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Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.Why The Digg Mafia Will Cost Kevin Rose Millions!
techtites.com — Digg.com was one of the social networking/blogging successes of 2006, but recently it's star has started to dim as people have started to question the efficiency of its voting system, that has actually resulted in a small minority, the 'Digg Mafia' deciding what makes it onto the homepage or not, rather than the wider userbase.
Brajeshwar- 359 diggs
- digg it
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19I bet, if this article hits the homepage. Digg will ban Techtites or even Brajeshwar
- diggamer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+30That will never happen. The Digg staff will bury it, as they do with all articles with an anti-Digg slant. Nothing must disturb the Digg paradise world.
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8only one way of finding out. Dugg up.
Is a good way to test if digg=digital democracy or not. - cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10Digg is utter shame, if it buries this post. Indeed they have to change their ways and their system.
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21made popular a few minutes ago. and now with the Digg message that the content may be inaccurate. In other words, the Mafia are working hard.
Goodbye Digg. Good bye democracy. Perhaps time for something more .... delicious? - cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Final call to digg, Why don't u let this story goto frontpage and take the openion of the fellow diggers, Is there any democrary in here or its just bunch of digital mobs ?
- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Digg! its 110+ now, do u need any more proof ?
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Everyone, read this: http://tech-buzz.net/2007/02/18/benchmarking-diggs-democracy/
- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Digg mafia is back they are digging down every damn post, Digg please provide me a link to delete my profile.
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4the link that thilak posted on this thread about 'Benchmarking...'. Has been banned by Digg - cannot submit that article on Digg! In other words, censorship at action before Diggers have even got a chance to bury.
Jay/Kevin et al - we know you are following this. And we really don't care what you do to/with our profiles. However, we are all passionate that Digg is a good thing. We do want to see it thrive and flourish. This post must be allowed free reign to wherever it belongs. Without censorship or policing from Digg. The community is the censor; the community is the police. Please remove the roadblocks. - unikuser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This is ridiculous 250+ diggs and this story is not in frontpage yet. And another f* thing is that coolduduvamsee's account is blocked for writing 4 comments against digg??? And he is not even interested in creating another account. We used to acall him THE DIGG for the amount of time he spends on digg. What is this f* monopoly???
- anastrophe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24indeed. everyone should digg this story up. it'll serve as an excellent test of how genuinely democratic digg is.
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Yeah!, Lets give it a shot. This is a really test of Digg's democracy!
- zappo1776, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree. I'm not sure I buy into the whole digg mafia thing but whatever happens to this story could change my mind. +1 for the sake of Democracy.
- ajaydsouza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Well, the democracy has definitely been proved... er.. disproved... this post has been buried even before it got up to 20 posts!
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8To The Digg Tea,:
Folks !! Where the hell is your democracy ?? - myscoop, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14The sad thing is, I bet only a handful of people buried this story - why does Digg apply so much weight to buries, when this story is clearly popular and worthy of the homepage? My Digg makes 52 in 7 hours.....Far too much power is given to the Digg mafia, and they are just ruining it for everyone else.
It would be very worrying if the Digg staff have buried this. We should send emails to feedback@digg.com to find out what's going on and to petition for this posts re-instatement- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Just mailed them, awaiting for response.
Otherwise I will leave digg. - cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Oh, They flagged this article as inaccurate, great digg!.
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9How can some one's opinion be inaccurate?
Come on Digg, this is just a opinion, not a cease and desist letter!
Oh.. I almost forgot. Digg reads our brain!
- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Just mailed them, awaiting for response.
- myscoop, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Which morons flagged this as being inaccurate? How can an opinion be inaccurate? You may disagree with it, but it's not inaccurate.
If you want to bury a story just because you don't like it, at least choose a sensible option!
It says that the story has been made popular but it's not appearing on the homepage....don't be fooled. Someone is playing games here at Digg, or Digg's system automatically adds 'made popular' once a certain threshold is reached...kinda makes a mockery of the fact that someone somewhere tried to bury this post.....- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Looks like digg admins monitoring this thing, With in 1 minute of you commented it was dugg down, I digg it up.
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8monitoring very closely, me thinks. don't be surprised to have strange things start happening to your profile if you appear to have suggested that Digg sucks in this thread. No longer trust them. Just look at the crap that has made the FP these last few days. Not good.
btw - I have rarely seen a thread where all the individual comments have been dugg up as on this. So each commenter and some diggers are obviously agreeing with the concerns being expressed by Diggers. Just hope that all your collective friends can influence a huge groundswell of diggs up to avoid the Mafia from 'interfering'
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Digg, you're democracy is clearly evident. We all love this story, not even a single comment gives it down.. but still the article is inaccurate!
- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Great, Yours was down as soon as you posted it.
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13guys n gals - the Mafia are working hard, it is clear. thilak's comment above was already down to 0 in secs of posting. just dugg up. Looks like its gonna be a battle of the Diggers vs the Mafia. Who're you with? Vote with your fingers. or else with your feet.
- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Proof of democracy here.
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/6205/yourdiggdz5.png - thilak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8OMG! They are such cheapskates. Come on digg... you don;t need to hide anything with us!
- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/286/anotherproffye9.png
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12This post is made for all you conspiracy theorists out there. We know you are out there. Come on, join in the fun. This may be the single most pupular post in Digg's history that may be at risk of not going very far.
A couple of other thoughts. Kevin and Jay have been known to comment on many posts, especially those on Digg. They are both conspicuous (sp) by their absence on this thread. And what about all those who it is claimed have reported this story as inaccurate. Where are their comments and thoughts?
There's something very sinister going on out here. We have a situation!- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I guess, Kevin has no words to answer!
- ajaydsouza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I believe the mafia is working really hard... the post on reditt is being given thumbs down...
This has turned out to be really interesting... mafia vs. the anti-mafia!
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I guess, Kevin has no words to answer!
- DiggsRus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I'm in guys. Diggers United. This could be an all-nighter :-)
- diafel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Is anyone surprised that people want to censor this?
I have continually railed against this so called Digg Mafia (i.e. the Gamers) who consistently use tens of accounts to systematically control the Digg front page. One look at the front page will reveal pretty that at least 70% of all stories are from the same small group of users. There was a recent article that indicated the Digg team was removing the Top Users list. Though this was a step in the right direction (I would guess almost every one on the list was a gamer), the reasoning was that Kevin actually wanted to PROTECT these frauds. How utterly absurd. If Kevin wants to save Digg, and the very principles it was founded on, he needs to BAN these frauds.- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2diafel - I think you miss the point.
The 'gamers' in this case do not appear to be a bunch of trolls. The evidence appears to point squarely at users in the higher echelons of Digg who are gaming the system to protect their personal interests.
That is not democracy - it is at odds with the exact principles that Digg was founded on. We are beginning to learn what the secret formulae in the algorithms is all about. After today, I would trust the secret formulae for Coca Cola and KFC more. And I can't stand the taste of either of those!
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2diafel - I think you miss the point.
- nsharp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I think Digg has jumped the shark. Sure they have a gazillion visitors and a million users, but, frankly, even the most diehard digg fans are beginning to see the bigger picture.
Pretty soon they will be like Slashdot (a place you USED to go for tech n stuff).
Frankly, there isn't much incentive for people to submit content here anymore.- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Exactly! Traffic serves no point!
- SoonerPet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Eh, more like digg will just fade away. I came from slashdot, but see myself there more and more as I distance myself from digg. I don't get why people are so hard on slashdot, the stories are better, the comments are better, just more mature people there. Though I guess if you're 14 and railing against the man, slashdot is a nice target for your prepubescent frustrations. There really needs to be more people at digg not in high school, that's why the comments blow. I'll spend all day reading interesting well thought out comments at slashdot, they are usually better than the story.
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Exactly! Traffic serves no point!
- diafel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Read this fascinating article "How Digg outgrew it's Top Users": http://www.valleywag.com/tech/digg/how-digg-outgrew-its-top-users-233727.php
There are some downright laughable quotes:
"Still, Rose says that Digg has done well keeping its top feed pure through users who "bury" bad stories and algorithms that keep fake diggs from pushing items to the front page."
"Presumably, the companies and organizations that try to game Digg first seek out top users. They seem like power users willing to make some cash or favors by spending more time on their favorite site. But Rose cites a slightly different reason: he says that Digg's top users have been blamed for gaming the site, and he made this move to protect them."
Does Kevin not see that the very users he's protecting are the very users who are ruining the site? Here's the now missing Digg Top 100 mirrored elsewhere: http://www.efinke.com/digg/topusers.html Recognize a few familiar faces? Webtickle, a very prominent and obvious gamer, has a whopping 73.4% submission rate. Percentage of users who have called out this disgusting fraud: 0.001%- bioskope, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1oh come on now. I mean guys I feel for your cause , I really do. But smearing people like webtickle with the'whole 'gaming' slime was totally uncalled for. There may or may not be some kind of mafia at work,(I dont think I am qualified to give a categorical answer to that because most of the time my frustration is directed towards the fact that ***** I submit will never make Front Page no matter how much I scout the net for quality content to link to and subsequently I tend to lose sight of the bigger picture) but people like webtickle who always submit quality stuff neednt be dragged into this one just because he has a high FP %. Or atleast not without any sort of evidence
- thilak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Digg infringes upon its own principals of sending traffic back to the original source by embedding video content from video hosts like YouTube, Google Videos and Metacafe. Digg is killing their profitability by leeching their bandwidth and not sending traffic to their site. How fair is it?
- SmartParts, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Especially with so many people link whoring and blog spamming.
- mbthompson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Too many immature assholes, too many fanboys, too many stories being buried, too many one-sided viewpoints. Digg is now dead, I'll still watch Diggnation, but it's going to be http://www.reddit.com for me from now on. Does anyone know if you can delete your profile? I really have no interest in posting content or comments anymore.
- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I have the same problem, There is no link to delete my profile.
May be keven wants to show digg user base when he is going to sell this wonderful thing along with some little ***** userbase. - rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5about deleting ure profile. U probably can't. Like Second Life, they want to be able to say xxx registered users where xxx is a higher figure (i.e. Gross, no account of defaulters other than those that Digg have banned).
Mark the date today - the day that Digg died! - lowkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, there's always one way to "close" your account. Just get banned for comments.
- cooldudevamsee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I have the same problem, There is no link to delete my profile.
- qcfb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The problem with success is that once it is achieved all you care about is maintaining the status duo. Sadly, it is all too predictable that after achieving power and influence on the Internet, Digg would begin a policy of censorship and control in an attempt to prevent any sort of criticism from reaching their much valued reader base. We the users of Digg have made the site popular. It isn't because of the Digg mafia that Digg is important. It is because of you users. If Digg cannot give the common user the respect he or she deserves for making the site as influential as we have then we should remind Kevin Rose exactly where he would be without us.
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3160+ diggs; made popular 3 hours ago; 42 comments; all with multiple thumbs ups.
But no Front Page - When I relogged back in after a couple of hours, some useless posts from a couple of days ago had just reappeared on the front page despite no apparent movement on them.
Brajeshwar - you appear to have served the community well by posting this. We salute you. You also appear to have commented on the Blog that you promote. Great. But we do not have any comments on this thread. Why so quiet? We value your wisdom!- lcmatt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wouldn't be surprised if he's been 'muted' or banned.
- ajaydsouza, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It shows made popular, but the story is still buried... try doing a search for "mafia" and this article won't show up.
Select "Include Buried Stories" and it is on the list... the made popular is just a false assurance.
Will write a follow up post on this, which I am sure will get buried as well!
- Bonez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I got tinfoil helmets.. 1 dollar a pop anyone want some?
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1now been popular about 4.5 hrs ago. The post is still getting the occasional hit but it has slowed down considerably in the last hour. Just had a look at Digg Labs. Does appear on the stack. Seems that diggs started slowing down suddenly about 4 hours ago, soon after it became 'popular'. From blocks of > 20 to < 5. Proves what everything else on this thread suggests.
D I G G Inc does NOT Support D I G I T A L D E M O C R A C Y - weetz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5UMMMM.
This is an opinion piece. How can that possibly be inaccurate?
I've stopped coming to digg unless linked from sites like reddit where this sh#$ doesn't happen. - jfence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't know why, but this reminds me of the part of the play Peter Pan where peter pleads with the audience, "If you believe in fairies, clap your hands! Come on..I know we can do it! If you do, Tink will get better!".
- rjani57, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Guys n Gals - have a look at new post below. It is related to this. Digg it up if u still care...
http://digg.com/tech_news/True_Loyalty_and_Death_of_Digg - imacsandra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm has digg dugg a grave for itself? I am liking Reddit more now myself.
- Croll, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is outrageous. Digg admins and mafia should not be able to prevent something like this from getting to the front page. As said above, an opinion is an opinion so it cannot be inaccurate.
- vikassah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1People here are right, this should make it the frontpage. I support Ajay and seeing all that is happening, would fully back this article.
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