So Stephen Searer calls John Chow on his claim that it requires only 10 “bury” votes to bury a Digg submission, giving an example of a story that required many more “buries” before it finally got deleted by Digg Moderators.
Well, my thoughts on this are that we’re working in a bit of a black box folks.
[Aside: you can flag a story with a number of negative flags, such as "this is lame", "spam", "wrong topic", "inaccurate", or "duplicate story" ... if enough people flag a given story submission with these negative flags, or votes, then it will be removed from normal distribution of news, and can only be viewed by searching for the story -- with the "buried" checkbox on]
First of all, Digg constantly tweaks its algorithms … whatever existed a few months ago to get John banned may not exist in the same way today.
Second of all, I do agree with Steve’s assertion that its probably not an absolute number. And it probably is just as complicated as getting a page promoted. That is, it probably has something to do with the velocity of “Buries”, the kind of “bury” flags (spam vs. lame), the time of day, and probably, in terms of sheer numbers — its probably requires a percentage of bury flags to get it done, rather than an absolute number.
For example, a post that has already accumulated 1000 diggs probably requires more “buries” to actually bury it than a story with 5 diggs.
The problem is that without someone from Digg actually broadcasting what their magical formula is, or without someone publishing better data, or their own experiments on this (Muhammad where are you?), its impossible to state with precise certainty at any time (since they may change it) what the clear formula to getting buried.
Why is this important? Who could possibly care how many “buries” it takes to bury a story?
Only for individuals with an agenda that like to use the “bury” button as a censor.
That’s right. People who hate Microsoft. People who hate Apple. People who hate blogs. People who hate people who write anything negative about Digg. People who write anything about Digg, period. People who love Michelle Malkin. People who hate Michelle Malkin. God, I could go on for days (and there’s a list floating around too).
At any rate, we can debate about the intricacies of actually getting buried.
What’s not for debate is that if you get enough stories from your url buried, you can actually get that url banned … regardless of its content.
And yes, I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating — Digg needs to have its population police its own content, because it doesn’t have the manpower (two guys at last count) to try and do it themselves. This leaves room for enormous abuse, as individuals can bury stories with abandon and get entire domains banned with little recourse to getting them reinstated, since the a large part of the process is automated.
Of course it hasn’t reached much attention, and won’t until a really large and publicly known domain gets banned.
So, yes, I’m still waiting for when NYtimes.com or TechCrunch.com gets banned … because only then will all the negative publicity, once again, force Digg to make public changes to its private algorithms.
6 Comments
This might sound stupid, but I am pretty sure Digg can tell when there is organized burying going on. The site has been running 2+ years and normal patterns of digging and burying have been established. We already know (from Jay and others) that they can tell when people are gaming the system with diggs, it is not very far-fetched to believe the same is true of burying.
That makes sense, and is probably true to a degree. But, the issue is that a great many more stories are buried than are actually promoted to the front page … i’m sure you’re familiar with duggmirror. Check out how many stories have a huge number of diggs, but are eventually buried.
Anecdotally, I can almost tell which stories get buried based on the topics and authors … and so can you.
So, clearly the bury brigade is alive and well, sadly
Yea I don’t think it takes just ten. Then again I never got on Digg. Can’t bury me if I’m not on. Haha
Steve — case in point this article.
It’s now buried.
Diggers love to hate blogs, blog which discuss Digg, or anything critical of Digg.
DJI fills all of that criteria.
Cheers
t
It’s nice to think that the algo for dealing with buries is as complex as those dealing with the diggs. While the fact the community is right to flag stuff they don’t like it would make digg a less interesting place if it was easy to game a story down like John imagines.
I’m of the belief that Digg’s so-called algorithm is not as sophisticated as many are lead to assume. I think it’s more or less driven by the top 5% Digg submitters. As long as you keep them happy and give their submissions weight, it’ll give off the illusion of an intelligent algorithm.
The bury/ban “algorithm” was more or less tacked on as the site became more popular and being tweaked as we speak. However, their “lifetime ban” policy which is akin to “three strikes and you get life” is probably good indication that they really don’t have a good grasp of handling it programmatically just yet and there is a lot of human intervention at play.
Just my 2 cents.
5 Trackbacks
[...] Now back to John Chow. Evidently his “10 buries to kill a story” is very inaccurate. What was not factored in was: what criteria was used to bury the content, who buried and how many Diggs the story had. It already seems Digg has an Algorithm for credibility ranking and saying a flat 10 buries will remove a post, without factoring in so many variants warrants suspicion. As Deep Jive Interests reports on the subject “First of all, Digg constantly tweaks its algorithms … whatever existed a few months ago to get John banned may not exist in the same way today.” Not only do Algorithms play a huge part but so does user ranking as well. It’s been known for quite some time higher ranked users have more influence on story promotion and outside activites. Depending on who buried it could determine the weight of their bury. Even choosing different criteria to bury can have a great or lesser effect. My guess is “Spam” and “Inaccurate” have a greater bury weight than “Duplicate Story”, “Ok This Is Lame” and “Wrong Topic.” Basically, this preset 10 buries rule couldn’t hold a candle to anything and with so many variants to factor in, the possibility of Digg ranking stories based on credibility, who submitted the story and who buried it could not warrant a preset amount of buries for that story. [...]
[...] Tony Hung’s take: ‘Getting Buried On Digg: Still a Black Box, Still Open For Abuse‘ [...]
[...] Tony Hung’s take: ‘Getting Buried On Digg: Still a Black Box, Still Open For Abuse‘ [...]
[...] Tony Hung has written an interesting post about articles getting buried on Digg, reflecting on the ‘black box’ that determines how easy it is for a group of people to bury articles or even entire sites: “Digg needs to have its population police its own content, because it doesn’t have the manpower (two guys at last count) to try and do it themselves. This leaves room for enormous abuse, as individuals can bury stories with abandon and get entire domains banned with little recourse to getting them reinstated, since the a large part of the process is automated. [...]
[...] Digg has come under increasing fire as they continue to tread deafly through the internet world. Kevin Rose inspires the entire organization to arrogance that carries through to corporate policies and down to the Digg Mob that buries stories it doesn’t like simply because they don’t like them. The problem with Digg is in the democratic system. Or rather the non-democratic system. Diggers on the surface have the ability to Digg an entry or bury an entry. This is great in an honor-system kind of way because every vote counts (how often have we heard that mantra?) and every voice matters. If the community doesn’t like something, a sufficient number of “Burys” will stifle the story. If the community finds a story worthwhile, in theory, the story will have legs. [...]