Why Digg Needs Moderators

Wow, my feet smell. I saw there were some opinions regarding my saying that there should be moderators on digg. Yes, collective wisdom seems like a great idea, in theory, but given the circumstances that have been presented by digg, in this instance this "collective wisdom" just won't cut the mustard without some aid.

Now, I despise slashdot, I really do, and I did not suggest turning digg into that horrible site, my suggestion was about having a core group of users, possibly the staffers at digg along with members who have shown to have good judgement etc to moderate digg. Now, what exactly would this moderation entail?

Editing Stories

This would have a few aspects to it. As I mentioned in another post which I am too lazy to search and provide a link for, I stated that the moderation of stories was not about editing the stories people read in the vein of slashdot, but rather it just be a way for people to filter out the obviously ridiculous items. Use it as a form of training wheels. While the community will be able to say that a story was submitted improperly because maybe the story was submitted but was just a link to a blog linking to the story, it's not something that should be dealt with now.

Have people to remove stories that wouldn't make it to the front page at all, even if it is something that is very newsworthy. Again, to reiterate my point, let us suppose Google was giving away money and I submitted the story to digg, but it was just a link to this blog which had a link to the real story, it wouldn't or at least shouldn't make it to the front page even though the story is front page worthy. What a moderator would do is simply not allow this sort of thing to get through at all. It isn't about stories people like or dislike, because the digg community still has the power over that, but it is about the quality of the submission, not the submission itself. The other way in which a story would be edited is if the description and title isn't good.

The reason for this is to seem a whole lot more professional to those who are viewing the site for the very first time. There was an article on digg about how people make judgements on a website just as quickly as it loads. In all honesty, if I were to come to a website that had the first story as saying "Google Releases Another Service LOL" and had a description that read "IMHO Google is not as cool as Clusty.com" I would simply go elsewhere to get my news. While the link may be good, the title and description need to be informative and to the point. No reason it can't be witty and/or entertaining, but some level of professionalism has to be maintained if digg is to really become what it can be.

Editing Comments

You saw this coming. People still view the comments as well, comments, which in reality they are not, they are forums, with every new article submitted being a thread ready to be ripened with discussion. Again, having a select few members/digg staff moderate these comments would benefit the site immensely. I don't expect it to be a case of "be nice, don't do this" but more of an observation thing.

To explain this better, moderators will not be outright identifiable as such, they would be members such as you and myself and they would take an observatory role in the digg community. Simply look for the people who submit one word comments, the people looking to start arguments and flame wars, and simply warn them about it, once.

Once anything persists, ban them from commenting, over time, this would benefit the site tenfold. More intelligent discussion would come about and more people who had before stayed away from digg would join and make digg a richer, more close knit community.

Now, to look at comments of the story submitted to digg highlighting this site.

This comment comes from infradead:

Go to Amazon or wherever and search for a book called "The Wisdom of Crowds".
Buy it, read it, if you haven't already. The basic premise is that groups of
people are generally better at reaching conclusions than solitary persons. It's
counter-intuitive, counter to Western culture even, but it's a good read, and
it's a damn good idea.
Digg is one example of how this group decision-making
process can be harnessed -- we moderate, we make the decisions. It's not
perfect, since we can see which articles are getting dugg by others, which will
tend to cause a cascade effect towards popular stories. And some people are
actively gaming the system with multiple accounts, etc. But basically, it works
and isn't far broken. The last thing digg needs is to have editors and
moderators -- it would be just another slashdot and not nearly so good. What
digg probably needs is far fewer stories, so I suppose you could say it's a
victim of its own success. Whatever, I think we can live with its imperfections.

While I agree wholeheartedly with the power of numbers to identify who or what is bad for digg, right now the community is just not in that position, so I think my suggestions above would be very beneficial. I mean to say, it's not something that will be noticeable by the community and they aren't losing their power. After the community has been "trained" then these moderators could possibly even be removed, so they could be temporary even. Nothing is perfect though, so yes, I agree that there will always be suffering imperfections. Right now though, we are suffering from a case of the stupid.

Joel2600 Opines:

yeah, but that is the basic idea of digg... to let the masses decide. and when
crap makes it to the front page, it's not because we need moderators, it's
because there are enough people visiting the site that find the crap interesting
that actually want to see it.you throw in the moderators and digg just becomes
another slashdot, except for less interesting things and a lot of buried stories
that nobody gets to see.

The validity of the content going to the front page is objective, you may or may not like it, after all, there are categories. What I have been talking about is the way in which the news items are submitted. I think if you have an open mind and a bit of intelligence, anyone can at least see where I am coming from.

I hope you walk away with something from reading all this. All I want is for digg to become the best online community that it can be, but right now, it just isn't there. My feet still smell.

Oh, and kudos to joel and infradead, who show what real digg commenting is about. I'm not mad they didn't like the story or even that they disagreed, and the way they handled it was beautiful to say the least. Hats off, fellers.