What do you Digg? Elements and Modifications to enhance Digg
August 16, 2007
UPDATE: This article has evolved into a new, expanded update. You can check it out here
It has been a while since a member of the Digg Army put up a call for users to discuss ideas and suggestions to Digg.com. I presume that is where the power of Digg truly is: in the hands of its audience, and it is apparent that Kevin Rose and company have listened to excellent suggestions in the past.
Yes, it has been some time, so I thought I might see if the Diggocracy was up for Round ∞ of a new Digg Suggestion thread.
The most obvious suggestions and thoughts are things like a Picture Section, and to get the whole comments system fiasco fixed and/or improved. For this, I tried to list some other concepts and enhancements that are a little less than obvious.
Off the top of my head, here are some of the areas I would love to see development in:
Outgoing Clicks vs. Diggs
The Digg Effect transpires frequently to sites that are not able to cope with the amount of hits they are receiving; and one of the most common statements about this by users is when a submission has a small amount of diggs on the front page yet goes down. Though it is not a resolution to the Digg effect, I believe it would be practical for users to see a marker on the story page indicating how many outgoing clicks the story has had. This would give Diggers a better gauge to see the difference between the amount of diggs and the quantity of page views. Unless you run your own site, most people would have no idea as to how enormously different the numbers turn out to be once a story hits the front page.
Comment Score
Call it a user's karma, reputation; providence, or standing, one characteristic that Digg is sorely lacking is some kind of "user score system". The ideal technique to develop this would most likely be based on the amount of positive and negative diggs your comments obtain. There have been a few user made tools that have popped up over the last year that have revealed how useful this kind of system could be. As an example, if a user has made only two comments on Digg posts, one with a score of +42 and another with a score of -2, their karma/reputation score would be +40. This would be a clever tool when adding friends, as in it would be advantageous when identifying users positively contributing to Digg as opposed to those who calculatingly troll for negative diggs.
Transparent Burying
Back around the times shortly before and shortly after The Digg Revolt, one of the objections that was driving me batshit insane was made by users when a story would drop from the main page or the upcoming stories list. "It is a conspiracy," some would screech, as others would claim it was some forceful censorship made by Digg. Whilst the administrators evidently delete stories that do not comply with Digg's Terms of Service, the main reason these articles drop off is because of the amount of people that have buried the story. Making burying blatant would be an easy way to combat these issues. Not only should users be able to see the number of people who buried the story; but they should also see (statistically) the main motivations behind why the story was buried. What percentage believed the story was inaccurate? How many people thought it was lame?
New Sections/Topics
One of my pet irritations at Digg is when I come across something interesting I want to submit, there does not seem to be an adequate category for it. Political News, Political Opinion, and US Elections 2008 should be repositioned into its own group, away from World and Business; simply because there are a lot of members at Digg that just do not get into the whole political debate thing. It's understandable. Religious, spiritual, and philosophical topics often get submitted to Digg as well; so I would imagine it would be advantageous to have a Religion and Philosophy section as well. Being an Aussie, I cannot help but wish for the addition of AFL Footy and Cricket to the sports section. Entertainment could use some development as well; with the inclusion of Books / Literature; or even Web Humor so that amusing submissions that are not news doo not get lumped into the Offbeat News section.
Search
Let us face it. Digg's search function sucks. Seriously, it sucks goats. I mean, if you really put their search page underneath a goat, I am sure it would seriously start sucking it. It's that bad. In the past, I have used Google to search for Digg articles, with some better success than at the site itself. Perhaps Kevin Rose and Crew should team up with Google to enhance their search function. If a cesspit like MySpace can work with Google to improve their search function (and no matter how much you loathe MySpace, you have to admit, their searching tools improved considerably after teaming with Google), then imagine the improvements Digg would have. Come on, Kevin, you dropped them as your advertisers; surely you could throw them a bone for this particular area - especially as seeing it is their pioneering field.
Expand World News
As mentioned, I am originally from Australia, and constantly thought it would be a great feature if Digg regionalized the World News section so that I could peruse the info on what is going on back home. Clearly, expanding this category on the main submission page would make things a little congested, design-wise. My suggestion would be that if a user selects World News, after clicking on the submit button they would be taken to a second page where they could refine the information for their world news.
For example, if I submitted an article about Oklahoma City, on the second page, I could select: United States → Oklahoma → Oklahoma City
Or if I submitted an article about Perth, Australia, I could select: Australia → Western Australia → Perth
NSFW Button
I think nearly each one of us who navigate through Digg have at one point or another, clicked on a story at work only to find the picture is erotic, politically incorrect, profanely offensive, or bloody and gory. Whichever way, it would not be a nice sight to learn that your boss was standing behind you when you clicked that link. Nothing says, "You're Fired" better than the facial expression of your employer after seeing massive silicon impregnated breasts bouncing up and down ravenously on your flat panel monitor. The unfortunate thing is sometimes submitters basically neglect or forget to add in a NSFW label in their title or description. A convenient addition would be a clickable NSFW button for each story. Based upon how many people click the NSFW button, Digg could then automatically add a label to the title affirming, "Many Diggers have reported that this story may be NSFW".
Accelerating Stories
The Upcoming Stories list is a fantastic feature at Digg. However, the number of diggs a story gets does not necessarily mean it will consequentially jump to the next page. The "Hot in All Topics" list is a reasonable gauge for what will hit the home page next; but I think this deserves a its own sort option as in the "Show Most Commented" and "Show Most Popular" filters. Call it "Show Accelerating Stories", meaning this filter will give you a list of posts most likely to hit the front page next.
My Top 10
I like making use of the "My #1" function in my profile, and often enjoy checking out my friends' #1 article as well. I think that this feature could be expanded somewhat: make it "My Top 10" and it can be displayed on the right hand side of screen just like the "Hot in all Topics" and the "Top 10 in all topics" lists. Users can modify their top 10 in their profile, and once finished, it will display their list on their profile. In addition, it would be a fun little widget for people to include on their blogs and web sites. Besides, if the front page is anything to go by, there's a lot of people that love Top 10 lists...
Blocking Users
Ever since the comments system was "improved" the whole concept of blocking users has completely changed. Now you only get a Block button when you bury a comment, which is pretty silly. And even then, if you go through a comment thread with a blocked user, their submission will be shown as a buried comment. These new modifications have somewhat discredited and defeated the whole purpose of blocking users to begin with. If I want to block an asshat, it is because I do not want to put up with their retarded shenanigans. The old technique of blocking was far more effective and user-friendly and I would recommend bringing it back.
Undo
So, you unintentionally buried a comment made by someone that you wanted to digg? No worries, just undo it. Wait, you cannot do that. Come on, Digg. I think we've all done this in the past and it is even worse when you accidentally digg a comment you meant to bury... since all of your friends will see that you dugg some jackass. Give us an undo button for comment digging.
Editing Time for Submissions
One thing I could never grasp in Digg was that you were given a certain amount of allowable time to edit your comments; but not for story submissions. This sucks, predominantly when you make spelling errors in your title or description. The last thing anybody wants is to publish a story that will set off the alarms in the secret headquarters of the Digg Spelling and Grammar Nazis. Editing time for story submissions would genuinely be appreciated by many users.
It has been a while since a member of the 
