Love and Hate with Digg and Blogs

As the author of a relatively new Blog (4 months in), of course I was happy to find out about Digg. I was even more happy once I learned how to integrated Digg into my WordPress 2.1 website (Blog), and see my traffic start increasing as readership grew. Initially, without knowing what I was doing, I was walking around with a digg smile on my face, submitting my own articles, and going about my day skipping and being merry!

After some time, I noticed some pretty vulgar comments toward some of my posts. I was really shocked by the comments (which I refuse to reference here, due to their vulgarity); so as any Blogger would…I started researching why this blog bash was occurring. Why would people be so crass for no apparent reason? My posts didn’t seem to have any bad information, and certainly nothing that should bring someone to anger. So I kept looking, and the more I “dug” (pun intended) into this topic, the more I came to realize that frequent Digg users seem to despise Bloggers who have monetized their websites. I’m not really sure why this is, and after looking into it more, I still can’t come up with any legitimate reasons, nonetheless…Diggers definitely dislike Bloggers in general. “So what?”…you ask. “This should not affect Bloggers in a negative way.” However, when you consider the control given Diggers to “Bury” a comment, a post, or an entire website, this Diggers’ disdain can be extremely harmful to the unsuspecting Blogger.

This love/hate relationship in particular has been a huge topic of interest in the Web 2.0 world as of late! Even high profile Bloggers such as John Chow don’t seem to be out of reach of the ruthless Diggers. Please let it be stated that most individuals in the Digg community don’t mind Digging blogs; this post is not meant for that group. It is the other side of Digg, the nasty Diggers at which this post is aimed. That ugly, vulgar, childish side of Digg that should be exposed, remedied, or eliminated. While my URL has not yet been banned, from what I’ve read about Bloggers submitting their own posts…it may not be long until I’m added to the list of banned sites. Why? I’m not sure. My site has no spam or anything of the sort being posted to it, nevertheless, that doesn’t seem to matter. We’ll see where that goes…

On a positive note, Digg did recently make a policy change regarding their Top Digger list. Read more about that here. Hopefully this change will help Digg culture move away from the blogger bashing (which seems to have grown with Digg popularity) and move back towards a friendly, helpful, and educational social networking tool. We’ll see…

To help pinpoint the negative view Diggers have on Bloggers, let’s inspect who they want banned. The banning campaign seems to be directed toward SEO blogs, and blogs on how to monetize your blog. The other crowd wearing a target on their backs are Bloggers who submit their own posts. Two great examples of legitimate sites being unfairly affected by Digger disdain are JohnChow.com and TopRankBlog.com. TopRankBlog is a SEO blog, but is not in any way shape or form, a spamming engine. John Chow has great content that thousands and thousands of people from around the world, enjoy reading daily. I could go on about these sites being wrongfully banned, but I digress…this topic has been covered enough.

The intended purpose of this article is not to bash the Diggers in question, but to appeal to their intellect. Firstly, when someone submits their own posts, if that is a big problem, educate them with a courteous comment informing them of the negative affects it could have if they continue. While this may seem like a big deal, it’s not…it would take just as long to write an educational comment as it would a nasty, vulgar one. Secondly, if sites featuring SEO, or blog monetization reach the front page, let them be!! Obviously someone wants to read the information!

This post is geared at becoming a comment farm for this topic…so please, whichever side of the fence you’re on…comment away. Let us know how you feel…but more importantly, why you feel that way. Also, please be objective, and keep the comments clean and educational.

Thank you.

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