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.
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.
This was posted on Digg two days ago...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Just so we complete the circle, here's a DIGG on this /. story ... ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
At /. they always censor topics such as
The internet is a collection of tiny dictatorship. It's not a huge democratic thing, and it is even no anarchy (even though it comes as close to the classic definition of anarchy, where everyone governs himself and holds no power over others as it can come).
Every server is owned by someone. And he's the dictator. As benevolent or tyrannic as he wants to be. Those pages that claim they're "democratic" are so because the dictator decided it would be nice to let his "peasants", his users, act as the ruling body. But ultimately, he is in charge.
And ultimately, he hangs if something illegal happens on his page.
The difference to a true dictatorship is only that you have the power to vote with your feet. If the dictatorship isn't to your liking anymore, you can leave. That's it, though. There's no such thing as a virtual coup d'etat (well, you can hack the page, granted, but that's usually overthrown quickly again). You can pick your stuff up and head out. You can even create your own "land" and "declare independence".
But what it comes down to is, that every page, every server is owned by someone. And this someone decides what is displayed, who may write stuff, even who may read it. Like it or leave.
Of course, on the other hand, your "international relationships" (i.e. other pages writing about yours) will quickly go down the drain if you turn out as the new Josef Stalin. And other "countries" will cease their "diplomatic agreements", their links, with you.
So unless you're Google or some other virtual equivalent of the USA, better treat your users nicely.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Two front page articles got pulled off within 10 minutes of being promoted.
Users can easily create email accounts, change their IP address by resetting their router/modem and create accounts in digg to eventually digg their articles.
Non-moderated news never works. Digg _is_ moderated. The poor soles who frequent that site just don't know it. As TFA said, digg.com is more of an editor playground that a democratic proccess of picking news.
here are two examples from yesterday
Example 1 Example 2Each website has its own specific qualities that make it good and bad. For instance, I like Digg because it is updated more frequently than Slashdot (see diggvsdot), but apparently "these updates" maybe too frequent (i.e. stories deleted). I think Slashdot has better comments. I cannot stand Digg comments. Digg comments are the same type of comments that Fark has... people talking about stuff they have no clue of. At least with Slashdot, most of the comments are made by informed people.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
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.
Slashdot and Digg are linking to each other! An endless loop of Slashdot Effect and Digg Effect! Is the internet going to explode?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
It is a dark time for Web 2.0. Although the Beatles_Beatles has been destroyed, Slashbot troops have driven the Digg forces from their Ajax den and pursued them across the Internet.
Evading the dreaded Slashdot Moderator Fleet, a group of Web 2.0 upstarts led by Kevin Rose has established a new Digg site on the remote web servers of Revision3 Corporation.
The evil lord Darth Neal, obsessed with finding young Rose, has dispatched thousands of remote links, DDoSing into the far reaches of webspace....
May the Maths Be with you!
Slashdot (and Digg for that matter), is like any organized group -- there will be people who will join because they want to commiserate with the like-minded, there will be people who are "just curious", and then there will be people of questionable character who are there to spread their own form of idiocy and bigotry. Can't be helped -- if you could do an accurate breakdown of membership by personality type, it would probably fit the Bell curve to a tee.
We're always going to suffer with this. I happen to think Slashdot's system, while not perfect, is certainly better than some. At least, despite the many times I have incurred some faction's wrath with my comments, I feel like I'm communicating with a fairly well-read and intelligent group most of the time. Some people don't like me and that's their perogative. I keep on posting because I think for the most part people appreciate my adding to the discourse and because I don't really care what others think ultimately, as they only have my posts to go by and don't know the real "me."
That said, I'd never want a faction to come along and mod me up all the time simply because they "like" me, anymore than I want a faction to mod me down because they "hate" me. I"ve noted an inequity now and again, as it's obvious someone doesn't have a sense of humor, doesn't understand my sense of humor, or got their hands on some mod points and plan to punish the "enemy." I think the moderation system here makes it harder for that kind of thing to go on, and I think Digg could learn a thing or two from the idea.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
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
All this hue and cry of censorship seems to be simply because people don't understand the system.
A story reaches the front page by people "digging" that story. The total number of "diggs" is listed on the page.
However, a story can be yanked from the front page by people who mark it as lame or inaccurate or spam, or whatever. These numbers are NOT listed.
So when a story is yanked back off, there is no visibility as to WHY it was yanked off the front page. Lots of people seem to think that the admins do it themselves, when in fact it's some algorithim taking it off because enough people marked it down.
If they made this information visible, then there'd be less complaining. Instead of having several options like lame and so forth, they should have a simple button marked "Bury" to allow people to say that the story is stupid (or whatever they feel). Put a counter next to the bury link, to show how many people don't like it. Then when a story is autoyanked from the front page, there will be visibility. People won't have room to complain, because the story clearly got buried from people marking it down.
The REAL reason people are complaining is because of a poor user interface, not censorship.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
But they rarely completely censor people here. Does the occasional bitchslap happen? Sure, but it usually gets plenty of attention, and the comment isn't summarily deleted, nor is the user account deleted. And how many posts have we seen that poke fun at slashdot, it's editors, or it's moderation system? I've seen plenty, and that's at +5. While it would be ideal that complaints about slashdot are listenened to and fixed, it speaks well of slashdot's operators that they are not summarily censored out of hand. Not to mention that many complaints about slashdot have been addressed, albeit not in a timely fashion.
Nathan's blog
CmdrTaco: What happen? ....
CoyboyNeal: Somebody set up us the digg.
CoyboyNeal: We get signal.
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
CmdrTaco: What!
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
CoyboyNeal: index.shtml turn on.
CmdrTaco: It's You!!
Kevin: How are you gentlemen!!
Kevin: All your index.php are belong to us.
Kevin: You are on the way to diggination.
CmdrTaco: What you say!!
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
Kevin: You have no chance to survive emerge your gentoo.
Kevin: Ha Ha Ha Ha
CmdrTaco: Take off every "slash."
CmdrTaco: You know what you doing.
CmdrTaco: Move "dot".
CmdrTaco: For great justice.
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
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 #!