Michael Arrington commented on my How to fix Digg in 3 seconds flat post with a good point.
I had said: stop telling users on Digg who has dug stories that they’ve submitted … make it harder for “friends” on Digg to just dig each others’ posts. This will help rid dig of the mob mentality that is screwing with the system.
Michael said:
John, most of the gaming occurs from people IMing or emailing the URL of stories to their friends they want to have dugg. Your solution doesn’t addresst that.
Well, good point. However, Kyle made a better one:
So take it a step further. Eliminate the scores and rankings that make Digg competitive. There’s no transferable value in being a “Top Digger” anyhow. When users recognize that, they’ll stop dedicating hours of their day trolling for stories to submit, and be less dissatisfied when they’re submissions aren’t promoted.
Exactly. Great point. After all, does Delicious rank people who bookmark? Nope. And it hasn’t hurt their popularity.
[tags] digg, delicious, democracy, arrington, john koetsier [/tags]
“they’ll stop dedicating hours of their day trolling for stories to submit”
But isn’t that the point? And isn’t digg a game of sorts?
The “gaming” nature of digg is the thing that differentiates it from delicious.
Digg needs to promote ranking as the core part of the user experience because so much of their success is about the quality of the content on the home page (and associated feeds). They are a content portal.
The core delicious experience revolves around my bookmarks, my page, and my link roll. Even when you expand it to groups, it is still a decentralized platform. Ranking is less critical because it’s less of a content portal and much more of a personal link management tool.