The Diggites have been at it again. After the guys at Digg launched a new comments system last Thursday, a group of users were in uproar immediately over the changes - oh, how we humans hate change! Kevin Rose hastily posted a message on their blog the next day indicating that they appreciated the feedback and that more changes were coming to their comments system.

Poor old Digg, dugg if they do and dugg if they don’t - apologies for the pun. I’m sure all they were trying to do was enhance the user experience on their website, but unfortunately they got it wrong and suddenly they are lambasted as some sort of evil empire trying to rule over all. Well actually they do own the website and all content within - I’ve been over this before - and if they want to screw it up by introducing a new ‘broken’ comment system then that’s their look out. For the group of people who rudely criticized Digg for the changes, vote with your feet (or keyboards) and not with profanity.

Source: ComputerWorld

It’s been an interesting 48 hours for the guys at Digg. Having taken a decision to remove a post displaying the hexadecimal code which breaks the protection on HD-DVDs, the site was inundated with posts re-displaying the keys. At one stage the whole front page of the site contained posts with the keys either in the title or description. Digg temporarily closed the site down and then released this statement via their blog.

After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

They unblocked all posts regarding the HD DVD keys and within a few hours the site appeared to be back to normal with only a few posts about the keys showing on the home page.

What a fiasco, Digg not knowing what to do and Digg users screaming ‘free speech’. The Digg Terms of Use clearly state

Digg may remove any Content and Digg accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all.

so the guys were quite within their rights to remove the posts if they so desired.

But what about free speech or more correctly ‘Freedom of Speech’. The term is generally used when a government censors a citizen or citizens from expressing their views no matter what the views are. To apply it to a website removing user content seems extreme in my opinion. Digg own, manage and run the site, they should be ‘free’ to display whatever they want on their site. They should listen to what their visitors want on the site, but it’s still their call.

Probably the most ironic thing all about the whole fiasco is that the keys are easily available on the net and have been for a while. Perhaps it was all just a big scam by Digg ….

Yahoo recently launched a suggestion site that uses the Digg mechanism and resembles graphically with the well known news promoting website. However I don’t understand all the fuss around this, since Yahoo initially credited Digg for this in a post on the official blog.

“We call it a Suggestion Board — you can browse suggestions from other site visitors or post your own. Digg-style voting means we can quickly discover what’s most important to users. In addition to reading feedback from other users, you’ll find responses from Yahoo! employees about the issues. Product teams regularly read and take action on your feedback. Though we aren’t always going to immediately act on it, it’s incredibly helpful to us in making the best sites we can… and we’ve even been known to reward great suggestions with some Yahoo! schwag.”

A friend of mine was searching for one of my posts the other day, when he got this following message. I thought it was funny (never seen it before). But hey, it happens to the best of us :)

I’m sure that many of you have at least one habit while surfing the net. A certain task, a certain page you’re visiting or a certain action you’re making. Perhaps you’re reading a newspaper, check your e-mail, read your neighbor’s blog or post something in yours. Today I’m going to try being funny and advise you how to tell if you’re addicted to Digg.

* You’ve e-mailed Kevin Rose at least ten times suggesting a search option “in the past two hours”.
* Your friends haven’t see you for days.
* You develop expressions that you use in real life as well, such as “Of course sir, let me digg that file up for you”, “I digg you buddy”. Or even better. you change words in your vocabulary to reflect your passion. “Gimme dugg, John!”, “Dugg it, I missed!”, “Why are you so dugg today?”,”My dogg needs a walk”.

* You buy something from the Digg store monthly and show off to your friends. Bonus points if you’re wearing a digg badge 24/7.
* You Photoshoped yourself a beautiful Digg wallpaper.
* You find yourself staring at the digg swarm for at least half hour daily.
* You digg every story Kevin Rose submits. Bonus points if you digg the ones he comments on too.
* You change your digg avatar at the end of the day “to start fresh”.
* You have at least one other account and when you get really bored you start flaming on popular posts between your two personalities.
* You have no cable TV at home, newspapers nor magazines. You find yourself trying to explain your family that all you need is Digg.
* You have a pet called DiggEffect

So, are you a Digg addict?