Like the F B I and the C I A and the B B C B B King and Doris Day Matt Busby
Yes, the title is relevant (sortt off).
ggwfung links to a blog post by Muhammad Saleem that labels Digg's revised front page appearance system as socialist.
The Digg economy is the reward system for the users who contribute to the website by submitting content. This ultimate reward is the glory by way of user rankings, calculated as a function of total stories submitted by a user that made it to the front-page.
Keeping this economy in mind, you could say that the recent algorithm ‘upgrade’ at Digg is actually a shift from a capitalist free market state, to a socialist state of equality.
Prior to this change, the Digg economy was a capitalistic one. One that emphasized fairness and allowed each individual user to create his own fate. Under this system, each user was rewarded appropriately, based on their level of contribution to the system. This economy has now become a socialistic one (not to be confused with communistic economies), which emphasizes equality over fairness....
Rather than rewarding good contributors based on monitorable past actions, Digg actually penalizes them. The more front-page stories you get, the harder it is to make it to the front-page. This is the equivalent of saying that if one farmer consistently puts in more effort, rather than letting him keep his fair share of more produce, we should create a mechanism which makes sure that the harder the farmer works, the harder it should be for him to produce better results (poisoning the land?).
So, on November 6, 2006 at 12:37 pm, I visited the Digg community, and after this visit, I now doubt that we can survive as a free society under our current networking model. Um...not really. This is that Digg said:
Once a story is submitted by a user it is instantly posted in the Upcoming stories section. This is a temporary holding place where stories wait to be promoted to the homepage. To help promote stories to the homepage, simply visit the Upcoming stories section and digg stories you think are cool. Once a story has received enough diggs, it is instantly promoted. Should the story not receive enough diggs, surpass 24 hours, or is reported, it eventually falls out of the Upcoming stories section. Digg works because a large group of people actively digg (promote) good stories and report (remove bad stories). Since digg's content is user-driven, it is up to YOU to contribute.
For the record, Digg's top users are here.
Next, we reveal the Google ranking algorithm...not.
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