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The reason Reddit and Digg are implemented the way they are is that they rely on people's need for attention to generate a constant stream of incoming links. Ma
by aston 19y ago
The reason Reddit and Digg are implemented the way they are is that they rely on people's need for attention to generate a constant stream of incoming links. Making it to the "front page" of whatever site you're dealing with is a badge of honor and indicates some sort of social significance. The incentive's just not there for people otherwise. The only people who'll submit links without any guarantee that anyone will see their submission should be using del.icio.us.
- neilc 19y agoThere's no "guarantee" that links submitted to reddit or digg will be seen by a significant fraction of people, either. As for the submitter's need for popularity, I think the basic problem is that you need to find the right way to balance voting on stories (which should be more or less independent of a story's popularity, as the article argues) with viewing stories (which must be inherently based on some notion of popularity or story quality, or the whole point is lost). That seems like it should be solvable, though: for example, you could present both kinds of items in the UI.