Update: 1250h: So, here’s a reason why it REALLY won’t matter: Chris Finke over at efinke.com has written a scraping program that repopulates a top digger list.  You can find Chris’ own thoughts over here, and the lazarus-type rising of the top digger list over here.  Excellent work — but I wonder how long it’ll stay up? (what with Digg’s twitchy legal fingers)

So, as you may have heard, Kevin Rose has elected to take down the top diggers list.  The only surprise is what took so long.  And why he’s leaving an incomplete job.

Digg’s internal ranking system has been a source for a lot of interest and publicity over the past several months — and most of it negative. It started with the blowup last fall, where there was a lot of interest in the front page on Digg, as a few people noticed that it was being monopolized by Top diggers.  This changed as the algorithm changed.

A few more kerfuffles later, and we’ve now gotten to the point where

a) Digg has gotten really big
b) Marketers have recognized the huge traffic potential of Digg
c) Marketers are now approaching people who have a better chance of influencing frontpage stories
d) And are offering sums of cash to influence submissions

So, is removing the top digger list the right thing to do?  And what’s the problem with removing the top digger list? There’s no question that people who have more friends have more influence.  Top diggers have huge lists of friends — in the hundreds sometimes.  This stands to reason that they probably do have more influence than others, besides the variable weighting of their submissions and votes.   So, it makes sense they’re directly targetted by publicists, marketers and all kinds of individuals looking for a quick spike in traffic.

And it, in turn, makes sense that it creates a bit of negative press for Digg, because it creates the impression that there is a blackmarket in influence for traffic.

Makes sense to tank the list, doesn’t it?

What’s the problem?  Well there are two of them.

1) It removes one of the only incentives to Digg: You can have all sorts of opinions about how diggers “don’t have a life”, and how they ought to do it for free, much in the same strange hippie ethos that is confused with the open source movement.  Regardless OF those opinions, I DO know that attaining a high rank takes a lot of time and effort.  And when you’re NOT getting paid for your efforts (like those at Netscape *are*), you tend to try and look to other things for motivation.  One of them is public recognition.  While diggers have all kinds of motivation for doing what they do, without the most important means of recognizing diggers efforts at the very least (since they will never get paid), Kevin Rose is hamstringing the core constituency that Digg has been built upon.

2) It won’t eliminate the perception of top diggers manipulating Digg: Why? two reasons, and they have to do with the fact that these Diggers can still be solicited.  When people can be contacted, there will always be the charges of manipulation.  The first reason is that the top digger list doesn’t actually change that much month to month — so lists of Top Digger’s emails that circulate amongst bloggers will still be valid.  Probably for many weeks, if not months.  The second reason is because profiles on Digg still list Digger’s emails.  If Kevin Rose and the bunch at Digg were *really* interested in discouraging blame, he would also change the profiles so emails wouldn’t be listed at all.  In fact, he could maintain the top digger listing and JUST removing the contact information.  By making diggers impossible to contact, they’d be impossible to solicit, and therefore, take a great deal of sting out of digger manipulation.

The flipside to things is that even if you were to make the top diggers completely invisible, there’s still room for corruption and manipulation from the ‘other’ side — unscrupulous top diggers could approach companies selling their services to submit stories on their behalf for cash.

If Kevin Rose were TRULY interested in eliminating charges of manipulation, then he would create a level playing field for everyone.  Abolish the ranking system completely.  Eliminate friends.  Make every user anonymous.  And make every user equal to the next.

Do I see that happening?  Not really.  Digg is really interested in having a friends system in place and will probably never remove it.   Is removing the top digger list a step in the right direction?  Sort of.  But its a half measure at best.  Kevin says there will be more improvements to come.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see if things really do change.