Ryan – good clarification. What I meant was that your site is out in the open (not private/password protected, etc) and thus open to anyone to offer their opinion (or in this case Digg your content).

I actually just went back and checked the original Digg story and it seems the new comments have taken a pretty dramatic turn…

This man is totally right, but just sitting around in the comments section will not solve anything, and petty bitching back and forth about it wont either. Its really sad that this is the state of Digg, it goes to show that the glory days are over and the site has fallen to petty arguments and popularity contests rather than informed, intellectual reviews and ratings.

BTW – one good thing about this is that I found your blog from it and I really enjoy it.

“On the other side – his blog is in the public domain.”

I hate to be pedantic but it’s actually not technically public domain. All content is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Sometimes people refer to freely available content as “public domain” but they are actually quite different.

I appreciate the objective look at the situation, Chris. Thanks.

Whilst people are quick to laud the “democracy” of social news, what is so easily overlooked is the actual social dimension.

And, frankly, left unchecked, what begins as school yard politics can end up as an Athenian-style mob rule.

Yes, it’s a vocal minority that tars the quiet majority, but it can take a certain set of social skills to be able to deal with such voices.

The surprise is that more people aren’t doing it – but I suspect Ryan won’t be the last.

2c.

Thanks. I think it’s important to note that for every bad story about digg (and there have been a lot recently probably for good reason) there are lots of good things about it as well. There are usually two sides to every story

Chris

Thanks.