Comments on: Wired’s Digg slam is offside

By: Luke

Luke — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 06:25:57 +0000

The specific problem does seem to be pretty widespread. User/Submitter has been around for months, and are buying diggs for about one story an hour.

Here are a list of a few recent ones:
http://lukewelling.com/2007/03/03/diggs-kevin-rose-has-an-account-on-usersubmitter/

By: Dominic Jones

Dominic Jones — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 21:46:18 +0000

“I have to say that I think the relationship between Reddit and Wired is a lot closer than between the Globe and Bell Canada.”

Agreed.

It seems a question of editorial judgment. You’d be the editor that would’ve frustrated the hell out of me in my younger years, but I do see your point about the optics of aggressively going after a story when you’re potentially in a conflict of interest position.

Personally, I’d do the story and not worry about the optics. But I’d be extra careful to be sure we got the facts right.

But to your point, Wired did pay a price in terms of reputation for doing the story. Even if I think the critics are wrong, they did enough to call Wired’s editorial integrity into question.

And I’m not sure it was worth it.

By: HMTKSteve

HMTKSteve — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:37:02 +0000

I think it is more a case of the New York Times not seeing you as a competitor.

Think of Great Cthullu. The humans on the planet are not even a thought to him. To the humans on the planet, he holds a very large place in the thoughts of the people!

By: Mathew

Mathew — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:17:04 +0000

HMTKSteve, are you suggesting that my blog doesn’t compete with the New York Times? :-)

And Karl, I will take you up on your wager — but you can keep the cheese steak, thanks.

By: HMTKSteve

HMTKSteve — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:12:25 +0000

I think part of the story here is that the gaming of Digg and Digg’s problems have long been circulating among the Digg bloggers.

Wired is one of the tech magazines that diggers like to read.

Reddit? A competitor to Digg? They are as much of a Digg competitor as this blog is to the New York times!

Digg came out and said, “you can’t game us, we have mad skillz, go away you hackers!”
Someone called them on it, “Look, I got this crappy site on the Digg homepage!”
Then Digg turns around and says, “Hey, I wasn’t ready, that didn’t count.. Wait a minute… You are from a competitor… discredit! discredit! discredit!”

They did the same thing when a blogger reproduced the top 100 list after they dumped it!