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UPDATE (11/24/07): Heh-heh, [why digg is blocked dot com] is NOT my site. I’ve been getting a lot of nasty comments from people thinking that it is. I enjoy lively banter but I think I’ll probably just delete the rest of the comments for this post that are in moderation. Digg fans, harass the REAL owner of that site. As for this post, well, it was an experiment of mine, I’ll leave it at that. Anyway, the post is below if you still feel like reading it.
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Don’t get me wrong, I’m a digg user and will continue to use digg (I’m not very active though, I guess I’m more of a lurker…) and there are stories on the site that I would not have heard about otherwise. Still, I think there’s a lot to be desired and since I don’t know how to fix things I guess I’ll just bitch about them. So, my five reasons why I think digg sucks:
1. Despite being a “technology news website” it consistently features stories that are not technology-related in the least. Stories like, “OMG! Clay Aiken is GAY!!” or “Britney Spears to appear on Simpsons!!” are very common on the site.* GMAFB, what does any of that have to do with technology? It’s a little thing to bitch about but still, if I wanted that kind of crap I’d look up different sites that specialize in it. Just keep things to technology, that’s all I ask.
2. Members can be elitist assholes. I rarely see anything that approaches a rational discussion in the comments, instead, you are treated to off-topic flame wars and personal attacks, most of which involve some sort of “I’m OLD SKOOL and I’m great” type of talk. I’ve seen new members of the community ask a reasonable question only to be told to “Go back to engadget where you belong because this is Digg where our mouths are even bigger than our dicks.”**
3. Webmasters are given no warning when their site is going to be “dugg.” I think it’s irresponsible of a so-called technology community to overwhelm a web server without having a system in place that would allow the webmaster to set up some mirrors or somehow prepare his site for when the traffic comes. The, for lack of a better term, digg-effect can be devastating to a site and the bandwidth bill can get into the thousands before the webmaster knows what’s going on. These “diggers” know exactly what they are doing yet they completely disregard their responsibility for bringing a site down.
4. Digg traffic does not equal advertising dollars. Many webmasters have advertising on their sites, like Google’s Adsense or Yahoo!’s YPN and mistakenly thing that getting dugg will equal money in their pockets. This is dead wrong. The people that use digg don’t click on ads, they’re the wrong crowd for contextual advertising, and the webmaster usually ends up paying for a ton of bandwidth and lowers his click-through rate, thereby causing himself to be smart-priced out of the higher-paying ads that might have been shown on his site.***
5. Apple is God and Microsoft is the Devil. I just don’t understand why everyone has to jump all over a guy just because he has Windows installed on his laptop. You want to know something jerks? Sometimes people in the world can’t afford the Apple-tax and they have to get something that’s in their price range. Yeah, everyone knows that Windows sucks, we don’t need to hear it every second.
Well, that’s my five so I guess I should stop. I’m sure there are other people out there with different reasons of why digg sucks, care to share yours?
* No, these aren’t real headlines (that I’m aware of.) I was exaggerating for effect.
** Not all members are elitist assholes. I’ve seen some very helpful comments and it would be unfair to the nice people to call them names. Also, I don’t think anyone actually made the remark that I did, once again I was exaggerating for effect. I can’t help it, I’m a writer.
*** There are probably exceptions to this, in fact, it was a guess on my part when I mentioned smart-pricing. Who knows, I’m sure there are some happy webmasters that have gotten dugg but I’ve read a lot of horror stories.
i truly agree. digg didn’t even help me get extra traffic for my blog.
[...] just a short list of reasons why I blocked [...]
[...] in general. As the website got more popular, the topics began to stray from the tech news angle to ever increasing stupid shit. I suppose this is the fate of popular social websites, but I digress. I continued to visit the [...]
“People keep finding it by Googling “digg sucks” which leads me to believe that I am not the only one that has/had this sentiment. ” <– this is how i found this page!!
Really you have to look behind digg to understand why it sucks. We have Kevin Rose, who used to be super cool… now is just a burnt out pothead who works for Mr.Big (that nerdy dude who owns Revision3). I mean face it that guy is a loser and just wants to be cool. You can’t control your content like that (moderating – was probably originally some ‘nice little feature’ Kevin came up with that ran into a ’standard of user based content’ guide some dick planted in his lap) So they moderate their content to what they THINK their users want, and what best suits the numbers of their show, Diggnation. *cough put on by u guessed it Revision3*
They lost their good audience, and their real quality content a LONG ass time ago. They really did have some badass users… some REAL ‘old skool’ punks out there. But they’re gone. Why? Because if you are a badass, you’re too busy BEING a badass to type it all up in some blithering rant much like this one.
I dont agree that Digg is useless, but it certainly fails in certain respects… check out http://www.managingio.com/2008/03/29/why-digg-works-and-where-it-fails/
Not only is digg a corrupt system, it’s fundamentally flawed.
If you don’t mind a plug for a friend of mine, http://digg-this.blogspot.com is the spot for an intelligent and rational approach to digg sucking.
It’s digg nation dot com.
I fucking hate Digg. I fucking hate Kevin and Alex… they are both fucking wankers. Digg totally sucks. I use to be cool back in the good ol days, but I fucking hate it now. I mean… I’d rather have a back massage by Hitler than go to Digg.
Fuck Digg, Fuck Kevin & Alex and fuck all the elitist assholes on Digg.
Also, fuck Michael Arrington, too.
Wow – I can feel the hate 100 meters away!
The #1 reason I hate Digg nowadays is that it’s very often painfully slow for me.
you forgot the worst part: a huge chunk of users are simply the same person under different aliases. If L33tPwnr01 submits an article that bashes on Hillary Clinton, he’ll digg it, logon to L33tPwnr02, digg it, logon to 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10 until his stupid submission has enough votes to count as a “legitimate” article.
digg is stupid and all its members are simple
dick ahem digg sucks donkey balls!!! they delete your account for no reason and actually have the balls to tell you they wont reactivate your account.
DIGG Is nothing without is users but they can cancel your account, you lose all your bookmarks forever,
digg can suck my di@&!!!
Hi
I am working on a site which try to solve many of the problems with digg.com.
You can find it on http://crowdnews.eu.
The main problem with digg is the voting system.
When only top voted stories get on the front page it has
to be a subject that many can relate to,
which result in stories with a low information content.
http://crowdnews.eu solves this by using sharing instead of voting.
Every have a personal news page on which they can subscribe to other users and when those users share stories they will appear on the personal news page.
Crowdnews
For what is supposed to be a ‘tech’ site, Digg offers an awful lot of other categories for submission. I’m not a techie, and I’ve submitted under Politics, Lifestyle, World News….
Wow old topic.. but I googled digg sucks too and got here. Maybe this page should be dugg.. lol. Agree w/ the elitist (nerds). The whole comment rating thing is just nerd warfare, a way to smack someone and attempt to downgrade their opinion without showing their face. Typical passive aggressive nerd-ness. Digg is why I hate nerds.
I just wanted to say that I frequent the NASA Astronomy Pic of The Day website and at the bottom it shows how many “diggs” that pic has. Well, I found out that any response you make on digg ends up being flamed by elitists and people who think they are intelligent but can only spurt out stuff like “it’s NASA so that means you’re wrong”. In other words, you are not allowed to have an opinion about anything and can’t get into an intelligent conversation with ANYONE. Digg turned out to be the biggest waste of time I have ever seen created and I will never Digg anything ever again! It’s a shame NASA even allows their site to be dugg…
digg seems to my untrained, unimportant, but unbiased eye to be yet
another useless internet appendage (ala our apendix). I have been
“dancing” with the component parts of the Internet Tooth Whitening Scam
for the last four months. Today (10/27/09) the Digg website came up in one of the plethora of State and Federal actions being taken against just one of the more than 30 “tooth fairies” slithering in and out of the WWW
scene. I go to digg, find out that they need to know when,where,how,andwhy I was born in order for me to access the “163″
postings on digg. I play the game then find out that digg “IS UNABLE TO
LOCATE ANY SUCH INFORMATION”.Pondering this pandering for no more
than five seconds I concluded there must be a “digg sucks” site
so here I am. Best wishes to you and yours this holiday (halloween)