| Date: | 2010-08-30 17:30 |
|---|---|
| Author: | Stefano |
| category: | Opinion, Websites |
| slug: | fear-the-crowd-digg-4-spurs-users-revolt |
The community-powered news site Digg played an occasional role on the development of this blog. Some of the findings I posted here started, in some cases, as a spark from a Digg submission, further developed through my personal research. This is the reason why I am writing here about it. News on Digg were frequent and fresh: reloading the page after some minute was already enough to see new upcoming content, and the time span from release to fruition was short, much shorter than Slashdot (which I also follow with very strong interest since almost the very beginning). Last but not least, in addition to interesting scientific or technological news, Digg was also one of the best sites to waste time on when bored.
This all changed recently. Digg's new version (Digg 4), introduced a radical change on both interface layout and use. Apart from the huge amount of errors the new site presented to the user (the now infamous Ox cart axle message), the main page content has become so stable that reloading and checking "what's fresh on the web, now" is no longer possible.
The recent changes triggered a raging reaction from the community, and in a perfect and hilarious example of coordinated mob assault, submissions promoted by the community to the current "Top News" front page now contains only links toward the similar site Reddit. If you are the host for an army of users so large they can bring servers down, having them unsatisfied can promote some issue to be dealt with.
I certainly hope the old Digg style comes back, otherwise I will have to look for alternatives to stay fresh on the internet.