In a fairly old post dugg up, it was found that Kevin Rose admits to using human moderators to edit Digg (Thanks to Muhammad over at themulife.com for the tip on this one). I suppose the surprise is in the admission of something that isn’t publicly written down, albeit that its from almost two years ago. We’ve known Digg’s moderators exist — and moderation isn’t the problem in and of itself.

But there are two issues with Digg’s moderation that I take exception to.

i) they are clearly ineffective — as evidenced by the three leaks over the past few weeks; the fake story about the 650k PS3’s that needed to be recalled (attributed to Reuters, clearly false); the spammer’s post hitting the frontpage, getting free, free, traffic; and most shocking, the results of a phisher’s exploits posted to the frontpage of Digg. The problem here is that Digg is so big and so popular that time spent on the frontpage is like throwing up whatever it is in giant headlights for thousands and thousands of people to see.

Digg’s ninja moderators work in the background, but its clearly not their chief occupation — in many cases, people have to email digg to let them know about an abuse AFTER it hits the front page … and in some cases, like the phisher’s exploits, this is clearly unacceptable.

ii) they are completely opaque – their roles are often hidden under the role of “spam killing ninjas”. That is, although they probably perform other functions, their chief is to find stuff that is inappropriate, and then kill it. Obliterate accounts, delete posts — so that they are never found again, as opposed to the fairly benign “bury” button. The problem with this, as with the fact you can’t tell anything about buried items (who did it, how many “buries” did it take) is that the pricess is completely opaque. Moderators do what they do without a trail, and without any evidence. Whether or not its a function of how big and popular its become (and how much mail they receive) is sort of immaterial — trying to email Digg to restore your account once its been obliterated is difficult if not impossible. What is also difficult is getting much of a response on anything unless you’ve got real juice with any of the Digger’s back there, or are an elite Digger.

Digg’s “moderation system” is really comprised of both Diggers and moderators; it relies on Diggers to bury items that are potentially offensive; the problem is that people “digg” things without reading them, so stuff can reach the frontpage that is clearly inappropriate. On the moderator side of things, either because they are understaffed, overworked, or just don’t have a strong enough mandate, most of the time, they are acting AFTER the fact.

Again, even an a single hour on the frontpage of Digg can result in a post being exposed to thousands and thousands of pageviews — which for some kinds of news is again, clearly inappropriate.

So does Digg have moderators? Sure they do. Unfortunately, the system of moderation that both Diggers and moderators take part in is clearly broken. Digg needs a better system of checks and balances in this respect that protects both its own reputation (from fake posts, spammers) and others (those who risk their privacy being violated).

tip: Stephen’s blog on Digg’s Moderation Ninjas