So there’s a lively debate going on over at Digg today involving, once more, the supposed inequity in certain stories getting promoted to the Front Page.

Well, I’ve written about this sort of controversy before, but there’s a new spin on things this time — which, to be honest, I’ve noticed, thanks to some work by Chrisekblog, a few days ago.

Basically it goes like this:

If you look at the stories that are in the FrontPage, a disproportionate number of them are actually submitted by the same small number of people — who happen to occupy the first 10-20 position s as “Top Diggers”. I’ve already written about this as a comment, and I think its worth expanding on.

The big deal here is that FrontPage traffic is A LOT OF TRAFFIC. Chrisek mentioned that the times when he’s hit the front page, he sees a spike of 30 000 uniques that day.

That’s huge.

Traffic is the lifeblood of e-commerce. Granted — its up to the site to determine what to do with that traffic once they’ve gotten it (i.e. conversion), but traffic is not only expensive, its what _drives_ many business models to profitability. You cannot make a profit when no one sees your site. People essentially “purchase” traffic with ads. How much money do you think it’ll cost to get 30 000 visitors in one day? Its the equivalent of a “clickthrough”, since people are landing on your site. But if the cost per click is, say 0.05 (a ludicrously low value), that’s $1500 worth of free traffic. For higher priced “keywords” it might go even higher … 0.50 per click is about $15 000.

Have I got your attention now?

Now, imagine a small group of diggers controlling that traffic. Its essentially what is happening right now. How does it happen?

Its based on the critical assumption: certain diggers’ submissions and votes are worth more than others. I haven’t done the legwork (yet), but when you see others work on the subject — and how certain stories end up on the front page with a miniscule number of Diggs, its the conclusion you cannot help but reaching.

Since it is easy to check what your Friends are submitting, IF the top 10-20 or 30 diggers have each other as friends (nothing malicious there), BUT they automatically “digg” each others stories, since they NEVER have to see the upcoming stories for this, then you can see how

1. a small group of diggers promote stories
2. their friends in turn promote those stories … because they’re friends
3. because their votes are worth more — those stories float to the top
4. the exposure to the rest of the community results in an explosion of Diggs and Traffic.

Now, certain people might say “well, voting in blocks is a vital part of the democratic process — no one votes in isolation”. Others might say “stop being such a damn crybaby! who cares if certain people vote together!” And to that I’d say — you’re absolutely right. What’s not right, however, is how certain diggers (one’s who already have boat loads of ‘reputation’ and ‘karma’) have votes that worth more than yours. Is that how a democratic system works? Is _THAT_ right?

How can Digg solve this problem?
The best way would be to elminate the weighted “digging” by different diggers. That way, all votes would be equal. Alternatively, its echoed by a few people already — just eliminate the friends list. OR — eliminate how easy it is to see what your friends are digging. It eliminates the “circle-digg” effect of powerful friends digging what their friends are digging.

Yes, it still leaves the avenue open that people are still able to organize themselves OUTSIDE of Digg to promote stories — but at least this way, all votes are equal, all “block-voting” is equal (because all votes are of equal strength), and it isn’t as easy to promote certain groups of stories to the front page.

Yes, its in Digg’s best interests to solve this problem (and others) — particularly if VCs take a harder look at this model. One would hate to think that this Emperor has no clothes.