Original story here: http://digg.com/software/25_of_the_best_extensions_for_Firefox_Have_It_Your_Way
For reasons unbeknownst to myself and the Digg community, the above story has an EXTRAORDINARY amount of dugg down comments. Almost every one of the 100+ comments on this story have been dugg down and have an average score of -10. Is there a rogue group trying to silence diggers who like Firefox extensions or has the Digg v3 software taken a dump? Take a look for yourself and see what I mean.
Update: We’re getting some heavy traffic now that the page is on the front page, so I apologize in advance if the site isn’t loading. We welcome anyone who wants to comment, and due to the limitations of our blog, we won’t be able to mod you down ^_^ Although the comments on digg regarding our post are now experiencing the same effect, this is NOT the story to which this post originally referred to, in case you didn’t realize. It refers to the Firefox extensions post that was on yesterday. I may point out that the majority of comments in THIS post on digg are modded down to at least -30, up from the -10 on the original Firefox story and the total comment count is nearly 400. My own initial comment is at -152. My updated theory on the situation is that a group of zealous Slashdot commenters have infiltrated Digg in order to publicize the possibility that Digg’s comments are flawed because they don’t employ Slashdot’s “karma” system. If this is the case, then they’re definitely right. Is this merely a proof of concept or the beginning of a full-out war with Slashdot? And what of the humiliating irony of our story getting hit by the same effect? Discuss!
Update: It has been suggested that there is actually a bug that allows you to digg up or down more than once by clicking the button rapidly, but I believe this is only an issue with the AJAX front-end because when you refresh the page afterwards, it will have only given one.
Perhaps our good friend Kevin Rose (whom I actually met once at a taping of The Screen Savers, but only briefly) could provide some insight into the situation?
Update: @Web Guy’s comment below
I was mostly just kidding about the idea of there being a war with Slashdot, although I suppose it’s a minor possilibity. I’m glad that you’ve made an intelligent comment about the dysfunctional comment system that Digg uses. The irony of it is that even though your comment is highly intelligent and accurate, if this were posted in Digg’s comments, it stands a good chance of being buried because you’ve taken a polar position against people who like Digg’s comment system.
I have been a long-time fan of Slashdot, but I think compared to Digg, they take way too long in getting the important stories out there and can’t provide the diversity of stories that Digg can because Digg takes into account everyone’s opinion. It is a system of many niches rather than a few big ideas. There is a book about this called The Long Tail by Chris Anderson that’s on the NYT Best Seller’s list right now that talks about this very concept and how it applies to businesses (primarily in digital distribution). I highly recommend checking it out even though I’ve only read parts of it. But even now, I believe that Slashdot’s greatest strenght lies in its comment system. Part of this is the fact that they’ve had this cult following being built up for over a decade now, and they have many extremely smart people spending their time commenting on the stories. This is not to say that Diggers are stupid (although it’s hard not to get that impression after seeing a bunch of jackasses exploiting the comment system) it’s just that they’re given too much power to undermine others’ opinions by modding them down. Basically, with Digg, you can mod a person down just as much as you can mod them up, but on Slashdot, you can only be modded down by one person just a little bit, but modded up far more. The problem is that when Diggers find something they don’t agree with, they mod it down, even if the comment is intelligent and presented well. Slashdotters seem to have a sense of respect for people that comment intelligently, even if their opinion is contrasting to their own. This is only catalyzed by the karma system, and I think the two elements of the actual software algorithm and the long tradition of respect for intelligence work in tandem to make Slashdot’s comments more useful and diverse than Digg’s. I don’t see any reason why Digg could not become this way. The first and easiest step is implementing a new algorithm, but the respect issue is something that may take a long time to develop in our newer community.
~Swabby
I didn’t get modded down =)
Maybe because there have been so many of these stories in the past people are tired of a list of firefox extensions? I know I couldn’t care less about those kind of lists…
my $0.02
No, I have see it to, alot of times on comments that don’t evoke any kind of bad responce, for example, some one wrote ” interesting story thanks for sharing” it had -15 diggs.
nikosapi – correct. every day there is a new “25 best extensions for firefox” article. i like firefox extensions, but it’s an easy digg for someone trying to digg something, anything
I don’t think this is a bug; this was bound to happen. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing stopping a well-coordinated group of people from taking complete control over the story comments. Get 20 or more people who share ideals together in an IRC channel and they can mod up and down as desired.
Granted, digg comments leave much to be desired in the first place. That’s why I’m posting this comment here.
i waited 4 minutes for this!?
Interesting….
aaa the complexities of an online democracy
Greedo — That’s because comments like that are worthless and should get modded down. Stupid, pointless comments should get modded down just like flames and bigotted comments, etc. But this particular case really looks like a DDOS or hackjob, or something…
I’ve hated unlimited modded comments from day one. I think it ruined digg for me. It encourages people to suck up to a story’s audience to get more “points”… and it also encourages the haters to go on rampage. I’ve seen many perfectly valid points get the shaft. Say something anti Mac or anti Microsoft in the “wrong” comment section and you get attacked and modded down. You rarely get an intelligent response or the sense that your argument convinced anyone to rethink their position.
I might scan the headlines on Digg these days… but I rarely bother with reading or leaving comments anymore. I think the one I left on Digg regarding this story will be the last one… I’m signing out and not bothering to sign back in again.
Hey Jason!
Funny that your posting got on Digg! Didn’t know you were a user.
Brad
@Greedo: i can understand a simple “interesting story” comment getting modded down because those kinds of comments are pointless. they do nothing to encourage any sort of meaningful conversation or debate on a submitted story.
maybe it’s just the roll over from having a … um … singed 6.8 bit integer … yeah. you can tenths of a bit right?
I think it is official Digg v3 has a little bug. most of the front page items are getting thier comments modded down.
I have modded down some comments myself. I love the extension, but I hate the fact that when I press ALT+D, instead of going to the address bar, the focus goes to this extension’s menu.
I want my ALT+D back!
“Maybe because there have been so many of these stories in the past people are tired of a list of firefox extensions?”
Then bury the story NOT the comments
I may know where the bug is. Someone may have written a script exploiting this bug I think I found:
-You can mod down a comment
-Block user
-Restore user
-Mod comment down again!
-Profit! (or maybe not, but at least foul-up digg)
Good find koick. Did you report it? http://digg.com/about
Just did, yeah.
I may know where the bug is. Someone may have written a script exploiting this bug I think I found:
-You can mod down a comment
-Block user
-Restore user
-Mod comment down again!
-?????
-Profit! (or maybe not, but at least foul-up digg)
Yeah yeah, forgot the question marks, but if the other steps work, there is no ‘mysterious second to last step’, just straight to profit! (o:
It most likely is a group of users (or one crazy loner) trying to take revenge on Digg because he either doesn’t like Firefox or some other pointless reason. It’ll blow over. I don’t think anyone is willing to spend hours a day just modding down comments out of spite. It’s pretty counter-productive.
Commenting on a digg story ? Who has that kind of time ? And why ? To make the Kevin clown more popular and richer ? It is just a supplement to my /. addiction to scan the headlines when I have nothing better to do. Nowadays, even watching tv is a better alternative than browsing the lame stories on digg. In my opinion, digg is going to be another one of those dotcom wonder-bubbles, which deflated real fast in the recent past.
Did a search on FireFox stories on Digg. Comments on all 10 of the first 10 articles found were buried. No other topics hit that I could see. NOT a bug. this is intentional
Funny comment to make on a blog, nomad
As usual, there was no organized conspiracy. I participated in modding down a lot of the comments early in the story’s posting. As I recall, a lot of the first few comments were pretty lame and had been modded to “not shown” rightfully. The list of 8-10 grayed out lines at the top of the page was kind of comedic so I continued it with other subsequent comments. I’m sure other users did the same and the aggregate phenomena you’re observing happened. It was a pseudo-funny meme that thankfully stuck only to that one story.
or is a dissendent group from the netscape camp eh ??
we all know about the jason vs kevin story correct ??
My balls itch.
Thanks you.
I subscribe to the rapid click theory. I went to Digg and was able to thumb up or thumb down several comments by several points simply rapidly clicking on the thumb up or down icon.
Usually I was able to manipulate the comments by up to 10 points.
BTW, I mainly tried to thumb up the comments. I only did a thumb down on once for testing. IMO, its a bug.
We got buried for no reason… so we think we are going to break digg. Check our blog if you are interested.
Filtered**
Reason — Dumb Person Found
I am guessing this has something to do with the API being cracked via the decompiled flash interface. Somebody interfaced the API with their botnet.
I am now thinking that it may be some kind of XSS bug. I noticed that all the modded down comments were locked out from modding, as if I had already modded them. Perhaps the XSS JS hack forces my browser to mod everything down without my interaction.
oops my bad… they were grayed out because they were collapsed. I am still thinking it is the API.
Swabby noticed that the rapid thumbs up and down don’t actually work. If you refresh the page it corrects itself.
I’m going to assume the conspiracy theory, given how almost every comment on your story was dugg way down.
Also, note how all the ones that aren’t dugg way down are dugg *way* up. Definitely smells fishy to me.
It’s not that there’s a Slashdot “war” or anything. It’s just that the commenting system is retarded. Restricting the number of comment moderations a person can do is a GOOD idea. Changing how the commenting system on digg works isn’t “giving” in or “being like” slashdot. Who the fuck CARES? Fix the commenting system so that retards who just don’t agree with a valid opinion that contributes to the conversation can’t bury a comment that might have been insightful to read. The karma system on Slashdot just works and the all out free for all that are dig comments (with one level of threading, how retarded is THAT?) just doesn’t. It makes digg feel immature and annoying, and it’s why I certainly don’t often comment on digg.
Erm… I’ve read the top 40 comments… and only a few exceptions are actually decent.
The ones rated at -30 are truly useless and deserve it.
First of all there is much, much, much more wrong with Digg.com than the comment system:
The Problems with Digg.com
And maybe people need to read up on the facts about Firefox:
http://www.FirefoxMyths.com
Wonderful and informative web site.I used information from that site its great.o
Lucky to find you, keep on the good workk guys! Best of luck.l
Nice site! Big thanx to webmaster!N
I have been looking for sites like this for a long time. Thank you!e
[...] extensions or has the Digg v3 software taken a dump? Take a look for yourself and see what I mean.read more | digg story addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = [...]
??? ????? ???? ????? ???????? ?????? ?? ??????????.
??????? ?????? ?? ??????? ????. ??????????? ??????, ????????? ????? ??????? ??? ????.
????????? ???????????? ???? ?????.
??????? ?????? ????? ?? ??????????????? ??????????.
??? ????? ???? ????? ???????? ?????? ?? ??????????.
??????? ?? ??????.. ????????? ??? ??????.. ????? ???? ??? ??????????.