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Digg User Rankings Now Completely GoneFeb 05 2007 | Social Networks |
It looks like Digg is pushing a bunch of new changes live this morning. One of the most significant ones is the absence of User Rankings from profile pages. As I covered last week, Digg had removed their Top Users list but this list was soon recreated by Chris Finke by scraping the profile pages of Digg’s users. Well it looks like those ranking numbers are now gone for good. Let’s take a look at the profile of Digg’s top user digitalgopher.
Here is the information that was publicly displayed on February 1, 2007 (via Google’s cache).
Here is what the same profile looks like today:
Two pieces of information are now missing. Overall Ranking and Profile Views. It looks like this will put an end to the Erik’s current version of the Top Users list as there is no (public) place on Digg to scrape the ranking from now. Added: I guess that you could just grab the number from “News and Video Made Popular” as that is essentially what determines your ranking in the Top Users.
What’s more valuable - Digg users feeling satisfaction for contributing to a flourishing community or Digg preventing people from gaming the system by contacting their top users? The top users obviously know not to listen to the marketers who are trying to game it. Many Digg users use Digg as a competitive entertainment. Getting a story to the homepage is the short-run high while moving up in the rankings is the long-term goal. Now only part of that incentive remains…
Digg user HMTKSteve had some interesting thoughts about how Digg could fix their “gaming” problems:
1) Dump the friends feature - As nice as it is to be able to find out what your friends are digging and submitting this feature makes it far to easy to game Digg. At the very least, remove the ability to digg a story from the friends area.
2) Force users to follow the link to the story before being able to digg it - This might take a bit more work on the part of the coders at digg but it would probably be the best method to combat Digg fraud. Forcing people to open up the story and look at it will negate the diggers who digg something because it has a snappy title or want to bookmark it to read later.
3) Add a new kind of digg called a ‘bookmark’ - This new style of Digg would allow a user to bookmark the story for later reading and digging. This ‘zero weight’ digg would allow those who do not have the time to read a story now to mark it for later reading without inflating it’s digg count.
I don’t agree with dumping the Friends feature because that is really what makes Digg a “social network”. If you remove that Digg essentially becomes another news site. His other two suggestions are spot on though.
There is also a new format for submitted stories. Here is what you would previously see:
Here is what you now see for the same story:
Fasten your seat-belts because the Digg ride is just beginning and things are surely going to keep getting more interesting….
Update: Frantic Industries points out that:
Digg has taken additional measures against identifying top Digg users, together with some cosmetic changes to Digg’s interface. Before, the number of stories promoted to the front page was visible next to the user names in the ‘Who dugg or blogged this story’ section.
Posted by Chris Winfield at 11:45 am
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10 Responses to “ Digg User Rankings Now Completely Gone ”
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Jake Matthews says:
February 5th, 2007 at 12:48 pmGreat post - quite interesting. They must leave the “friends” feature.
Perhaps Digg Labs is working with http://stamen.com/ on something simlar to their “Stack” feature - to watch Top diggers and digg activity by user, real time?
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HMTKSteve says:
February 5th, 2007 at 12:52 pmI don’t expect them to remove the friends feature but… removing the ability to Digg a story from the friends area would stop people from rapidly digging all the stories their friends submit.
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Tamar Weinberg says:
February 5th, 2007 at 1:25 pmSteve, I’m mostly with you on point #2. I actually pointed this out on my own blog post on quality of Digg, where I said “If you’re going to Digg a story, a text box should pop up allowing you to submit reasons why that story has your endorsement… I want a smart system that gives people the ability to think … [and not] where people click on random buttons for the hell of it.” (The latter statement fit in better with lame stories making the front page, though it fits somewhat in this context as well.)
I personally only Digg stories that I read (yes, I follow the link) and found that those posts deserved a vote from me. If I follow a page and it isn’t deserving of my Digg, I simply won’t promote it.
My friends probably hate me for that.
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HMTKSteve says:
February 5th, 2007 at 1:33 pmAs much as I hate frames… A solution may exist where a small sliver of a frame appears above the story when you follow the link. This small frame would give you the option to Digg, bury or comment on the story.
You could then remove the digg option from the story page on Digg and force users to at least view the story before digging it. This could be used with the bookmark idea in that if you have not read the story you only bookmark it and the story gains no digg weight.
I know some people have done studies in the past where people dugg a story because of the title when the story itself was just a test page saying, “did you read before you dugg this?”
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Tamar Weinberg says:
February 5th, 2007 at 2:11 pmRight, Steve. I’m not sure a frame is a great idea either. But there should be measures in place to ensure that people participate for the right reasons. If it means forcing people to share why they’re digging the post, then great. If following the story is a requirement, even better. The only downside of the latter is that when stuff hits the main page, it can often bring servers down… and then what? Stuff still gets Dugg regardless even then.
I think something should be put in place to make sure people are using Digg for the right reasons. Clicking “digg” because your friends do doesn’t really add any real value to the system.
Digg is still a great network, but these changes as of late are a little depressing and other options should be considered instead. The incentives are completely gone now. Why aim for the top if there’s no reason to get there?
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kyle says:
February 5th, 2007 at 5:30 pmi think this will stop marketers from calling the top diggers and wanting to pay them. but, some of the underhanded “pay for diggs” tricks will still happen…
for instance, I read today in the comments of techcrunch that the top digg user “webtech” gets her site mentioned on techcrunch as a reward for submiting as many techcrunch stories as she can…
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/05/web-20-directory-go2web20-upgraded/
here is another story about it…
http://michaelarringtonsucks.com/2007/02/05/does-michael-arrington-trade-traffic-for-favors
now that nobody knows who the top diggers are, but they are still powerful, it will be easier for them to exchange their power for money or favors. to stop people like webtech and techcrunch from forcing stories to the frontpage, digg needs to change the friends system….
btw: i always wondered why there were so many techcrunch stories on digg. now i know.
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Christopher Finke says:
February 8th, 2007 at 7:00 pmThat’d be Chris, not Eric.
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Chris Winfield says:
February 9th, 2007 at 11:14 amSorry ’bout that Chris - fixed…
Nice job on that list BTW. What’s the daily traffic to it like?
February 28th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Digg Removes Another Feature, Apocalypse Soon To Follow…
Stop the presses, er, keyboards. Remember that feature on digg that wasn’t always there and then came on and nobody noticed and then it was taken away and everyone started making noise about it because writing something big about digg nets you tr…
May 9th, 2008 at 9:18 am
[...] only the karma points (and associated awards) but no real rankings. And it’s no surprise that Digg did away with that list (officially) last year — I just think it’s time to take it a step further. They need to make it impossible for [...]