[Recap: "Aliwood" a Cadet at the US Air Force Academy was asked by a class assignment to post articles to Digg as well as participate by writing comments. She asked for some help by contacting a prominent Digger. Things have swirled out of control thereafter as have posts were digged not based on their own merit, but the story around her]
For reasons that are unclear “Aliwood’s” profile has been yanked from Digg.
So have all of her submissions as well.
As mentioned in the comments section of a current post by Mindops:
If Digg truly is a democracy for the diggers, why have all AliWoods submissions been completely removed; not just buried but completely vanished, not even leaving a trace in the dugg history. There was no cheating involved; she asked for votes and people dugg it (a lot of people dugg it). The digg community supported it. So who is the Sith Lord behind the curtain that believes the communitys choice must be edited. You have given the power to the diggers now step down as the Digg overlords. The community does not want to live in fear of a shadow dictator who causes submissions to completely vanish at the flick of a wrist.
Currently, its impossible to tell if her profile has been withdrawn (and all of her posts) based on a decision on her behalf OR something made on behalf of the staff behind the scenes. The state of Digg v3. is such that it is impossible for a user’s profile to be deleted and all posts withdrawn on their own (trust me, I’ve tried to take back my own diggs).
If Digg’s raison d’etre is the total democratization of the news, in my humble opinion it should live by its own rules; if they’ve opted to change the game, then its surprising that KRo et al. haven’t had anything to say so far.
Is it a reflection of how “underneath-the-radar” they think it is? Well, I hope not.
Before her posts were yanked, there were over 100 comments and counting on her first post debating the whole issue. That first post as well had over 1300 diggs as I recall.
Without some level of transparency, Mindops is right on the money – how can Diggers trust that their own posts won’t be edited, deleted, or changed in some fashion without their permission? On the other hand, if Alison Wood wanted her own profile and submissions yanked, I think that Digg should mention this as well, to ensure that the above, in fact, isn’t happening.
More to come as the news develops ;)
August 17th, 2006 at 11:51 pm | Permalink
[...] read more | digg story [...]
August 18th, 2006 at 3:45 pm | Permalink
I don’t believe digg is democratic in the first place. If a top user diggs your submission they get to the front page faster. If diggs are weighted then Digg is an aristocracy by definition.
August 18th, 2006 at 4:13 pm | Permalink
Yeah, I’ve heard about that as well.
Whether that’s a function of their popularity in and of itself, or the fact they have so many “friends” driving up their posts irrespective of their worth is debatable … but worth trying to investigate.
Thanks for stopping by!
t
August 24th, 2006 at 2:29 pm | Permalink
http://digg.com/tech_news/Digg_Should_Disclose_if_Moderating_Submissions
and another one bites the dust.
August 25th, 2006 at 1:47 am | Permalink
[...] A Brief History of Dig Controversies August 25th, 2006 at 1:45 am by Tony After blogging about the “Aliwood” incident, which was received with deafening silence, I looked into whether or not this was the first time anyone had been interested in controversy over at Digg.com. [...]
August 25th, 2006 at 2:00 am | Permalink
[...] A Brief History of Digg Controversy August 25th, 2006 at 1:58 am by Tony After blogging about the “Aliwood” incident, which was received with deafening silence, I looked into whether or not this was the first time anyone had been interested in controversy over at Digg.com. [...]
August 31st, 2006 at 4:22 pm | Permalink
[...] Another post about controversy and Digg: After blogging about the “Aliwood” incident, which was received with deafening silence, I looked into whether or not this was the first time anyone had been interested in controversy over at Digg.com. [...]
September 12th, 2006 at 11:16 am | Permalink
[...] Jay Adelson has started posting comments telling people, likewise, to lay off trying to target elite diggers — it wasn’t their fault. Digg will take care of the abuse. And … well, that’s about it. [...]
November 21st, 2006 at 9:56 am | Permalink
[...] Consider “Aliwood”, where a few months ago, the Diggnation got ‘tricked’ into voting up a page for reasons other than its intrinsic newsworthiness. A college student basically mentioned that she was getting graded on her ability to post articles and get them “dugg”; as a result, the first few articles she submitted, although stale, got hundreds, and in one case, over 1000 diggs not because they were fresh and interesting — but because of the story around her. What may or may not have helped is that she was also not unattractive. In a demographic composed almost entirely of males, this may have also pumped up the number of diggs. [...]