Get a clue, Digg (Oolon Colluphid fixes everything, pt. 4)

Yes, time for another installment of Oolon Colluphid fixes everything; the segment where I banter about how things should be, and no one listens. Well... it makes me feel a little better at least.

There was some recent hubbub on Digg.com about the so called "power users". These are people that submit a lot of news stories to the site, and regularly see their submission made "popular". Popular stories are displayed on the front page, where anyone loading the site will see it. This generates huge traffic for the site in the submission. Many of these people network with other power users to trade "diggs" (i.e. votes) on each other's stories. They just go down a list of submission from people and digg them all, in return theirs are dugg. You'll see a lot of them with hundreds of diggs in a day. Far more than one would expect if they were... you know, actually reading the submission to see if they were any good.

In addition, it is not uncommon for power users to resubmit a link they found on digg (posted by a regular user), and pretend it was their own. Some of them don't even have real jobs, they just Digg things for a living. Being able to get something on the front page of Digg is an in-demand "skill".

Some feel the power users have too much control, others think they contribute to the community and should be allowed to operate as they please. I think from the tone, it should be obvious where I come down on this issue. I think the power users have taken over Digg. There are too many examples of them gaming the system.

Digg is supposed to be a web 2.0 site, so you can't just make things anonymous. But I have to admit, I'd be fine with that (I don't use it as a social networking site). There's an easy solution here, put a flood filter on Digg. A lot of forums have similar measures to keep people from posting in quick succession. Just set it up so that no one can digg more than say... five stories in a five minute period. It still seems like a lot, huh? It is, but it will make it incredibly tedious to go down a list to click the "Digg" button on a bunch of stories as part of a power user "quid pro quo".

It might be enough to wrest control of the front page back from the same small group of users. If it's no longer virtually guaranteed that their submission will be made popular, they'll have no reason to continue gaming the system.