’(do you like that choice of wording? LoL) that Digg wants the majority of it’s members to come back. Hey, the fact is that they allow people to come back fairly easy - therefore they must want them to come back."

Ashmadai states the case that as an experienced Message Board admin/owner he is well aware of a minimum of 3 ways to ban a member... and it seems that Digg has shown that it knows of two of the ways. In short, since Digg only bans screen names of most of it's Diggers - then Digg must want to leave the option open to these 'Walking Dead" to return to Digg under other names (under certain conditions, of course). It seems Diggers are taking them up on the offer by returning from the "Dead" to roam Digg once more.

Who am I to oppose the powers that be, at least in this case. Many of those banned from Digg were either banned under questionable reasons anyway or they had valid reasons and a mere warning would have sufficed. In any event the warning given of being banned for violating the Digg TOU would have made it's point with the many 'undugg' roaming the net looking for new homes.

It's a win-win situation, really. The Diggers get a second chance, or third, and Digg gets to show it really does stick by it's own rules.

Stay tuned for "Dawn of the Digger" to find out the outcome of this move.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Digg Uproar: What's Going On With Digg?

Over the course of the past few days I've been reading about the shenanigans going on over at Digg and felt it is time to comment upon it, besides it's time I've done another blog post. and this is a handy topic. :)

The whole Digg Uproar thing seemed to begin with an attack on Mr. Babyman and Blind Digging.
It seems that some people were unhappy with Mr. Babyman because the number of items Mr. Babyman had go front page and the fact that Mr. Babyman seemed to not click through and read some of the articles he has dugg. It seemed to escape many that if a person submitted 20 or 30 articles a day, then the odds are that 1 to 3 of the articles will go front page -- providing you are submitting the type of items that you have seen go front page time and again. It also escaped people's notice that the mere fact that Mr. Babyman was the Top Digger, he would gather a cultlike following whether he wanted one or not. This following would be more than happy to digg Mr. Babyman's submittals just to try to gain his notice, one blogger calls this "The Suck-up Factor". :)

The attack on Mr. Babyman seemed to lead quickly into an attack against blind digging in general. The loudest of those voicing their outrage at Blind Digging never seemed to define the term "Blind Digging". In general Blind Digging is the digging of an item with-out looking at the article, but how do we know if someone is actually blind digging? Sure we can say things like "If you digg 89 posts in 3 minutes, you're blind digging... but everyone overlooks the fact of "It depends on what you digg as to whether you have to click through or not". For example:

1. Some items submittted to Digg are single images and when the item is submitted the image is sometimes shown next to the description. Quite often a person can see the reduced image and say "Oh, I have seen that 1,000 times over, there's no need to go look at it again.". So all they have to do is click the Digg button and go onto the next item to digg.

2. Another thing is that many of the items on Digg are news items and we are saturated with the news 24 hours a day from multiple sources. When one sees a headline and description that is often enough to judge whether you need to read the article or say "I've seen this before". Once again, no sense in reinventing the wheel everytime... you simply digg the item because you've seen it already.

3. A third thing is that Top Users and normal Users alike are not careful in what they submit. Quite often you will see the same item posted from different sources. The choice of the Digger is to bury all duplicates and risk making people mad at you or just digg the articles even though they say the same thing. The idea behind Digg is to be social, pissing off your fellow Diggers isn't exactly classified as "Being Social"... so many diggers will simply digg the item and be done with it. This appeases friends and fans on Digg alike and is basically harmless. The point is that there is no need to click through to the item in order to Digg it.

There are many valid reasons why a person does not have to waste the time and resources to click on every single item they digg. Yes I said "Resources", which is something many people don't seem to worry about. The fact is that not everyone has 2 gigs of memory to waste, some people operate on much less and every window being opened affects that memory. Windows has always been a lousy resource manager, it's not so quick to return resources it uses. The end result is that by opening screens unnecessarily, this can (and often does) tie up resources on the person's computer.

This uproar over Babyman and Blind Digging seemed to quiet down for a few days, but never fear - there is always something on Digg to cause unrest. This time it was the fact that familiar "faces" seemed to disappear. It quickly became known that Diggers were being banned, as many as 600 bannings were said to have happened. There is a list of 150 Diggers who were banned on the net The fascinating thing about this list is that it only contains 5 out of the Top 100 Users (about 3.33%), 72 more (about 48%) were ranked from 101 to 1000 on the Social Blade list. This meant that about 48.67% of those being banned by Digg were 'Normal Users". This is an interesting piece of data for it indicates that the normal, everyday digger who is not a part of the Top 1,000 abuse Digg as much as the Top Diggers are said to abuse the system.

At this point let's back things up a little, Zaibatsu posted an article on a blog and said that he was not banned for using scripts. Zaibatsu was banned for posting a link from a Spam Site, so the accusation by Digg states. No one brought forth evidence about Zaibatsu to the contrary. Next we have ZoomTechTV who resigned from Digg, I believe his resignation was in the Grim Reaper Visits Digg blog post. So why were these Diggers banned?

It appears that many of them used scripts, but some used a script that was not designed to Digg or submit. This script was one to keep track of one's Digg Friends, according to Diggboss. So what's the harm in utilizing a script to help one keep track of one's friends on Digg? Don't ask me, ask Digg... they are the ones making the call. As far as I am concerned Digg should have methods to keep better track of one's friends on Digg, afterall it is one's friends who mostly will digg our submittals and isn't that what friends do - they look out for each other?

One of the newest articles on the net goes by the headline of Thinking Like Kevin Rose: What Does The Digg Founder Have in His Mind? This article is written by a man named Manish Pandey and it's a fairly good read. I don't agree with all of Manish's views on the subject, but I respect them and will go a step further... he might actually be right! :) The one issue I disagree over is about Blind Digging. When I was on Digg I have done more blind digging through the Upcoming pages than anywhere else. On the Upcoming Pages all you have to do is click on 15 Digg Badges and move onto the next page... the amount of time to digg a page was about 10 to 15 seconds. Others I've talked to has accomplished this feat in as low as 7 or 8 seconds and there were times that it took a whole 20 -25 seconds to digg a page of 15 items because of the load time to bring up the next page or because of scrolling too far and having to backtrack to catch a missed item. When friends sent their shouts, you had to at least go to the page to get at the digg badge. This usually only had taken up 1 to 3 seconds to load the browser screen and set the page so you could see the digg badge, plus the time to scan the description and title. As you can see, there wasn't a great deal of difference in time, but there was enough loss to make a shout from a friend slower. Quite often the title and description were enough info to tell a person whether they had to go to the actual item or not.

On the other hand, like Manish I have mixed feelings on this. It seems to me that the Digg Fixes are like putting a tire patch on the Hindenberg... i.e not enough to actually fix the problem. The root problem with Digg are those who want to dictate how a digger is to use the site. It doesn't lie in blind digging or the top users monopolizing the front page, it lies with those who are on Digg and trying to control it when they have no legal or moral right to control it. Each Digger should be allowed to handle their accounts as they wish... as long as they are not using scripts or bots to cheat the system. A person should be able to give his or her diggs out as they see fit, there is no requirement on Digg that states you have to love the item you digg... and how could they tell whether you loved it or not anyway?

If Digg felt it was necessary to put 'stops' into their system then that would be fine. Let's say it takes an average person 3 minutes to view a Youtube video, 1 minute to read an average story or news article, and 5 seconds to view a static image. This averages out to about:

180 seconds + 60 Seconds + 5 seconds = 245 seconds/3 = 81.67 seconds (1 Minute, 22 seconds)

There are 86,400 seconds in a day (60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours), this averages out to a person being able to digg approximately 1,057.92 posts per day. Now if Digg simply said the upper limit for the amount of diggs per day were 1,000 diggs, or 42 Diggs/hour... they could be perfectly justified and still give people plenty of diggs per day. Hell with 1,000 friends, that is a potential of 42,000 diggs per hour or 1,000,000 Diggs/day... and how many of us really gets that kind of response? :)

The fact is that if a person is happy digging only 1 post every 3 years, they are free to do so... but if a person wants to digg 1,000 items a day - that also should be their perogative. Signing up to Digg isn't like signing up to the military, it's a damn social site on the internet... let it remain social. For those who are disgruntled because they can't get the diggs they want -- let them find the right friends who will give them the numbers they want. It's absolutely impossible to be friends equally with 5 million other Diggers, when groups are that large then the main group will break up into smaller sub-groups. It's just the way things work. If Digg wants to give everyone an equal chance then perhaps a new formula for Digg needs set up to where the program automatically applies a digg from each member to each member and take the abillity for the freedom of choice out of the equation entirely. The one thing Digg can't do is allow the Digg Mafia and Bury Brigade to dictate policy.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Another Digg Uproar

It is reported by the article entitled "Digg Uproar: Attack on Mr. Babyman and Blind Digging", on Ashmadai's Blog, some members of Digg raised the roof last week over one of the Digg Top Users known as Mr. Babyman. It seems some members of Digg were disgruntled over the fact that Mr. Babyman achieved great success on Digg and the allegations flew around about how he gained his status and kept it for over a year like finger nail's at a bar room cat fight. The accusations were so intense that Mr. Babyman felt compelled to conduct an interview to explain a few things, of course this really resolved nothing in the long run. The major complaints of Babyman using scripts and blind digging remained with some of those in attendence and it seemed to fuel their agendas.

One of the things I've seen happening in the past week or two over at Digg is not really dealing with the subject of Blind Digging or Mr. Babyman, these two topics are only the tip of the ice berg. If these bully groups get their way, then they will target new people and new things. I've seen this happen many times on the net, people who have no power often get drunk with it when they find out they can manipulate people and events.

There is a poem that I've always liked, which fits this occassion. I am sure most of you have heard it before, but I will repeat it here:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak upbecause I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

This was said to be written by the Reverand Martin Niemoller in 1945, I never checked to
insure that if this information was correct. I don't think it really matters. What matters is the thoughts being conveyed.

Mr. Babyman is under attack and many allegations are made about him, none of the allegations come along with hard fact to prove the claims. The detractors of Mr. Babyman state their case as if they have enough proof to crucify the man, expecting others on Digg to drop into line like good little sheeple. Along with this comes the pleadings of some to ban Mr. Babyman because of baseless accusations. In the old days they would say a person in Mr. Babyman's position was being "Railroaded". On the heels of the Mr. Babyman upheavel comes the agenda guided people who want to alter Digg's Rules and Policies to suit themselves. To those who have seen this done many times over in other forums, it is easy to see the drive for some to manipulate Digg and it's staff.

If these people get their way with Mr. Babyman, then who's next and where will it stop? The members of Digg need to be made to realize that their input and opinions are important, but that does not mean that just because they say something that Digg will do as they say. Digg controls Digg and they are gracious enough to say, at least, that there is a democratic process that is involved with their site. The baseline is that it is Digg who will catch the heat from the state or feds if something happens on their site that draws attention and those at Digg have to protect that, so the illusion of Digg being Democratic has it's limitations -- and this is one of them. Digg has to maintain the reins of control and not allow it to slip to special interest groups.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Google-Digg Merge New Format Chosen


Google-Digg Merge: New Format Chosen
Google McDigg Born

San Francisco
- Today a new corporation was born when Digg was sold to Google at 11:45 AM. Sources report that the company was sold for $1 plus other considerations, but our sources would not hint at what the other considerations were.

Google McDigg standing in front of new sign The formal announcement was made by the
famed comedian/actress Ellen DeGeneris. "We wanted someone famous, but our first choice of George Carlin was unavaible and Robin Williams declined.", stated the spokesman. Sources close to Kevin Rose said that Bill Cosby was asked to make the formal announcement, but our phone call to the world's most famous father received the reply "Mr. Cosby was never asked to make the announcement, besides he doesn't need the money that bad."

The Google spokesman made the announcement that the new company name for Digg will be McDigg. "It's a harmless steal from McDonald's restaurants," said the spokesman, "but they don't mind - they can use all the free advertising they can get now-a-days." The spokesman went on to say that the new logo of McDigg will be none other than Kevin Rose as Google McDigg. "We most likely could have gotten Erin Moran, ex-Happy Days star, or Stephen Erkel to do the new logo... but they both wanted too much money." It is now rumored that secret dealings are underway with Coors and Budweiser to use the McDigg poster child in their ads.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

How To Get More Diggs

Today I ran across another How To Get More Diggs article, and found it interesting enough to post an article concerning this blog post. The article tells of the author's attempts to succeed through social book marking sites ends with the author's short testimonial of listening to Chris Lang and then advisinge to buy his book. Take a look at this site and check out the other blogs.