Digg.com: Welcome to the Republic
Recently my digg account, bluephoenix has been disabled by the digg admin. Being that I'm not a spammer or a digg gamer and the fact that I've been a user since August of 2005... I was wondering what could possibly have caused this to happen.
Now, the safe explanation that I imagine I'll receive from the digg staff (which I've yet to receive) will be something along the lines of "You've violated the website's terms of use". My opinion is that digg banned me for submitting a link to a direct competitor....a first offense for my account and far from a malicious action on my part. This all started when I noticed a post on Techcrunch about Wikio.com.
Arrington claims "Europes Digg Killer Raises 4 million" in this article and naturally I was interested in anything claiming to be a digg killer. I use digg and other rss enabled tech sites to keep me on top of the tech world for my job, being that I'm in the website/database/multimedia field and the site has always provided me with relevant links and articles to good content that I can use daily. So upon reading techcrunch's iclaim, I decided to give wikio.com a look.
First impressions of the site were so-so, the UI wasn't laid out as nice as the digg interface...although I did immediately notice the load times for the content and for the interactive features was much better then the javascript bogged down digg homepage. Regardless, what caught my attention was the technology section of wikio. The tech homepage upon first glance immediately had 4 or 5 stories that I hadn't seen that day...which is amazing considering the amount of RSS feeds I currently monitor in my reader. Typically when I visit the digg homepage, it is full of stories that I've already read about via slashdot, metafilter, boing boing, etc....but wikio.com was different. The content was recent, relevant and free from biased flame wars supporting one company over another. (it is well known that digg leans toward apple, from Kevin Roses's secret contacts there to the fact that there is no "windows" category under technology, only linux and apple)
The subject matter was the next thing that caught my eye. Gone were the numerous stories praising Steve Jobs and arguing why Windows users absolutely must switch to Ubuntu....instead I saw relevant tech stories with almost no commentary from 15 year old world of warcraft junkies.....it was refreshing to say the least. Granted, wikio is in beta and clearly does not have the user base that digg has, but here's hoping that they learn from the mistakes of those that came before them.
So I bookmarked wikio's homepage and submitted the story to digg with the title "Attention all digg users who are tired of what digg has become"
The story went nowhere with only about 2 or 3 diggs and a few comments....most written by myself explaining that while I am promoting another site ...I still will use digg for what it is. This is typical fare these days on the site, most stories won't go to the homepage anymore unless you have amassed a hoard of friends on the site that will blindly digg your content. Whether this is unavoidable due to the immense number of stories submitted each day or not, I simply wanted to show other frustrated digg users that there is another valid tech option.
In the past I had tried netscape.com, reddit.com and a few others....but the tech sections left much to be desired. I could've gone back to slashdot for the community, but the interface for comments is just too messy....that's why wikio appealed to me.....simple layout, great content....no drama.
1 hour after submitting the story linking to wikio.com...digg had banned my account...no explanation, no warning.....I tell this story because I think it speaks volumes about what is happening to the digg community and the site itself. It is my belief that the site it getting too big for it's own good.....while it is understandable to protect your credibility by blocking users that use the site to further their own needs, it is unacceptable to alienate your core user base that has been there since the beginning.
Digg claims to be a "democratic" website, where the user controls the content. In my opinion, digg is more of a republican society now, as opposed to the democratic system they claim to be....and we all know how well that policy works with the general public.
Here's my e-mail to them:
I was wondering why you disabled my account.(http://www.digg.com/users/bluephoenix/)...I can only attribute this to my recent posts regarding wikio.com. It is my understanding that in your terms of use you state it is wrong to:
"submit stories or comments linking to affiliate programs, multi-level marketing schemes, sites/blogs repurposing existing stories (source hops), or off-topic content;"
I'm at a loss as to why my recent submissions and comments would cause someone to disable the account....what harm do my actions cause to your website?
I would like you to fully explain your reasoning for disabling the account, as while my statements in the aforementioned stories clearly imply that I'm tired of the existing digg website, it does not imply that I wish to stop using it entirely. I've been a member of the site since august of 05 I believe and I've never broken any of your "democratic" terms of use. Whether or not you reinstate the account is irrelevent, I simply would like to know the reasons behind it.....thanks in advance.
UPDATE:
The digg staff has responded:
Your account was banned for using a re-direct to a banned website, cybernetnews.com. We will unban your account if you agree to not circumvent our banned URLs. We understand you may not have realized that it was banned, which is why we are willing to unban it. Just let us know the circumstances and we'll work with you.
To which I responded:
The redirect was a right click "save target as" from a link on wikio.com. I don't think anyone knows which site have been banned....have you released a list of "black listed" websites? I saw nothing in your terms of use. Your decision to unban my account is strictly up to you, I'm pretty disenchanted these days anyways with the site (not that you personally care) but I'd like to continue to interact with the community as opposed to just using the rss feed. I just wanted to know why my account had been banned after being a member for so long. You can look at my digging history yourself if you question my intentions on the site. Cheers.
It looks as if my digging days are done...
Now, the safe explanation that I imagine I'll receive from the digg staff (which I've yet to receive) will be something along the lines of "You've violated the website's terms of use". My opinion is that digg banned me for submitting a link to a direct competitor....a first offense for my account and far from a malicious action on my part. This all started when I noticed a post on Techcrunch about Wikio.com.
Arrington claims "Europes Digg Killer Raises 4 million" in this article and naturally I was interested in anything claiming to be a digg killer. I use digg and other rss enabled tech sites to keep me on top of the tech world for my job, being that I'm in the website/database/multimedia field and the site has always provided me with relevant links and articles to good content that I can use daily. So upon reading techcrunch's iclaim, I decided to give wikio.com a look.
First impressions of the site were so-so, the UI wasn't laid out as nice as the digg interface...although I did immediately notice the load times for the content and for the interactive features was much better then the javascript bogged down digg homepage. Regardless, what caught my attention was the technology section of wikio. The tech homepage upon first glance immediately had 4 or 5 stories that I hadn't seen that day...which is amazing considering the amount of RSS feeds I currently monitor in my reader. Typically when I visit the digg homepage, it is full of stories that I've already read about via slashdot, metafilter, boing boing, etc....but wikio.com was different. The content was recent, relevant and free from biased flame wars supporting one company over another. (it is well known that digg leans toward apple, from Kevin Roses's secret contacts there to the fact that there is no "windows" category under technology, only linux and apple)
The subject matter was the next thing that caught my eye. Gone were the numerous stories praising Steve Jobs and arguing why Windows users absolutely must switch to Ubuntu....instead I saw relevant tech stories with almost no commentary from 15 year old world of warcraft junkies.....it was refreshing to say the least. Granted, wikio is in beta and clearly does not have the user base that digg has, but here's hoping that they learn from the mistakes of those that came before them.
So I bookmarked wikio's homepage and submitted the story to digg with the title "Attention all digg users who are tired of what digg has become"
The story went nowhere with only about 2 or 3 diggs and a few comments....most written by myself explaining that while I am promoting another site ...I still will use digg for what it is. This is typical fare these days on the site, most stories won't go to the homepage anymore unless you have amassed a hoard of friends on the site that will blindly digg your content. Whether this is unavoidable due to the immense number of stories submitted each day or not, I simply wanted to show other frustrated digg users that there is another valid tech option.
In the past I had tried netscape.com, reddit.com and a few others....but the tech sections left much to be desired. I could've gone back to slashdot for the community, but the interface for comments is just too messy....that's why wikio appealed to me.....simple layout, great content....no drama.
1 hour after submitting the story linking to wikio.com...digg had banned my account...no explanation, no warning.....I tell this story because I think it speaks volumes about what is happening to the digg community and the site itself. It is my belief that the site it getting too big for it's own good.....while it is understandable to protect your credibility by blocking users that use the site to further their own needs, it is unacceptable to alienate your core user base that has been there since the beginning.
Digg claims to be a "democratic" website, where the user controls the content. In my opinion, digg is more of a republican society now, as opposed to the democratic system they claim to be....and we all know how well that policy works with the general public.
Here's my e-mail to them:
I was wondering why you disabled my account.(http://www.digg.com/users/bluephoenix/)...I can only attribute this to my recent posts regarding wikio.com. It is my understanding that in your terms of use you state it is wrong to:
"submit stories or comments linking to affiliate programs, multi-level marketing schemes, sites/blogs repurposing existing stories (source hops), or off-topic content;"
I'm at a loss as to why my recent submissions and comments would cause someone to disable the account....what harm do my actions cause to your website?
I would like you to fully explain your reasoning for disabling the account, as while my statements in the aforementioned stories clearly imply that I'm tired of the existing digg website, it does not imply that I wish to stop using it entirely. I've been a member of the site since august of 05 I believe and I've never broken any of your "democratic" terms of use. Whether or not you reinstate the account is irrelevent, I simply would like to know the reasons behind it.....thanks in advance.
UPDATE:
The digg staff has responded:
Your account was banned for using a re-direct to a banned website, cybernetnews.com. We will unban your account if you agree to not circumvent our banned URLs. We understand you may not have realized that it was banned, which is why we are willing to unban it. Just let us know the circumstances and we'll work with you.
To which I responded:
The redirect was a right click "save target as" from a link on wikio.com. I don't think anyone knows which site have been banned....have you released a list of "black listed" websites? I saw nothing in your terms of use. Your decision to unban my account is strictly up to you, I'm pretty disenchanted these days anyways with the site (not that you personally care) but I'd like to continue to interact with the community as opposed to just using the rss feed. I just wanted to know why my account had been banned after being a member for so long. You can look at my digging history yourself if you question my intentions on the site. Cheers.
It looks as if my digging days are done...
posted by Dennis Gotto @ 2:37 PM
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