7 ms·
Digg freezes manual story submissions as user anger mounts
- mdolon 16y agoI see it happening but I don't fully understand it. Digg v4 has been in beta for weeks now, if it is as bad as people are claiming it is now shouldn't that have come up during the beta period? And if it did come up and if the changes have been this protested even in beta, they're pretty dumb to try and force it over anyways. Anyways, one thing @kevinrose did Tweet correctly is that this isn't the first revolt on Digg. Chances are it'll blow over like the other ones but who knows, maybe history won't repeat itself.
- seanalltogether 16y agoThe thing is, the previous revisions didn't represent a disruption to the community itself, just certain members within the community. This latest change effectively sends the message "the community isn't important, what's important is the readership". I think what this revision failed to take in to account is the 80/20 rule. If digg loses the 20% that drove the community, the remaining 80% might not like what's left behind.
- flipp 16y agoI think its getting pretty close to time for a revert back to Digg v3. Look at google trends for Reddit vs. Digg. When something's a failure, its a failure.
- mcgraw 16y agoRelease. Iterate. Repeat. But at a pretty hefty cost. Definitely wasn't ready for prime-time, but it's here and they're going to be pretty busy over the next month or so re-integrating v3 philosophy and stabilizing the new back end.
- swolchok 16y ago"Iterate" means "repeat".
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mcgraw 16y agoThat's great, but to be clear: Release - Ship it, get it out there for public consumption Iterate (on your release) - Refine what you just shipped however you see fit (bugs, missing features) Repeat - Ship what you've refined and begin iterating on what you've released
- flipp 16y agoThis wasn't an iteration. This was changing pretty much the foundation of the site in a massive redesign they've been working on for months.
- ojbyrne 16y ago...years...
- mcgraw 16y agoThat was a magnified iteration on many levels which people are not used to seeing -- design, philosophy, code. They didn't simply release a new look, they released what they believe is fixing what they felt was broken in prior versions, ie., left/Right wing bury machines, power users. Ultimately, they released a product that wasn't ready for public consumption despite being in Beta for several weeks. Had their algorithms worked effectively, preferences to change the default behavior existed, and a stable back-end in place we might be singing a different tune.
- ojbyrne 16y agoI very much doubt they can do that. What they seem to be doing is adding the features of v3 back into the new architecture of v4. Not fun.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoI continue to find this funny as digg users file into other sites, reddit included, and talk about how great it is compared to digg, how happy they are that they "switched". Number one, digg's story quality tanked during version 2 and the comments went along with it. Version 3 brought an even more broken commenting system, and more of the same run of the mill storieds. Version 3 also brought in some ridiculous lag, that for whatever reason, managed to post articles from Engadget, reddit, etc days later. Digg was the place to get tech news. With version 3, it was the place to get reddit's news from 3 days ago. Now with Version 4 there are auto submitted "publisher" stories. This is what's causing people to jump ship? Frankly, if that's the reason they're leaving digg, I hope they stay away from the social news sites I'm on.
- jcromartie 16y agoI don't understand why users of services like Digg get so indignant about downtime. It's a free diversion.
- ojbyrne 16y agoI understand your point, but people have itchy back buttons. They'll bitch for a bit, and then they'll leave. The people who should be getting indignant are the people running the company - it is an advertisement-supported website after all. Downtime = lost revenue.
- sdh 16y agoBroken axle? The whole cart has caught fire, the horses have fallen over dead, and the settlers have gone elsewhere. Digg v4 is a ghost town.
- ronnoch 16y agoReddit's logo today has the alien carrying a shovel... almost as if they're going to "bury" Digg.
- zacharypinter 16y agoThe tooltip for the logo (I think it's one of the gold addons) says "pardon our construction: we're digging around for new logos this week"
- AgentConundrum 16y ago(I think it's one of the gold addons) It was one of the gold addons, but reddit is using the gold subscriptions as sort of like buying early access to beta features, rather than as a set of purchased features. When new features are built, gold members get first access to them, then when they're solid / when a new batch of new features comes in, the old gold stuff goes public and gold members get access to the latest features first, ad infinitum. The logo title text was rolled out to public users last week, when reddit introduced a feature to gold members allowing them to have new comments added since their last visit to the page flagged as such.
- seanalltogether 16y agoIt's descended into mob mentality. Everyone just wants to watch it burn. I'm sure they'll have a sizeable chunk of readers left by the end of the week, but as for contributors and discussions, it might as well be a ghost town.
- chopsueyar 16y ago"You have died of dysentery".
- 16y ago
- pavs 16y agoWow. Just checked out the new site. (I actually like the new design) ~80 of the links right now are link back to reddit.com. Crazy. No wonder reddit was slow as hell the whole day today.
- skeletonjelly 16y agoI hear there's holidays or returning from holidays in the US for schools/colleges as well? My information may be wrong
- pavs 16y agohttp://twitter.com/kn0thing/status/22560188509 http://twitter.com/kn0thing/status/22560188509
- vinhboy 16y agoI asked this in the other thread already, but let me ask again. So as startup founders, what do you guys think is the right move here? Do you do what your users want, or stand your ground and do what you think is best for the company??
- timwiseman 16y agoWhat your users want is almost always what is best for the company. (Note that what your users want is not always the same as what they say they want.)
- bruceboughton 16y agoWhat your users want or what your customers want?
- ojbyrne 16y agoIf it was me, I'd be doing what they're doing - putting back the lost features, and trying to assuage disgruntled users. I think the people in charge stopped thinking about what's best for the company long ago in favor of what's best for themselves. That also needs to be reversed.
- rwmj 16y agoIf you've only got 30 users and you're aiming to get millions, then you might consider "standing your ground" (although even this situation is dubious -- it seems almost always better to build). But as Digg has millions of users already, what your users want is the same thing as what is best for the company. You say sorry and revert back to the old site, then have a long hard think about what you did wrong and how to avoid making that mistake ever again.
- quinndupont 16y agoI don't think there is any coherent point that the users want. Some want V3 because they don't like change, others want unicorns, others want to have fun burning Digg to the ground. I'd love to see it succeed, but I seriously doubt it will.
- gfodor 16y ago..and another one falls to second system syndrome.
- ojbyrne 16y agoExcept of course that it's, oh, 4th system syndrome.
- quinndupont 16y agoSomehow Kevin Rose has become the Web's babysitter. Product launches are hard, and having revolting factions of whiny Diggers has got to make it nearly impossible.
- danilocampos 16y agoI'm done with Digg. There's way too much noise and not enough material that I genuinely care about. The community mostly sucks -- I read everything with comments sorted by upvotes. Last week, when my hand-picked Digg RSS feeds stopped working, I deleted them from my reader and moved on. For me, at least, Digg's time has passed.
- say_ 16y agoThis is very disappointing. These community sites like reddit and the old Digg are great for finding funny and unusual content, but they are very poor for discovering new content tailored to specific interests. Twitter is barely serviceable for this purpose, but there's also a lot of fluff. I was projecting my hopes of personalized content discovery onto My News, but it looks hopeless now.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoYou couldn't be more wrong. Reddit's subreddit feature is it's best, most underutilized, and most ignored feature -- especially by its side seat critics. (edit, it's/its)
- esdi 16y agoYou're so right. I used to think reddit had deteriorated until I discovered subreddits. Some subreddits have very high quality and relevant content.
- SkyMarshal 16y agoAbsolutely. Most who complain about Reddit just haven't discovered or don't use the subreddit feature. Rule #1: Unsubscribe from the Front Page reddit, and Politics and Atheism (even if you're atheist) subreddits if you're subscribed to them. Then go find the good ones.
- bmm6o 16y agoReddit has to solve this problem if they want to grow. The fact that "unsubscribe to front page" is the best advice for new users is ridiculous. They would be much stickier if they could figure a way to automatically determine what subreddits would appeal to a person. I can't believe "beg for money" was higher on their idea list.
- _delirium 16y agoThat's probably good advice businesswise, but as a user I sort of like that people aren't really thrown into subreddits. The fact that the smaller ones (not on the front page by default) only have people who went out of their way to find them keeps them a little higher quality imo, and keeps the influx of new users at a manageable pace.
- dstein 16y agoI got almost all my news from Digg for the past 3 years. Watching Digg self implode like this is somewhat sad to see. It is fascinating, and scary how fast it happened. And I think Digg is in pretty serious trouble here regardless of what steps they take now, or whether they deserved it. The userbase seems intent on kicking them into the ground now. I think their primary mistake was tying an infrastructure change with a complete recoding of the site. It appears they didn't even had a backup plan of going back to the old site in case "something" didn't go as planned.
- ronnoch 16y ago> I got almost all my news from Digg for the past 3 years. Wow. That doesn't seem like a good thing.
- sliverstorm 16y agoI get almost all my news from HN, but that's not necessarily bad. If I was LOOKING for news, and using it AS A NEWS SOURCE, it would be. But I'm not- the news just sort of comes along for the ride.
- dstein 16y agoWhy? On average I found Digg's slice of news (current events + comedy + tech) pretty appealing, and it's format was better for skimming the news a lot better then the other aggregate sites -- including HN. I also got very comfortable with Digg not being "real time", such that I never had to seek out the news. Rather than trying to read everything, and follow every story from beginning to end, I just wait for the good stuff to bubble to the surface, and then I skim over just that.
- teyc 16y agoLet's unpack this: v4 has a host of changes 1) new code 2) ranking algorithm 3) ui The new code and ranking algorithm are intimately tied. The key problem is that any election-based website has a single "correct" view, making phased beta difficult, but not impossible. This is complicated by the fact that Digg is a startup, and doesn't have infinite amount of money to solve this. So, ideally, what is required is 1) a parallel run of the two algorithms, measuring some subjective quality of the results. (e.g. click throughs) 2) Notifying users that personalisation is being progressively turned on. Thus, breaking up the audience into cohorts (i.e. no single true view). 3) Using Eric Ries' style AB testing to continually tweak and split test, rather having a big deployment.
- cletus 16y agoPersonally I think Digg is now in the same bucket as PointCast, if not to the same degree: they should've sold when they had the chance. Now they're basically irrelevant. I mean just look at the language when Digg talks about your home page.... people still have home pages? Really?
- siglesias 16y ago4 in Chinese culture is bad luck because it sounds like "dead." Apple's been there too this year.
- lotusleaf1987 16y agoSo are you implying this is coincidental or do you actually believe in superstitions?
- siglesias 16y agoThat it's coincidence, obviously. If both Apple and Digg had launched v.13 of their products, with problems, then people would be more perceptive to it. Just imparting a little bit of culture, that's all. For those that don't know (and who knows, you might find it useful some day if you launch something in China), 4 is China's 13.