Detailed How-To From Banned Digger

http://aszx.net/how-i-became-a-digg-power-user-with-a-75-popular-ratio.html

by mathewgj • 18 years ago

61 37 18 years ago

alexandros• 18 years ago

Extremely intresting article on how digg users have managed to bend the algorithm to their whims. I wonder if any social news site is really immune to this.

tome• 18 years ago

Any algorithm is going to end up being exploitable. It's an arms race, but like with evolution, it's the only way.

ojbyrne2• 18 years ago

The banning thing is dumb.

http://digg.com/how: "Digg is democratizing digital media." Riiiight...

kirubakaran• 18 years ago

Even the best democratic governments of the world imprison individuals who they consider to be a "public disturbance" etc. And the definition of "public disturbance" usually has a pretty wide scope.

ojbyrne2• 18 years ago

Even the worst democratic governments of the world have due process, the right to actually hear what the charges are, courts, etc.

snorkel• 18 years ago

All that effort just to front page a story on a news site overrun by idiots. What sad, sad, waste of time.

sachinag• 18 years ago

Look, they do it for the high. That's a lot safer than pretty much any other addiction - gambling, drinks, drugs, WOW, whatever. At least he recognizes it for what it is.

It's the same thing as we free speech zealots say about TV - if you don't like it, change the channel and let those who enjoy it have it. You don't like Digg? Fine. Then don't go there. (I'm sorry, but people getting all holier-than-thou about things as stupid as which social news site is better really gets on my nerves. Let's fight about something useful, like the Yankees signing Tex or something. :) )

villageidiot• 18 years ago

Different strokes for different folks. What's the point of anything, for that matter? ( - "Ask HN" question, perhaps)

tectonic2• 18 years ago

Well, maybe. But my site http://absurdlycool.com didn't go anywhere for a year until I got it on the Digg frontpage (got all my friends to Digg it back when that worked) and then it took off and has stayed at 5k unique per day ever since. The value of that Digg frontpage to me has been many thousands of dollars in revenue at this point, and that PR resulted in a subsequent write up on TechCrunch, LifeHacker, etc.

tectonic2• 18 years ago

Speaking of which, feel free to Digg my variant on the above site. However, these days it's really hard to get on the Digg frontpage.

http://tinyurl.com/7t2ydc

yef• 18 years ago

The front page of Digg is worth traffic, and therefore money. If you control access to the front page, that too is worth money.

jackowayed• 18 years ago

if only there were a place where posting a story instantly puts it on the front page at least briefly, and where people actually vote for submissions because they're good, not just so that the submitter will reciprocate. It would be an added bonus if the comments weren't filled with mindless drivel. But that's clearly a utopia that could never exist.

0xdefec8• 18 years ago

Sounds a lot like politics. Just with more hotpockets and wizard capes.

antiform• 18 years ago

This is a very insightful article, and I'm impressed with how much work the author put into getting something onto the front page of digg. If I were looking for somebody to do effective online PR, I'd be looking for somebody like this.

I think it's somewhat sad that digg is so huge now that it takes so much effort to get people to pay attention to an interesting link, and I'd be interesting in seeing if there were any way to counteract the user fragmentation that occurs as a social news site gets popular. Reddit-like categories seem to be one solution, but it seems more like a band-aid than a total solution.

mleonhard2• 18 years ago

I think it would be better to create a site that embraces the user fragmentation. I want to create a news aggregation site that provides a different set of articles for each user.

lincolnq• 18 years ago

I made one. :) http://newsbrane.com

Please send me feedback!

diN0bot• 18 years ago

snap. hit me back if you want to work on this; i've got some things started but i'm open to collaboration (diN0bot@bilumi.org).

eli_s2• 18 years ago

Except that there are no interesting links on digg any more. It is close to 100% blog spam. Sites like this have to stay small to be useful - it's sad but the same thing will happen to HN if it gets too many readers. Luckily these type of sites are easy to set up so if HN ever goes bad an alternative will appear :)

Personally I am completely baffled by people who think it's an achievement to increase their rank/karma etc.

Prrometheus3• 18 years ago

>"I hope this article can help those normal diggers understand just how it is the power users got that way, and why digg is not a democracy"

Actually, it sounds like Digg is exactly a democracy to me. You have as much chance making the front page of Digg (or a popular subreddit) as you do getting your preferred policies enacted by the government - essentially zero. Having your voice heard in a crowd of millions is hard. Those that succeed usually hack the system.

The position that there is no conflict between competing interests in a democracy because "everybody has a voice" is BS (not that I would expect such arguments from this crowd). You can ask my sister who was outvoted for 18 years by my brother and I, the Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, or the Republicans in DC about how great a job democracy does of balancing competing interests.

mixmax• 18 years ago

I think it was Churchill that said that democracy is a terrible way to run a country, but it's the least terrible of the alternatives.

Prrometheus3• 18 years ago

There are certainly counter-examples to Churchill's thesis. While Singapore is technically a democracy, it has been under one-party rule for 50 years. In the early years of independence, the ruling party used its power to persecute its primary political opponent, the communist movement which was sweeping southeast Asia at the time.

Now Singapore is a clean and prosperous state with a per capita GDP higher than the USA and three times higher than its neighboring countries. There are things to dislike about Singapore if you are accustomed to Western political liberties, but it is hard to say that it would be better off if it had followed the dictates of liberal western democracy, especially in the precarious early years.

Chile is the most prosperous state in South America, although it was led to that point by a dictator that did horrible things to his political opponents. Iraqis had a higher standard of living under Saddam than they do under the current regime, though not if you opposed the government.

rw• 18 years ago

What we have in the U.S. is not democracy (literally, "rule by the people"). We have, instead, a quasi-accountable tyranny of politicos and lobbyists. Do not call that democracy.

Prrometheus3• 18 years ago

I am curious exactly what you think democracy is, then. The combination of democracy with large bureaucracies is vulnerable to horse trading and power abuse, behind-the-scenes deals and favors, pork politics, and the like. Bureaucracy is needed to implement the policies desired by democracy, so there is really no way around it.

I think of some examples of well-run, transparent democracies in history, but they are all much geographically smaller, less populated, or poorer than the United States.

Spyckie• 18 years ago

Ideology makes good dreams but bad practice. In a sense, 'true democracy' is a lot like 'true communism' - both sound good on the outside but have issues when implemented. Like the Digg article, it seems that 'equality of vote' is one of the ideals that isn't enforced in real life (due to social engineering, money, politics, etc)

iamelgringo• 18 years ago

You have as much chance making the front page of Digg (or a popular subreddit) as you do getting your preferred policies enacted by the government - essentially zero.

The entire article was a description of how to go about consistently getting articles on the front page. It takes months of work and effort into ensuring that you are noticed as a "power user". It's not easy, but there's nothing stopping people from putting in the effort if they really wanted to.

As to preferred policies in the government... I have no idea. I'm assuming that if you put in years of work starting a special interest group and doing fund raising for politicians, you might be able to get a rider attached to a bill.

nazgulnarsil• 18 years ago

classic example of how democracy turns into an in-group oligarchy. there is no way to engineer a democracy so that certain people will not wield disproportionate power.

this is a problem, for government to be effective responsibility and power must be equal. since democracy always ultimately ties responsibility back to the masses there is no accountability.

notice how in this example, just as with political democracy, power is wielded through framing what people vote on and not controlling the votes directly. the in-group does not actively prevent any story from reaching the top. but engineer the system in such a way that it is phenomenally unlikely for out-groups to get their content noticed, regardless of merit.

d0mine• 18 years ago

26,000 diggs in two months should have meant, $13k right </quote>

It is about one digg per minute working full-time (8 hours a day) for two months straight!

  26 000 / ((2 months) / ((24 hours) / (8 hours))) = 0.889820511 minutes^(-1)

google calculator: http://is.gd/dnFp

gojomo• 18 years ago

Alternate title: "How to win at World of Diggcraft"

known• 18 years ago

Democracy != Meritocracy

ntoshev• 18 years ago

Are any of you guys practicing mutual upvoting with friends here, on Hacker News?

I suppose it happens naturally to some extent. These voting patterns and the amount to which they happen naturally should be statistically visible for pg if he is actively looking for them.

wesley• 18 years ago

If someone really wanted to, alot of this could be automated. Ofcourse, there probably already are such bots (unfortunately)

eli_s2• 18 years ago

wow what what a pathetic waste of time!

Ardit202• 18 years ago

I guess there is a lot to learn from this article which goes way beyond digg to the internet in general and maybe AI and also probably the genetic coding which we see happening and will see much more in the future.

What this article tells me is rather simple and important. Programms do what they are told to do. There is no human element to reason nor decidions being made, it is simply fucntions, orders which are very very predictable.

Knowledge is power of course and no one ought to have power which is why I believe that the author's cause seems noble, namely sharing your kowledge. But it really goes to the heart of the matter as far as the internet is concerned.

Everything is a program and programms follow orders therefore every programm can be manipulated whether directly or inderectly to achive the desired maybe mal intentioned results.

Hence will there ever be a proper democracy, a unity of people, a place where the market forces do not manipulate the good intentions of the users?

Will there ever be a place where the people in general can share with each other deserving articles, unifluenced by other motivations or bias, but the simple desire to share worthy kowledge, I presume with the aim of advancing civilisation itself and educating felow human beings?

The answer seems to lie not with the internet where robots (algorithms) follow orders but with the humans themselves who are imensly much more complex and driven by many varieties of purposes.

Detailed How-To From Banned Digger

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