Article from ValleyWag:
Why do some stories abruptly disappear from Digg? Duncan Riley of TechCrunch suspects “super users.” But there’s a much simpler explanation: Digg’s shadowy moderators. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose has admitted that the social-news site, a supposedly democratic venue where users pick the headlines, employs moderators: “We have site moderators that ban spammers, remove illegal content, and keep an eye on things. Always have, always will.” But what, exactly, does keeping an eye on things entail?
According to someone who was approached about a job as a Digg moderator, Digg uses one moderator per topic, and their duties go far beyond patrolling the site for spam. While they don’t have the power to launch a story straight to the homepage, they can adjust the criteria to make it easier or harder for a story to make it big. And in so doing, of course, they exercise editorial judgment. When you submit a story to Digg, it’s not just in the hands of the users; it’s also at the mercy of unnamed Digg editors.
What does this say about Digg? First, that it has failed to match its aspirations as a perfect democracy of news. And second, that as a business, it may be less attractive than some think. The craze among investors these days are for startups where users generate the content, for free, while paid workers do as little work as possible. At Digg, it turns out Tom Sawyer is painting the fence, after all.
What should Digg do? As Rose points out, Digg does need to do some policing of the site to deter spammers and criminals. And spelling out what moderators do could make their jobs harder, as people will inevitably use the information to try to game Digg.
But I think Digg needs to err on the side of transparency here. When a moderator gives a story an assist, or holds it back, users deserve to know what’s happened, and why. Otherwise, conspiracy theories about “super users” will continue to circulate. Digg has in fact begun to change the news business, making traditional editors more accountable to their readers. It’s time Digg’s editors were, too.
After the above article was published, Digg struck back, and even warned readers, with regard to the above, that “the content in this article may be inaccurate”.
If Digg is putting that notice on the ValleyWag article about Digg, certainly Digg knows for sure whether it is inaccurate, or not inaccurate.
What follows is the update on the previous article:
“Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate.” So reads the creatively capitalized disclaimer now placed on the Digg discussion page for “Digg’s secret editors,” in which I revealed that Digg’s so-called moderators use their own judgment to override Digg’s supposedly all-powerful algorithm. The consequences are stunning: Digg is not a democracy of news, and the way headlines make their way to Digg’s homepage are neither fair nor transparent. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose weighed in with an oddly worded nondenial.
Unfortunately ValleyWag never contacted us for the real facts.FWIW, we have one site administrator on duty at any given time. Their main responsibility is to monitor and review stories the digg algo/backend has flagged as pornography or SPAM. With 20M+ monthly unique visitors and tremendous traffic implications, gaming Digg is something that is attempted regularly.
So, as we have since the beginning, we’ll continue to build tools and maintain staff that detect and remove spam/spammers – but most importantly, we rely upon you, the Digg community, to Digg your favorite stories and bury the ones you don’t like.
How nice to know that Digg has “site administrators.” But that’s not the position of moderator Rose has admitted Digg has, and it’s not the job description his company gave to an individual I spoke to whom Digg tried to hire as a moderator.Could it be that Rose’s reality-distortion field is fading? Digg users normally swarm to defend their hero Rose. But his bloom may have faded. “I think we’re the ones getting gamed,” writes one user in response to Rose’s comment. “Could you tell us anything about what criteria the human editors are using to determine whether something is actually spam or not?” asks another. Rose has not yet answered them.
Valleywag commenters have raised another issue: Digg shows which users have voted a story up, but not those who have voted it down, or “buried” the story, in Digg parlance. Conspiracy theories abound about “bury brigades” — but it’s equally plausible that Digg’s moderators may be abusing their powers to bury a story. Without information on who’s burying what, it’s impossible for outsiders to know. No surprise that Digg is not forthcoming on this point: If a Digg staffer’s vote carries more weight than any numbers of users, then it’s hard for Digg’s users to believe their votes matter.
Until Rose actually responds to Valleywag’s reporting and explains why he describes the position of moderator one way to his users and another way to people he tries to hire for the job, I propose that Digg’s homepage carry this disclaimer:
“Warning: The Content in this Website May be Undemocratic.”
What do you think? Is Digg secretly manipulating the popularity of content on its site, while advertising that popularity is determined by the users? Or is ValleyWag blowing the situation out of proportion?
