Turn the Democracy into a Republic
Over at Little Green Footballs there is a post about Digg and mob rule. The democratic nature of Digg gives everyone a vote about what stories appear on the front page and what does not. This system has previously been pointed to as flawed since a few select people can promote a story to the front page and also bury the story if they do not agree with it.
This has lead to a Digital Maoism ”that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force.”
I took a screenshot of Digg today and I think it more than proves the point of the collective burying stories that the group does not agree with.
As you can see, most of the stories being buried are from Little Green Footballs, most likely due to ideological differences. Of course, Little Green Footballs also get a lot of positive digs from its readers. So, this site is both fairly and unfairly affected by the democracy. The negative votes seem to have more impact than the positive votes, though.
This is true democracy in action - tyranny of the minority. How can this be changed?
I’d suggest turning Digg from a democracy, to a republic. How does this work?
Simply; as a user is registered they’d randomly be assigned an internal group id. No one would know what group they were a part of and their group could not be changed. In order for stories to appear on Digg’s homepage (or be buried) a supermajority of voting groups (66%) would have to positively Digg the story. 51% of a group Digging positive would be a net thumbs up for the group.
This system would prevent a small group of people from digging down (or digging up) articles. It’d give everyone on Digg an equal say as to what stories were promoted or demoted.
Related: Ace also has a post about this with a screen shot of posts from Michelle Malkin’s site being dugg down too. So the problem is a bit more rampant and more ideological based that I originally suspected.
Related: Meetings make you stupid.
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