There are many reasons the Digg Community may perceive you negatively, or worse yet, consider you a filthy social media spammer. If you take part in the majority of these activities you probably aren’t seen as a positive social media maven as you may have hoped. Instead your actions depict you as a whiney and needy nuisance.
You might be a Digg Spammer If:
1. Your only shot at glory is to slightly rip of a top digger’s icon so you might get a few extra diggs
2. Your icon is a busty woman, but you are an out of shape male
3. You have over 400 “friendsâ€
4. You only shout with one of these sayings: “shouting for a friend,” “sharing for a friend,†or “for a friendâ€
5. Your goal is to be first on each of Mr.BabyMan’s or MakiMaki’s submits just to say “great find, so informative!” or some other lame, unhelpful comment
6. You use your account status and friend network to submit the same breaking news story that has already been submitted 3452 times
7. You have never used the Digg recommendation engine
8. You leave threatening comments for people who don’t digg your shouts
9. You have shouted more than 2 different stories to your friends in a 24 hour period
10. You have dugg 2362 stories … and you have submitted 2362 stories
11. You use the comments feature to promote your recent submission
12. You always digg a friend’s shout no matter how terrible of a story it is
13. You haven’t looked at the frontpage in weeks
14. You use the shout feature to promote a story and add links to your other submissions in the message. 
15. Your had to replace letters with numbers in your user name because your previous account been banned
16. You have ever ended a shout with “digg/comment/shareâ€
17. You shorten “For A Friend†in your shouts to “FaF†because it is quicker
18. You keep trying to submit a YouTube video on your Blogspot blog
19. You send each person that adds you a list of stories to digg before you will add them as a sort of “friend testâ€
20.You IM digg users out of the blue ordering them to digg your story
21. You just let Digg truncate the titles (causing spelling errors) because it is easier
22. You sit around all day and wait for Digg to stop telling you “slow down there” because you shout too many stories
23. You’ve never dugg a submission of your friend’s unless it was shouted to you
24. You continually submit articles that are all caps to try to gain more attention
25. You use crazy characters to gain attention
26. You submit stories into incorrect categories, just because they get more traffic
27. You are part of a “voting ringâ€
28. You stuff keywords into all of your submissions for “SEO purposesâ€
29. You have only submitted 235 stories … and all 235 were from your site
30. Your username has “digg†somewhere in it
31. You shout your submissions to all of your friends, but don’t allow anyone at all to shout you
32. You use your blog/twitter/facebook/friendfeed/pownce/awaymessages to promote your stories
33. You mainly submit the story from the popular blog, as opposed to the original source of the information
34. You apologize in advance when you shout a story to a friend because you didn’t check to see if they already read it
35. When you see a good story that didn’t make the homepage, you copy it word-for-word and paste directly onto your blog
36. You can’t remember the last story you didn’t promote via IM, shouting or emailing
37. The users that digg your stories look like this:
(via original Digg story here)
While doing some of these things occasionally isn’t terrible, participating in the combination of activities on a consistent basis probably makes you a “spammer” in the eyes of many. Digg is about community participation, NOT about forceful promotion. So take some of these spammier tactics into consideration and help keep the community (and your account) clean.
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56 Responses to “You Might Be A Digg Spammer If…”
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and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
Eep. I think I’ve been guilty of 2 of them. Not knowingly, though. I’ll try to be a good girl from now on.
Great post! Very interesting…
It would be interesting to take that list and cross index the behaviors with the list of the Top 100 Diggers. I think people would be shocked at how many would end up being classified as “spammers.”
Nice article, hey anyone reading this also check out a related post:
FaF – Rebecca wants more readers on her posts.
That’s great. hmm, I feel like I have some of those qualities.
I take umbridge with point 15, what’s wrong with numbers in names? I mean really!!!
Anyway, funny post. Even though I’ve only used Digg like two times, I recognise most of the shenanigans!
Very good list, very funny as well, but also true, its amazing the things we can find in the digg, what people try to do to get to first page.
IMO the quickest way to learn social media and understand community sensibilities is to just spend some time being an active member without promoting a thing. I see some smart people make major mistakes because the only time they visit a site and vote is when they have something up their sleeves and their behavior sticks out like a sore thumb.
huha, thank you. It really worthy of reading. i dugg this and read for 10 min.
Best fix for Digg is autobury the top diggers
Greasmonkey script
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/32571
Enough people sign up, problem solved
Ha ha! You hit the nail on the head Greg. What is sad is I recognize one of those avatars. We have been discussing the same issues over at Mixx.
Great post, I was only expecting a few reasons and the list went on. My favorite is the people who shout a list of their articles. But the reality to me is that you just need to find a way to benefit the whole community. If this benefits you somehow at the same time, no one will care. But the real problem is those who are just polluting the website.
[...] you are one of the Digg community, take a look of this. There are 37 signs that shows you may be a Digg spammer. Unless you are from big company, it is [...]
If that’s what a digg spammers, then yeah, I’m proud to be a spammer! No, really now, I hate all these people who harass me each day with digg, they don’t even introduce themselves to start with; actually i just burry them
.
I agree with another commenter saying it’d be great to see how much of this the Top Diggers do… I bet they do 90% of it!
wow…what a funny and interesting post. I believe most of the guys doing the same from list many time in a day.
[...] the Duke got quite carried away with his digging. So carried away, in fact, that he was labeled a Digg Spammer. He began to “shout for friends” all the time to digg. He stole a top digger’s [...]
Excellent post! I have to admit to being guilty of a few of these. Must do better!
Ugh!!! You’re on the spot and that’s why I never look at my digg account anymore
Too many FaF, LOL!!!
[...] pals at 10e20 crafted up a helpful list that can help you determine if you’re a Digg spammer. You might be a Digg spammer if your porch collapses and kills five dogs. A Digg spammer or a [...]
I’m pretty new to digg and already I’m guilty of of a few of those things. Very informative post – love the cheek. Off there next to right some wrongs
[...] You Might Be A Digg Spammer If… (10e20 Blog) Dig this content? Don’t miss another article – click here to subscribe to The Future Buzz and get articles automatically via email (you will never receive spam). You can also grab my RSS feed. [...]
[...] of all I would like to comment on only Greg’s personal thinking, and not on 10e20 blog, because I’m a great fan of that blog and especially Chris and Patrick [...]
Ya! if you are trying to take advantage of bookmarking services for seo purposes then don’t think that these guys are dumb! And the Big G is also watching you either!
You’ve also introduced me a few features of Digg that I didn’t know. Thanks! This is a great list of what NOT to do.
@37
Auto generated accounts suck!
LOL!
I also admint that you provide many worthy posts for me and the other readers, include this one.
[...] Shouted more than 2 different stories to your friends and many others. Check these rules here to ensure your self that you are not a digg [...]
Um… I’ve never done any of those things… really
please believe me
The best way to avoid spamming Digg is to submit quality content.
LMAO….Incredible Post
Includes everything that some people try to do get on the FrontPage..:)
You are definitely gonna get your diggs for this article regardless of how the digg community views you sir.
Great Writing. I enjoyed reading it.
It’s a shame what has become of Digg’s front page and all of the gaming that goes on to get to the front. I wonder when the free lunch will be over, and reforms or tweaks are made.
Informative post.Many domains (highly respected online marketers blogs with really useful information) have been banned by Digg.Why is this?
[...] Greg Finn lists 37 reasons why you may be a Digg spammer. [10e20] [...]
[...] You Might Be A Digg Spammer If… Greg Finn, 10e20 | 8/22/08 [...]
I don't think digg will really do this!
A managers reply to a inquiry: I believe if you have the workgroup setup, and the outlook user profiles, most of what you want to do is done through the workgroup set of menu items under tools. But since we don’t use outlook mail here and don’t have the enterprise setup, I can’t give you first hand instructions.
Now i can see only mails from my g.f
and mails few mails from official blogs like labnol, seomoz and problogger….
thanks
thanls you
I think most quality issues with the iPhone can be fixed with software updates, notwithstanding the reported cracks in iPhone 3G cases. Software is the key differentiator that Apple has compared to it’s rivals, iPhone OS is far more powerful and flexible that any other mobile OS.
Location
This topic really pawned me but i'm not a spammer cause i used to submit and share other people story. Only 5 – 7 point does really nailed on me. Dang…
Yes, a lot of people tend to enter into social media sites out of overt self-interest. We tend to forget that we have to contribute whole-heartedly to the community in order to gain something in return. When first I joined digg, I was only promoting my own articles, but I changed my style when I learnt that wasn't the best way to succeed.
Like I always say, spam and duplicate content are what social media sites have to address every time. We can help them to make good use of their time.
i think this post can help me more to understand what is digg
well what you have said is the common problem.
i always say that every thing has good side and bad. it is our responsibility to judge the good one and get it.
Thank you for this Information. As I also use Digg but never thought a lot things that will make others think that I am a Spammer. Thank you very much.
Very nice information. But lots of things to care for preventing myself to be assumed as spammer. Thanks for your suggestion.
Good points. As a matter fact I've never reached front page of digg nor other sites, I am there just for the view, searching for sites.
Some people become Digg spammers unintentionally, and others out of their desperation to be noticed.
I recently came across your blog. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Very informative and nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Thanks for stopping by! We're glad to hear that you enjoy our blog.
Outstanding!!! Never seen before…. I loved visiting this Blog as everytime I visit I’ll get something out of you guys…
The title of this article got me laughing. Many social media sites are very spammed. A lot of people go in there with only their interest in mind – thereby spamming to get to the top. They scream for attention with no spirit of socializing.