Any active Digg users might be interested in this article about some of Digg’s faults. To preface this, I enjoy enjoy Digg despite it’s faults, and typically check it once or twice a day. So take this hating on Digg with a grain of salt, not as anti-Digg, but more of telling a friend he needs to lay off the drugs or he’ll hurt himself. 
Two points in particular stood out in the article.
2. Not everything can be democratic.
Every developer creating a community-driven web site should compare their site in terms of the above. In one sense, a site where users have complete control over the content is appealing. Freedom is good right? Absolutely, but only to a point. I compare it to when I’m writing a new web form.
If I create a form where the user has absolute control over the content of each field (and we are ignoring the security risk of doing that for the sake of the argument), then a user of that form is going to stretch the limits of what was intented. This could result in the end result of that form being dilluted. If a submitted form has incorrect or unusable data, then it’d have to be thrown out. Whether you are doing a survey, a poll, an online purchase, or puttign in work order to get the power turned on in your house, this is a bad thing. You want to give the user enough freedom but that the end goal is still accomplished.
So you may be thinking, what does that possibly have to do with Digg? From their very mission statement…
You won’t find editors at Digg – we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.
The problem with this is when a majority user group define the narrative of what is value or not. What it comes down to, is that users will Digg anything that agrees with their worldview, whether it be politics, technology, business, or gaming. And users will Bury anything that doesn’t. They have made the definition of value as something that supports how they think. With the Bury feature, they don’t even let other people find value in something. Which brings us to point 3 from the article.
3. Crowds must retain their individuality.
This is a difficult task for any crowd, but seems especially so on the Internet. It is always easier to see an opinion rather than a person. When you see something you don’t agree with, it is a little more difficult to think there is a person behind that argument, at least much more so than in a face-to-face conversation. As such, people in the crowd with differing opinions are not tolerated very well. It’s amazing to me how easy it is to make a hate filled comment about something most Digg users are against, but when a Digg user tries to point out the bias, their comment gets slammed well into the negatives.
Case in point, I defy you to find a pro-McCain story in the top 10 of World and Business. Or even a pro-Hillary story. Digg is so incredibly in the tank for Obama that anything less than this is treated with hostility. Though this is at least a step above a few months ago where anything less than proclaiming Ron Paul as a The Greatest Thing Ever would not make it into the top spots.
There is nothing wrong with Digging an article you like, because an Obama story would absolutely be of value to Obama supporters. But Digg has decided in their group wisdom that a pro-McCain or pro-Hillary, or even pro-Bush story would be of value to no one, and that is unfortunate for Digg. Digg may have freedom, but the users have chosen to that freedom to silence any vocal dissent in the narrative. That ain’t any kind of definition of freedom in my book.
Update: Rofl, moderately related to point number 2. Brutal.
Internet momentum and specifically the influence of ‘group think’ on it is an interesting phenomenon in itself that seems to be evidenced by many occurrences, whether they are diggs or a 50 page thread of shadow priests “melting faces.” I can only imagine the social pathology theories that will be developed because of people’s ability to express opinion anonymously with the almost total lack of consequence on their non-virtual identity. Of course there is Penny Arcade’s theory
Ultimately, the rule of the majority or democracy’s value is predicated on the education of the mob and their ability to make altruistic decisions. Otherwise we are living with a decision making body that naturally finds the lowest common denominator based on solely selfish motivations.
As a rule, what history we have, generally tells us that the mob is wrong.
The Internet and online social communities are the purest expression of this trait that I know of and I consider it evidence of the mob’s inability to rule itself. This isn’t to say that a democracy or a republic aren’t effective forms of government. It is however representative of the absolute necessity in maintaining the system of checks and balances on a body of power.
If one considers first world nations and Internet technology as representations of the culmination of human achievement during the course of recorded human history. Then it is sad to see that given the wealth, knowledge and freedom we possess the best our achievements can be put to use is a way to share music, porn and to argue in fits of angry illogical passion.
Digg is something I participate in as a way to take the pulse of a section of the Internet population. It represents the crudest and broadest patterns as held by the majority of the Internet-elect and tells me what matters most to this class of human society.
Both of the points you list are important. I’m not sure what the answer is… right now I see tagging as a possible way for one to filter opinions. The problem is that I don’t think one can allow the mob to tag things with any word they want. One has to give them a subset of words to maintain tagging coherency and yet by restricting their tagging abilities one runs the risk of missing a particular world view or opinion subset.
If one could take the entirety of Digg material and filter it through different political “lenses” perhaps one could find a series of Digg reflections that allowed them both to see news that as relevant to their world view and yet retain the ability to see other world views.