I think Digg.com needs to adopt SomethingAwful.com’s title header.
“The Internet makes you stupid”
Digg.com, for the uninitiated is a Web 2.0 news source, people submit links with short write ups from around the world and then according to how interesting the news is, people can “Digg” a story up or down. The cream rises to the top and the front page is constantly awash with interesting sites.
Digg is the anti-Slashdot. Its stories are constantly updating and generally ‘Duping’ is less of a problem because duped reports don’t often get ‘dugg’.
Unfortunately, whereas Slashdot had terrible reporting and fantastic commentary, Digg has fantastic news and terrible commentary. It’s like the Idiot Parade on that site a lot of the time.
Perhaps it’s because Slashdot’s modding system is far more heavily restricted or because it grew slowly and steadily as a site, attracting techies who knew that if they wanted their comment to be read, they had to post something especially intelligent, funny or interesting. Whatever the reason, Slashdot’s commentary, in spite of the undying memes (“I for one welcome our new
Digg on the other hand is like listening to an army of 6 year olds. Sure there’s a lot of voices, but even if there’s an especially erudite six year old, imparting some profound wisdom, you’re not likely to hear him amongst all the drivel.
I took the time to write a post on a pet area of Law - Conflict of Laws to comment on a Digg story, I made sure it was properly formatted, grammatically correct and proof read. It went up, got a whole bunch of Diggs (comments can be dug or buried by anyone) garnered some praise, then about 5 posts down the comments degenerated into more idiocy and name calling between posters.
I officially have fallen out of love with Digg. Back to Slashdot for my homepage.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at October 20, 2006 02:08 PM