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The Effect of User Ranking on Digg
tannergodarzi.com — "User ranking has always been useful for sorting out contributors to the community but is not without it ’s faults. Having that number next to your name can do a whole lot more than give you a positive standing."
koregaonpark- 559 diggs
- digg it
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Surpised this article has not already made front page! Good one that every digg user will want to read, judging by the comments on another one about digg addiction. Go4it!
- cadillaccactus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4agreed, rjani. very interesting.
check out this if you're interested, its along the same lines: http://digg.com/tech_news/How_your_Digg_User_Rank_is_Determined - ryland2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3You can say what you will but this really doesnt hurt or help digg, its just a feature, people will complain that because they cant homepage, this is very simaler. The majority of people who want it removed are just supporting this because they aren't ranked highly. It DOESN'T hurt digg, so it will not be removed because a few people dont like it.
- cadillaccactus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4agreed, rjani. very interesting.
- sixty6, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Yeah, but koregaonpark should have submitted the CORRECT post URL:
http://tannergodarzi.com/?p=40
Linking to their homepage would require visitors to find the post if the blogger decided to make another new post. Should be buried as inaccurate, but it does have some good content on it..- koregaonpark, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Yeah, sorry. I thought I was on the post page when I hit the magic button.
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Thanks for linking to the original. I won't update the Blog for 24 hours so people have enough time to see it.
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2thanks to cadilaccactus and sixty6 for the links. always looking for good stuff to surf. Perhaps how Digg found me!
- NoOneButMe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7This quote sums it all up: “If Digg got rid or all ranking I don’t think it would make that much of a difference. The homepage stories will still come from a small percentage of the users. Plus new users will still add tons of friends to increase the chances of their submissions making the homepage.”
- Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -9/+14The ranking and the "top digg user" list should be removed.
- ImTheDarkcyde, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5but then how would titlesaysitall know he's the 25th biggest commenter? and how would i know i'm only 10 behind him on that list?
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Ha! Doesn't matter if I am ranked 25 comment wise if people don't like my comments.
- dan2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Remove the ranking and come up with titles for users such as power user etc and implement a karma system.
- foxhaze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14I very rarely look at the user that posted an article. I've only ever been to the user ranking list once. In my opinion, it serves no real purpose except for the people that are on the top of it. Competition is always good.
- Yashar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Plus the fact that most top users submit dupes and those stories get promoted. As I said before, if you are a top user you are expected to know the rules and be an example.
- pizzaman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Yes, even Kevin does that. I submitted the top 50 life hacks almost an hour before him. Good thing its just the Internet
- koregaonpark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Kevin's done it for sure. I remember he appended a '?' to the Songbird screencast URL when he submitted it. The original got some 20 diggs and his got a few thousand.
http://digg.com/software/Video_Songbird_See_how_it_works_and_why_it_beats_iTunes
- nobogeys217, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Rankings are good for the people who want to be at the top. They search through digg more and see more stories.
Or some people will just digg every story to try and up their ranking without reading or caring about the story.
so what is the ratio of the ranking. (how much weight is put on dugg/popularity ratio/submitted etc.?- ryland2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2All that matters is homepage count, if you have the same amount of homepages as someone else, then profile views will decide who is higher.
- greekgoat91, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4w00t, top 1000
953 - BigKitty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I think that the user ranking provides a great incentive for DIGGers to go to extra effort to find and submit good stories. Digg is a game and that's what makes it so addictive and keeps people so active in it. Take it away, and there will be far less total activity, and far fewer good stories.
- noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.duggmirror.com
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well the Blog is not dead yet.
- noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2was for me, had to go to the mirror.
- snowpatrol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Who gives a ***** if you're number one on digg...it doesn't mean *****.
- narduk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I believe the "abuse of power" by some of the top Digg users only appears to be a threat to the Digg system. This belief is similar to the idea that AdSense fraud will not greatly impact Google.
The price that one pays for a click of an AdWord is based on what that user think the word is worth. In deciding the value of a word, the buyer takes the cost of the ads and weighs it against the benefit receieved from the ads. If there is a great amount of click fraud, the perceived value of a word decreases in value because there are some clicks that are "noise" giving the advertiser no benefit. However, because the price has decreased the advertiser is now able to buy more clicks. Some of them are not valid, but the number of valid clicks is the same as at the higher price. Therefore, the total benefit to the advertiser is the same as it was had there been no click fraud. Click fraud changes the price and value of each click, but this is not a problem the advertisers because they receieve the same benefit at the same total cost.
So how does this relate to Digg? As users we are visiting Digg because we want to be entertained by the content we consume. We determine which content gets to be the most viewed content. Now there is a group of users that has more influence over the content that we view. Some of these users are now creating "noise" within Digg. This noise appears to be a great threat to Digg. Our fear is that Digg will be overcome with spam and our great community will be destroyed. Let me remind you that this argument has been happening since the early days of Digg. I remember listening to Veronica Belmont on Buzz Out Loud complaining about this very topic. It has been a topic of discussion since Digg first became popular. It was argued that it will ruin Digg. However, the opposite has a occured. Digg has grown to be amazingly popular. Is it a result of system gaming? Maybe it is good for Digg. Afterall, it appears to be a bigger problem as Digg continues to grow. So maybe it is the opposite. It is the reason Digg is so popular! That is of course an absurd claim, but so is claiming that it is some sort of cancer. Instead, the user ranking and gaming of Digg is a benign tumor just as click fraud is for AdWords. We needed to do the biopsy to make sure that it was not cancer, but now that we know it is harmless we need not continue to perform biopsies on the same tumor.
Something that is of interest is the result of anti-gaming and anti-click fraud measures. Do they have an impact? Should they continue to be a focus? I believe that they should. These measures help remove some of the noise that is a result of these problems. It does not hurt to remove the noise and I believe that it could help hasten the reactions that are a result of the noise, but I do not think that these measures are make or break for either system.
I would just like to lay this discussion to rest. It is a silly discussion and continues to pollute my front page when these stories become popular.
Can you prove that the author didn't pay a top digger to digg it?- koregaonpark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2He's 14, I'm 18. We're on opposite sides of the globe. Why he would pay me to submit a story is beyond me. I did so because I was quoted, ego thing. :-P
- kinchknifeblade, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I didn't even know there is a user ranking until this story.
- diggamer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The top users ARE important, because in order to get to the top they had to submit quality stories that made it to the front page. Therefore, the community assumes they will continue submitting quality content. The top users have the most friends, so stories they submit have more reach.
I blogged about how Digg should start rewarding its top users:
http://neomeme.wordpress.com/2006/12/30/the-solution-to-social-news/- BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As any politician can tell you, popularity is much more about saying what people want to hear verse the quality or correctness of what you're saying.
- BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As any politician can tell you, popularity is much more about saying what people want to hear verse the quality or correctness of what you're saying.
- BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Interesting...I didn't even know there was user ranking. I guess that sorts of makes it like an on-line game thing where the people with the least life have the highest ratings. I can see how that could be used as a marketing vehicle. You could hire someone to screw around on a web site for a year for far less than one 30 second national commercial would cost. Hire someone to figure out how to work the system and then push your products to the top when possible.
- DeltaX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yep. Like that BMW post.
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1deltaX provides an excellent example of viral marketing at play. I did follow the BMW story, must have viewed the ads a few times over.
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