Digg’s home page is controlled by the votes of its members. This is very Web 2.0, and it works to keep interesting stories visible most of the time. Garbage that achieved popularity through manipulation usually gets buried quickly. Now, Digg’s decision to remove stories about a DVD hack have caused a large number of users to revolt – a few minutes ago, all Digg.com home page stories were related to the DVD hack.
This is a problem many communities may face – moderation decisions aren’t always popular. Fortunately, most of us don’t have to face major revolts. I do think Digg has dropped the ball by not taking action. When the home page is jammed with junk stories, the quality of the site is greatly reduced. My advice to Digg admins would be to leave one (or several at most) of the DVD protests in place to give members a place to discuss the policies, but to immediately junk the rest to make room for legitimate, higher quality stories.
Community administrators win most of these battles because they have more firepower. One click of the “delete” key can undo the work of thousands of spammers. Removing the powers of users who participate in spam attacks forces the user to re-register each time, a tiresome process rendered even more frustrating if every new ID is killed on sight.
Free speech is fine, but it’s time for the Digg admins to step up and restore the site to its normal and productive status.
