There’s been some rather convincing criticism of Digg that suggests a consistent handful of heavy users has teamed up to vote their stories to the home page, and as a result, reaping the benefits of a ton of traffic. The evidence is so convincing that Digg founder Kevin Rose has agreed to change the algorithm that determines how much and how quickly a story moves up and down the list. “This algorithm update will look at the unique digging diversity of the individuals digging the story,” Kevin explains. “Users that follow a gaming pattern will have less promotion weight. This doesn’t mean that the story won’t be promoted, it just means that a more diverse pool of individuals will be need to deem the story homepage-worthy.” Fascinating stuff, and worth watching as the lessons learned at Digg need not be repeated as user-managed sites become more mainstream.
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