Digg.com: Mass wisdom or mob mentality?: Interview with Digg Founder Kevin Rose

[mandy]

Interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose

As you know, digg.com is a technology news site that over the past 6 months has begun to rival Slashdot in popularity among IT geeks. But whereas Slashdot content is controlled by editors, digg prides itself on being run by its community. Which articles make it to the coveted digg homepage is determined by how many "diggs" they get from the readers. digg calls this "non-hierarchical editorial control", in a none-to-subtle dig at Slashdot.

However in recent weeks there have been signs of possible cracks in this user-driven system, with some people wondering whether the 'wisdom of the masses' is more like a mob mentality at times. I myself have published a couple of posts critical of the digg system, firstly about their (what I at the time perceived to be) overzealous response to spam and then there was the highly controversial group tarring and feathering of an innocent O'Reilly writer.

full article:
Part 1: http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=108
Part 2: http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=109