Slashdot Mirror
Growing Censorship Concerns at Digg
I find site rivalries boring, but growing concerns over Digg "censorship" have been submitted steadily for the last few months. Today two such stories were submitted so numerous that I had little choice but to post. The first claims that Digg is
the editor's playground- it explains how a few users control Digg, and that it's not really the 'Democracy' that they claim it to be. Personally I think this is all totally within the rights of their editors to choose content however they like. But it's less pleasant when combined with accounts getting banned for posting content critical of digg, and watching other content getting
removed for being critical of sponsors (also, here is Kevin Rose's reply).
It is also worth noting that Digg has rapidly gained popularity to the point that Slashdot and Digg are now neck and neck according to Alexa.
Digg is an interesting site that implements a number of things many long-time Slashdot users have wished Slashdot would do for quite some time. It would be a shame if they are failing to live up to their claim of non-hierarchial editorial control. If this is true, then they deserve to be outed.
You don't like it? Don't use it.
So you build a website that acts as a community (a webmunity?). And one of the great things is that you get to be God of Gods at your webmunity and do whatever you want to users. You giveth life and taketh life away!
... or is it? Is this the opening salvo in a war of words between the editors of Digg and Slashdot? I hope not, this site is the center of enough flamewars as it is.
And all is good.
But your reader base hates you for it. And one day, dissent might arise. If you don't address it you risk losing your user base. If you try to cover it up and the truth breaks out, I guarantee you will lose your user base.
So the editors do what they want and you vote with your clicks. This is no grand concept, we provide them revenue by visiting their sites. We are traveling to their sites by keystrokes and clicks (not our feet) so vote with them and everyone is happy!
If you can't find a fair site, build your own! Show us how it's done and let us know where it's at. I, for one, would like to see more slash/digg hybrids popping up that rate everything (stories, users, comments, etc) and have a tight handle on who gets how many mod points. I don't care for the easy exploitation of digg and I don't care for the veto happy choice editors for Slashdot.
This isn't a cold war (yet) since they aren't openly bashing each other like the USSR Vs USA war
It would most likely boil down to a witch hunt. Sites will be judged by two qualities: fascist nazism & crap content. It's like precision versus recall, everyone has their own preferred happy medium.
Frankly, the Godaddy digg seems to be there and intact. But I did have to Google it. Remember, you can hate the diggers who submit (and digg) crap, the GNAA trolls & Adolf Hitroll but only as much as you hate your freedom to submit, digg and post yourself.
My work here is dung.
...in order to not like it, you need to know it is happening.
Such as what? Apparently you have been censored while you were typing your post.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
this, the same day I decide to quit "digging" after seeing how their community is racist, sexist, ethnocentric, and so on... weird concidence.
Digg.com, to put it simply, sucks. Without any true editors, their focus and target audience have drifted far from their stated "we're a tech site" definition.
Most stories have no bearing at all on tech, and comments range for the childish to outright stupid.
Digg.com is more like Fark.com, except it's not as good.
As to Kevin Rose, who cares. Like his site, he's a major tech poser.
At least on digg you know who is modding you up or down. Plus everyone's article and comments are accepted.
On slashdot you have no idea who is removing your submitted articles and comments, not who is modding you down.
In both groups there is an intolerant and active "politically correct" core. If you dont agree with them on IT or social comments, you get abused.
My prediction is this comment will disappear because it is "wrong".
I'd love to see Slashdot's "rejected" queue. That would really be a testament to "open source", of the journalistic kind.
--
make install -not war
Ignore and let them co-exist. /. for the comments whereas you can find fun and interesting stuff that gives you a minute of fun on digg.
They are no rivals and have completely different models of providing news.
Most people come to
Let's not follow into the thinking many digg-users seem to have that "a war is going on".
One thing that's been making me sick of Digg are all the damn blog posts.
Oh, but there's meta-moderation to deal with the abusers. Whatever. The same people that only want to see certain viewpoints also judge the moderation. That works. Not!
I lost interest in slashdot (and let my sponsorship lapse) when I lost moderation privileges. I was never told I was black listed. I simply stopped receiving mod points. It doesn't really matter if the editors or the hive mind blacklisted me; the result is the same. The moderation system here is not an asset, it's just a tool for the status quo. It's not even available if you don't pass some test of conformity.
It pains me to read some other forums because the quality of the commentary is so bad. Slashdot is capable of so much more, but it takes more time than I have to find the good through the parrotry. Go ahead, mod me down. Whatever.
With moderation, I find /. bearable, but it does suffer from that "attention curve" -- comments posted after attention has decayed from the story will probably never be moderated up. If you want moderation attention, you have to post very early.
you had me at #!
Hahahahahaha. Maybe I'm missing something, but some of those guys built this place, right? Did you think that Slashdot was conceived by the internet via immaculate conception?
I'd love to see more open-ness and an open metric and stuff like that, but as long as there are people like you wandering the byways of cyberspace with this insane feeling of being entitled to every website you land on I'm not really that surprised that the creators retain (and delegate) more authority than would otherwise be optimal.
It's precisely this attitude of being entitled to stuff other people created that makes socialists so annoying.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
I'm sorry, but no. If google did something irrational that pissed everyone off, they would go and use a different search engine and there is nothing google could do about that.
The 'USA' as 'google' however, would blow up all the other rival websites claiming its 'their internet' and you can't stop us... god told me to do <insert stupid thing that pissed everyone off in the first place
But I digress from the actual topic, as has been mentioned by another reply, the whole world is made up of tiny dictatorships, with the illution of democracy etc... internet included.
Well thats my two pence... night all.