Introduction

Digg (http://digg.com/) is a technology news linking site that for the most part is moderated by the community. It is currently branded as 'Digg 2.0'. In a similar vein to Everything2, it is a good way to waste time. Unlike Everything2, it is more focused on spreading interesting URLs and inviting discussion than producing content itself. Any user can submit a story, which will undergo the quality control system;

Quality Control

The format of moderation is primarily 'positive-only', in that the community is focused on 'digging' items, which is a positive response, rather than a more traditional rating system where people can rate an item positively or negatively. The rating system is absolute and very balanced, in that every person who 'digs' an article increases the digg count of an item by exactly one. It therefore goes without saying that the number of diggs is the number of people who like an article. A negative number of diggs (should) not be possible.

Items which are newly submitted are not shown on the frontpage, but in the back area. When enough people have approved the article, it will move onto the frontpage. Frontpage articles tend to vary from 50 to 800 diggs on the most popular items.

To make digging a painless and fast process, JavaScript is used in combination with Ajax to make digging fast and relatively 'quiet' an operation.

Stories can be voted to be removed by a user in certain circumstances. The number of people required to 'report' a link before it is taken off is unknown. Reasons for removal include duplicate stories, bad links, spam, old news, general lameness, and inaccuracy. In the case of inaccuracy, a warning is placed on the article after sufficient votes. Otherwise, the article is removed.

Commenting

Users can comment on any item. The comment system was originally unthreaded, but recently (as of 2006) has been refurbished into a two-level threaded system. However, it goes no deeper -- you cannot reply to a reply to a reply. This is apparently deliberate, as the website administrators wish to discourage Slashdot-esque discussion and focus on news. The comment system has a positive-negative system as opposed to the digg system itself. You can either positively vote a comment (digg it) or negatively vote a comment (bury it). Each user gets only one vote on a comment and every user account has the same influence in voting. You cannot vote your own comments.

Social Networking

To a certain extent, Digg implements social networking. An example of this is the friends system. One can add a user as a friend, and then stories dugg by the friend will then have an icon attached to signify this.