Jan
29
Slashdot Isn’t Digg - and that’s a good thing
January 29, 2008 |
Brad Stone of the New York Times’ Bits blog features an interesting commentary on Digg by Slashdot’s CmdrTaco, aka. Rob Malda, today.
In it, Malda basically questions how effective a site like Digg (and for that matter, reddit as well) can be run if there is only a small group of vocal users that have made it their mission to drive a site into a certain direction:
“I try not to paint Digg as my arch-nemesis. The Digg method and Digg community are a wider audience than Slashdot,” he said. “But with sites like Digg, it’s the wisdom of the crowds or the tyranny of the mob. You never know what you’re going to get.”
Malda also points to the many Ron Paul stories on Digg. While Paul clearly doesn’t even that much backing among the general population, you wouldn’t think so if you took the vocal majority on Digg to be representative of the whole community (by the way, I think the Ron Paul fever is worse on reddit than on Digg)
Slashdot, while largely based on user submitted material, is an edited site. While that might mean that the overall level of discourse is a bit higher and definitely more focused, it obviously also only represents the will of a small group (which, as MG Siegler points out, might easily miss interesting items). However, it doesn’t pretend to be anything else, either.
Digg, on the other hand, wants to be a democracy, even as the site is mainly driven by a small number of very dedicated users who feel a certain sense of ownership over the site. That means it is prone to get a lot of pushback whenever even a slight change is made that might put the top users at a disadvantage.
But the numbers speak for themselves, Digg has far more users than Slashdot ever had, so they are clearly doing something right. However, while Slashdot features an item about the changes in GNOME 2.22 right now, Digg is featuring a post about 11 Personalities Guaranteed to Ruin Your Superbowl Party. It seems clear what the crowds are more interested in.
I wouldn’t want my Digg to go the Slashdot way and I don’t want Slashdot to go the Digg way either.
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