// UPDATE - Ok, so this might be an ironic turn of events, but this story was reported lame by users at digg. There’s obviously a need for some etiquette to hit the mainstream so that shit like this doesn’t happen. If you agree, toss a comment back up on the digg post…
Alrighty so there’s a ton of diggers out there, and they seem to keep multiplying. With that, tons of new users come in every day and have ABSOLUTELY no idea how to digg, how to get your stories to the front page, and how to keep the digg economy strong.
So here are a few bullet points on how to fix that:
* Please search for something a bit more than 30 seconds before you post a story. There are so many duplicate stories that it’s almost difficult to digg something up anymore because you’re not sure if you’re just bringing old news back. The best way to do this isn’t to just submit your story and try to have digg figure out if it’s a dupe or not. Type in some key words into the search field, and then when it goes to search, make sure you use the ADVANCED SEARCH feature and take your search back to “From All Time” so that you don’t just search the last 7 days. This will give you a more accurate representation…
* Don’t put up a blog post just to have a paragraph excerpt of another article. Yes, it’ll bring you a ton of traffic, but the catch is that if your blog goes down, someone has to dig (no pun intended) to find the link you should have posted in the first place!
* NO MORE FREAKING REFERRAL CODES. Ok, I thought it was pretty cool in the beginning. Shit, I even submitted my own referral code and tried to drop it on the front page, and of course I got negative comments and dugg down. Don’t do that crap, it’ll only get you haters on digg, and most likely, it won’t hit the front page.
* Don’t digg down a comment just because it disagrees with you or your views don’t match up. The point of the commenting system is to create constructive criticism. If I, as a Mac user, think that a feature is cool, just because you’re a Windows fanboy doesn’t mean you have the right to digg down my comment. If the comment has bad grammar/poorly written/has no real benefit then sure, you can digg it down. I’m always a fan of digging down “omg this is sooo stupid” because what gain does that give to ANY conversation?
OTHER ways to help out the digg economy
* Before you start digging something up that you think is old and may have been a dupe, do a search for it, much like when you submit a story for the first time. If, indeed, you do find that it’s a dupe, flag the post and post a comment that links to the original, to support your claim. Burying stories for no reason is stupid and destroys the digg economy, but if you back yourself up, you’ll be good.
If you think there’s more to add to this…submit a comment here or back at digg, and I’ll try to revise the post…
Happy digging folks!
Matt Galligan
digitalsoap Founder and President
// UPDATE
To be added thanks to prof23 from digg.
* Ok folks, shit happens, and dupes happen. As much as we can try to keep them from happening, sometimes the search doesn’t always work, and sometimes dupes get through. Rather than posting comments to flame the person that did it, I’m gonna go back to a previous comment and re-mention constructive criticism. Instead of flaming, rather, just bury the story, it’s that simple. Maybe even post a link to the story that it duplicated, that might help new users coming in to find the original article. Just bury the story folks, there’s no need to have a billion “DUPE +0 diggs” comments…it’s just silly
[tags]digg, digg etiquette, social news[/tags]
