WTF Dept. Why does Digg allow comments?

1. MistressRoninS says:

   January 4, 2007 at 4:02 pm

   I think it is important to note that the social scene of Digg.com creates a need to post comments more so than posting on a site you may or may not be familiar with.

   Understand that commenting is a form of offering your opinion, communicating with someone when you feel passionately enough to effect the minds of others on that site.
   When you establish a bond with a site’s community, you will care more about taking the time to put your comment there, more than putting a comment on a new site you have not experienced a bond with.

   Your article is akin to someone who hangs out at his favorite coffee shop(Digg’s coffee) and has established a relationship with the employees and regulars.
   While he is there, he has engaging conversations about other businesses in town. He posts bulletins on other business’s services sometimes driving people to go check out their places but they return to the Digg.com coffee shop after visiting the others. This is because their community is at the Digg coffee shop.

   When you have a sense of community, you have a sense of participation in that particular community, so disallowing comments Digg.com will not automatically create comments on other sites. People will flow to another site and form a community there.
   Consider that those comments are meant for Digg.com. They aren’t misplaced comments that belong to other sites. The discussion is taking place on Digg.com, within that community. It is unique to Digg.com and it is very shaped, evoked and themed within that community.
   There are various styles and attitudes exclusive to Digg.com users as well and this sometimes is out of context on other sites that have no understanding of the way the Digg.com community works.
   The best way to generate commenting on your site is to encourage it by making it convenient and easy to comment. I personally comment on Digg.com AND on sites that encourage my comment but rarely if I do not intend on returning to that site later.
   Don’t expect some other web site’s community to pay homage to your commenting space when you have not taken the time to develop that community on your site.
   Spend the time to develop your own community, and people will bond with it and therefore feel a need to comment.
   If you want Digg.com users to comment on your site more often, you should encourage them to come back and give them a reason to comment, establish a relationship with them.
2. Lars-Christian says:

   January 4, 2007 at 2:36 am

   I wholeheartedly agree with your point on this one. The thing is that Digg has has departed a bit from the original mission statement. These days, people use Digg, thanks in large to the comments system, as a social network at least as much as a place to find and rate news and articles.
3. Anonymous says:

   January 3, 2007 at 1:33 am

   A friend, Michael Eakes, dugg a entry he wrote about an open letter to Al Gore to put An Inconv. Truth on BitTorrent.
   It now has 11 diggs. http://digg.com/environment/An_Inconvenient_Distribution

   A lame ass entity called ZeroPaid steals it, hypes it with a sexier title and a bunch of digg lingo (as well as copy and pasted letter and other uncredited text by Michale) and it goes to the front page. The item links thru to a ZeroPaid page with tons of internal links and nothing to Michael’s original page.

   Kevin summed it all up well: http://www.feedblog.org/2006/12/rewriting_histo.html

   The reason they have comments is so the jack-booted 19 year olds that feel like they run the site can post their gabble to each other like some modern bathroom wall. Seriously shouldn’t there be a place for people that have never contributed anything other than voting on a link have a place to feel special about themselves ;>
4. Darren Stuart says:

   January 3, 2007 at 4:18 am

   are we looking at 2007 the backlash against digg?

   while I agree with you Allen and I have given for the most part even using digg for anything other than finding podcasts.

   my problem is the rampant fanboys and rude children on there.

   I like apple but I don’t want to read about some guy who changes from developing on windows to apple. This story gets to the front page purely by the title. If you want a front page story go pro apple and anti Ms. As for the comments, some idiot gave me a hard time for spelling MAC in caps…

   If you didn’t have comments on there I think there would be a lack of community (if you can call it that).
5. Ben says:

   January 3, 2007 at 12:51 pm

   Allen, you’re asking for linear content from a non-linear source. Digg is a tool; the utility of the masses not to make new content or provide new content or attract new content from other places but to observe it only. Digg’s entire purpose is that of the quantum mechanic – Digg is all about indirect observation… for to observe something directly you have to change it and no one wants that much change. Digg does not aim to change anything directly.

   Does it seem elitist? Yes.
   Does your site get touched directly by people reading your content (from somewhere else, no less)? No.

   I have no other interpretation worth mentioning except that I am a Digg user, and I have come here to encourage you (hopefully with the simplicity of presence); some of us like directly dealing with content and the providers there-of. Digg wouldn’t be a useless tool without content, but as it is it is tremendously useful with the content that even you as a dissenter provide here.
6. Muhammad Saleem says:

   January 3, 2007 at 1:36 pm

   You have pointed out a perfectly legitimate concern as far as the statistics are concerned:

   * 50+ comments on digg
   * 30+ comments on Search Engine Journal
   * 1 comment on CenterNetworks
   * 0 comments on William’s blog

   There are several issues here. First of all you wrote an anti-Digg article. The Digg community can be rather self-involved (try submitting anything pro-Digg, or anything at all mentioning Kevin Rose) and hostile to criticism. That is understandable to a degree, and that is why your article was marked as lame (similar reasons why most of my objective analysis, whenever critical of Digg, is marked as lame)

   Also, I have been looking at a way to transfer comments from the social bookmarking sites to the original posts as well. I think it would help with the continuity of the conversation both on sites like Digg as well as the blog post where the content originated.

   While I agree that all the comments should be on the blog post, I don’t think that Digg should be exempt from the comments. That just takes away from the social nature of the site. All the comments should be available on both sites, and perhaps Digg should facilitate site owners in that regard.

   Thanks for the follow up.
7. Michael.NET says:

   January 3, 2007 at 3:32 pm

   Maybe some sort of Social Discussion site that one can comment on but that still displays the original content in whole? I know there’s a few browser plugins that do this, but really…why do the comments have to be on the same site as the content, as long as the majority of the conversation is in one place and the content producers get their revenue.
8. SEOrefugee says:

   January 3, 2007 at 5:48 pm

   @Michael.NET, that’s Allen’s whole point though, the content producers aren’t getting their revenue.

   For the record, I was the person that submitted Loren’s article to Digg. I tried submitting Allen’s first but it had already been submitted and buried. I thought this issue was quite interesting and needed to get more attention so I submitted Loren’s article.

   Allen, I am a bit divided on the whole issue of including Digg in the search results but I agree that this issue (one of duplicate submissions or second hand postings) is one that Digg needs to crack down on. When you go to submit a story again under a different url, they say hey you might be duplicating a submission, but all you have to do is ignore it and submit away.
9. SEOrefugee says:

   January 3, 2007 at 5:51 pm

   Another problem with allowing Digg comments is that people will copy the entire article over to Digg in a comment “in case the site crashes” due to the Digg effect. Then you eliminate the need for a viewer to visit the original site all together and the person who created the content originally gets proper screwed rather than partially.
10. Michael.NET says:

    January 3, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    I know, when I say “content” I mean the page in like an IFRAME, ads and all.
11. Flashman says:

    January 3, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    What about web pages that aren’t blogs? How do you start discussion on a photo hosted at NASA, for instance? That’s one reason why Digg needs comments. (Unless of course Digg comments were switched off when the entry is a blog-like entity, which would be needlessly complex.)

    Allen, no offence, but until ten minutes ago I had no idea your site existed. I’ll hazard a guess that the majority of the Digg community falls into the same category. For me, Digg is where I do the talking – except on some occasions.

    All this adds up to Digg’s advantage in this area: it has a large centralised community, immediately invites discussion on topics (which is also a reason why Loren’s post attracted comments), and an excellent rank-based comments system.

    Surely there’s a way you can roll with Digg? If not, I guess you have to accept that, like Canute, there’s no way to roll back the tide.
12. Anonymous says:

    January 3, 2007 at 8:30 pm

    > “Content and associated discussion should live in its home. Those 50 comments belong on either my site or William’s or at a stretch Loren’s. But not on Digg. All that does is continue to add to my topic about whether Digg should be in Google.”

    I hate to break it to you, but Digg is not put together to benefit your site. The Digg owners I’m sure are happy that they get the comments and you don’t. Don’t like Digg linking to your site? Then block any traffic from your site that comes from Digg. It’s technically quite easy to do and you’ll quickly find if anyone does Digg your site it will not likely get to the front page because nobody else will be able to follow the link. I enjoy the Digg comments and am glad they are there. The masses have spoken. Digg is a winner, comments included.

    I’d not be on your site (never heard of it) if it wasn’t for Digg and I doubt I’m alone. So pardon my lack of sympathy, but it’s not Digg’s problem if you don’t like how the web is evolving.

    Let the best product win, Digg or otherwise.
13. KeyJ63 says:

    January 3, 2007 at 10:09 pm

    Maybe this is something the digg people should think about. I dont see it being that difficult for digg (if they chose) to offer an API so that just like the digg it it button on your site they also offered a comment component you could plug into your site so that your users could use that to comment.
14. jaakl says:

    January 3, 2007 at 10:53 pm

    I just came to the same idea. It is not technically impossible to have tool (API or whatever) to reverse-aggregate comments from digg and from the original blog (if it has or wants to have commenting feature).
15. Anonymous says:

    January 3, 2007 at 11:19 pm

    If you’re busting your ass so much, why is there an instance of comments being typo’d to ‘coments’?
16. Anonymous says:

    January 4, 2007 at 10:06 am

    well you are a ******** idiot if you spelt Mac in caps