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Over on reddit, the hottest news item is "One woman fighting an army (pic)." Now there's a link that wants clicking. Maybe you disagree—there's no accounting for taste—vote me down if you think I'm weird. I think I'm not: I think the promise of a picture of a woman vs. an army plainly outranks the promise of... of some incomprehensible Rosetta-folding-thing embedded in an incomprehensible gerund-laden sentence.
Just below the news about folding is, "Microsoft prepping component to HDMI adapter?" The question mark tells us we're dealing with a rumor, I guess. You know, TVs are neat, especially the big new flat ones, and adapters greatly impact the quality of many display systems, yet I still just can't get excited about a whole article on a little electronic plug. What I'm struggling to understand: Do Diggers really care about this stuff, or is Digg just broken?
reddit and Digg are similar in concept. Presumably the technology behind the systems is largely identical. So why is it, when I browse reddit, that I quickly find myself engrossed, whereas when I browse Digg, I quickly find myself dozing?
I have no investment in either site. I don't care which is better. When I first sniffed around reddit and Digg a month ago, both intrigued me, and I divided my browsing time between them. In fact I rooted for Digg at first. It's prettier. Digg Labs rocks. The Digg button for my website worked effortlessly whereas the reddit button resizes oddly (I told reddit; they replied; they still haven't fixed it).
Then after a couple of weeks, I noticed something weird: whenever I browsed the news, I always ended up at reddit. I just liked it better. So I asked myself, like a man courting two women, liking them both, seeing that the one is prettier and nicer and has better long-term marriage potential and that the other is uglier and rougher, yet preferring the latter and being unable to account for his feelings—"Perhaps it's her informality, perhaps it's just the way she makes me laugh," he says—thus did I ask myself, "Why do I prefer reddit?"
It's the Little Things...
Here are some reasons.(1) Digg stories bore. I find myself trolling through pages and pages of Digg stories and rarely clicking. On reddit I find about 60% of the headlines interesting. Reddit stories are, on average, more interesting than Digg stories.
(2) Reddit has a better information-per-eyefull ratio. On my monitor I can see 25 reddit headlines in one glance; on Digg I can see 6. And those 6 are clogged with Digg buttons, icons, various font colors and sizes, and a pointless story description. Why do we need a description? If you want to know if the story is interesting, just click, for crying out loud. All the little jinglies that make Digg attractive to newbies make it tedious for daily use.
(3) Digg Capitalizes Its Stories. Like That. Not always, but more than reddit. And somehow it puts me off. Digg headlines just don't scan as well as reddit headlines. Capitalization Makes Words Plod. Reddit headlines—usually, not always—scan more nicely.
(4) Categories stink. Digg asks story submitters to categorize each story. Reddit throws all stories into one big pile. You'd think categorization would be a good thing—divide and conquer and all—but in a democratic news recommendation service, categories defeat the purpose. What is Digg but a personalized, fuzzy categorization service? It makes rigid, human-picked categories redundant. It undermines the very thing Digg wants to do: automatically recommend news based on affinity. I wonder how much of the reason Digg's stories stink lies in its recommendation algorithm hobbling along on the crutch of manually-selected categories. Maybe if Digg got rid of the crutch, their algorithm would get better.
(5) Digg stories are harder to submit. Here's a final complaint, and it applies only to people who submit stories, but I wonder how much it feeds into the overall quality of Digg. To submit a story to reddit, you type in a headline, then click submit. That's it. To submit a story to Digg, you type in a headline, then a description. Typing the description evokes a feeling somewhere between stage fright and frustration, as you struggle to summarize for the public in less than 350 characters. Assuming you make it through the intimidation, you now have to pick a category among a number of arbitrary options. Then, before you submit, Digg informs you that your story is old hat and asks whether you really want to submit it. You insist you do, then lean back scratching your goatee: Why all the hurdles? Do Digg developers feel they need a filter to cut back on the number of stories users submit? Well, that would be sensible—except, isn't the whole point of a democratic news service to let users decide if a story is worthwhile? It's like putting a surgical mask on a baleen whale. Why do you need a filter? The whole system is a filter.
There you have five guesses why Digg works less well than reddit. But you know, these problems are really quite minor. Could they really have such a large effect on how these services ultimately operate? Although I'm sure there are many other differences that have equally big—or bigger—effects, even these five could seriously impact the overall service. That's because Digg and reddit are feedback systems—glorious feedback systems.
Feedback
Recommendation databases like Digg and reddit are complex, highly recursive, organic systems. Like rain forests, playgrounds, and stock markets, Digg and reddit consist of myriad feedback loops. Stories beget votes beget news beget comments beget stories beget comments beget votes—and so on and on. And wherever you have feedback, you have the potential for what we might call Resonance Cascades [ah, the memories]. In a feedback system, small initial variations collide and expand and fold [argh, the memories] back upon themselves to create massive higher-level effects. Yes, I'm talking about chaos theory: Butterfly in Bangladesh Brings Blizzard to Bangor and all that jazz.So very, very tiny differences in the implementations of Digg and reddit can manifest in huge differences in the output of the overall systems. A cool story about Man-Eating Tigers! that might bubble to the top of one service might get buried/downmodded into oblivion in the other. Do you blame the story writer? Do you blame the algorithm? Do you blame the users? Yes! All of the above! Because all of them mosh together in complex resonance patterns. What you've been saying since the '60s is finally true: the system is to blame.
The Masses are the Message
Of course, the system administrators have more control than anyone. Digg can still improve—so can reddit—so can the brand new service that will destroy them all, which some high school student in Sweden will invent next Tuesday. If I were Digg, you know what I'd do: get rid of categories and descriptions, Kill Capitalization In Headlines, and tighten up the story list. Those changes would improve matters greatly. But would it be enough?Eventually, maybe it would. Or maybe not. Because now, see, Digg is more than just an algorithm and an interface. Digg is also an Established User Base. And that user base likes what it likes—likes what Digg has trained it to like. What if what it likes is kinda stupid? What if Digg improves things and its users don't like it, or can't cope? What if the system can no longer resist the fluttering of all those butterflies?
Labels: technology
..posted at 7:41 PM
Comments
Digg is bigger (i.e. larger userbase), and therefore its stories are the results of lowest-common-denominator voting. Therefore less variety. Therefore more boring.
—
, March 30, 2007 5:50 PM
, March 30, 2007 5:50 PM
Good point, anon. But isn't the "recommendation" aspect supposed to fix that? Digg is democratic, but it's also personalized. You vote for what you like, and stories come to you based on what other people who resemble you like. In a sense, each enclave of similarly-voting people is a smaller democracy within the overall Digg user base, and that smaller democracy should filter stories according to its members' tastes. (Of course, there are no discrete enclaves; rather, there are fuzzy "voting affinities" that vaguely outline similar voters.) In theory, the system should scale to any size of user base, because each user's recommendations are tuned by people—whether few or many—who have voted like that user in the past.
That's my understanding, anyway.
That's my understanding, anyway.
—
Jeff, March 30, 2007 6:00 PM
Jeff, March 30, 2007 6:00 PM
I am really put off by the poor grammar and spelling on Digg. These guys submit stories and can't even run their headlines through a spell-checker. Maybe they are in a big hurry to submit before the next guy? Who knows. All I know is, it comes off as a community of pseudo-intellectual little kids who are new to the 'net.
— , March 30, 2007 10:00 PM
, March 30, 2007 10:00 PM
Apples and Oranges ...
Try
http://digg.originalsignal.com
for your ADD :)
It works for mine.
Try
http://digg.originalsignal.com
for your ADD :)
It works for mine.
— , March 30, 2007 11:40 PM
, March 30, 2007 11:40 PM
I also want to say that I wish reddit had / required post summaries like digg does.
[OT] Anyone remember the video game dig doug :)li
[OT] Anyone remember the video game dig doug :)li
— , March 30, 2007 11:43 PM
, March 30, 2007 11:43 PM
You missed the biggest differences between digg and reddit:
1. Reddit stories can be upvoted or downvoted, but digg stories can only be upvoted or buried. Burying is very different from downvoting, and much more powerful (just a few buries slide the story all the way off the front page), so digg's attempted to mitigate its effects by hiding the bury button in the middle of the page and making you choose a reason for burying. Not good enough -- that just means that the bury button will be overused by the type of people who don't mind hopping through interface hurdles, who are also the type of people who get excited by TV adaptors.
2. Each person on reddit has one vote, but on digg you accumulate credit based on foresight -- upvote a story that eventually gets huge, and you'll be credited as an early adopter, or whatever. The votes of influential diggers count more in deciding what should go on the front page.
1. Reddit stories can be upvoted or downvoted, but digg stories can only be upvoted or buried. Burying is very different from downvoting, and much more powerful (just a few buries slide the story all the way off the front page), so digg's attempted to mitigate its effects by hiding the bury button in the middle of the page and making you choose a reason for burying. Not good enough -- that just means that the bury button will be overused by the type of people who don't mind hopping through interface hurdles, who are also the type of people who get excited by TV adaptors.
2. Each person on reddit has one vote, but on digg you accumulate credit based on foresight -- upvote a story that eventually gets huge, and you'll be credited as an early adopter, or whatever. The votes of influential diggers count more in deciding what should go on the front page.
— Ben Yates, March 31, 2007 12:09 AM
Ben Yates, March 31, 2007 12:09 AM
Digg treats the quality as a threshold. Once a story hits the front page it just goes down the list. The stories on Reddit will travel up the list as more people vote them up, this puts all of today's interesting news on the front page regardless of what time it became popular.
— , March 31, 2007 12:50 AM
, March 31, 2007 12:50 AM
I agree - Digg is stultifyingly boring. Reddit always has a half-dozen stories I immediately want to click on.
Although the same stories seem to hang on longer at Reddit than they did a few months ago. Less variety.
You're also bang on about story submission.
Although the same stories seem to hang on longer at Reddit than they did a few months ago. Less variety.
You're also bang on about story submission.
— Pierre, March 31, 2007 7:57 AM
Pierre, March 31, 2007 7:57 AM
Woah, this is cool: they fixed the reddit button at last. It now sits properly in its frame. Squeaky wheel gets the oil, I guess.
— Jeff, March 31, 2007 8:33 AM
Jeff, March 31, 2007 8:33 AM
Ben Yates (above) is right. The biggest architectural difference between Digg and reddit is downvoting vs. burying. Like, the top story on Digg right now is "High schoolers turn in plagiarism screeners for copyright infringement." Mm, captivating. I'd like to downvote it, just to let Digg know I really don't care, but I can't. Yet the story doesn't stick so much it needs burying. So my only way to vote is to move my eyes downward, choking down the feelings of disappointment. For one story, this isn't so bad, but I end up choking down the whole front page. News Recommendation Service Fails. How can it recommend what I want when I can't tell it what I don't want. Well, it can, but with half the information: it only knows what I like. So it optimizes its recommendations half as quickly as reddit (at best).
— Jeff, March 31, 2007 8:42 AM
Jeff, March 31, 2007 8:42 AM
Why the fear of burying stories? If they aren't interesting, mark them as "lame". Also, re: recommendation systems - Digg does not observe your digging patterns to suggest stories to you. The stories you see on the front page are the same stories everyone sees on the front page. Digg's answer to this is its friends feature, which allows you to follow people whose tastes you agree with and see what they've dugg or (better) agreed-upon.
— Michal Migurski, March 31, 2007 11:49 AM
Michal Migurski, March 31, 2007 11:49 AM
Digg *used* to be a lot better. Thus I blame the userbase, basically. I mean, I like Macsw sure! But are ten articles on "whowaaaaa we got tetris working on the apple TV!" really that interesting?
— devolute, March 31, 2007 3:06 PM
devolute, March 31, 2007 3:06 PM
"HuntingtonJ" sent me this comment by email:
Just thought I'd send you another reference to support the concept of the etymology of the word skabala as being consistent with human excrement - politely stated, I suppose.
I was listening to a pastor just this morning discuss the etymology of the word and he read a section from a German Scholar, Frederick Lang as saying, "he says the derivation has not been cleared up by modern scholars. Only with hesitation does literature seem to have adopted it from 'popular' speech, and therefore, it is literally excrement or dung. When tracing the etymology back to Hellenistic Judaism, he sees that the word remains in use. Then to the Septuagint, he says it occurs only once outside of human excrement and that is for lumps of manure remaining in a sieve. To illustrate the impurity and wickedness of the mind of man in the words of what follows – skubala anthropo – excrement of man. The intensification lies in the elements of resolute turning aside from something worthless (abhorrent) with which one will have nothing more to do." Lang adds, “The choice of the vulgar terms stresses the force and totality of this renunciation."
Just thought I'd send you another reference to support the concept of the etymology of the word skabala as being consistent with human excrement - politely stated, I suppose.
I was listening to a pastor just this morning discuss the etymology of the word and he read a section from a German Scholar, Frederick Lang as saying, "he says the derivation has not been cleared up by modern scholars. Only with hesitation does literature seem to have adopted it from 'popular' speech, and therefore, it is literally excrement or dung. When tracing the etymology back to Hellenistic Judaism, he sees that the word remains in use. Then to the Septuagint, he says it occurs only once outside of human excrement and that is for lumps of manure remaining in a sieve. To illustrate the impurity and wickedness of the mind of man in the words of what follows – skubala anthropo – excrement of man. The intensification lies in the elements of resolute turning aside from something worthless (abhorrent) with which one will have nothing more to do." Lang adds, “The choice of the vulgar terms stresses the force and totality of this renunciation."
— Jeff, May 3, 2007 5:58 PM
Jeff, May 3, 2007 5:58 PM << Home
