The whole idea of social bookmarking sites is that democratic voting and policing will level the playing field — more relevant, interesting and sometimes rare news, articles or information make it to the top, or the frontpage in the case of Digg.com.
While every bit of effort is being done to unmask groups which try to game the system and prevent the same, it will IMO be an unending battle. The very same social idea of wisdom of the crowd will be it’s own Achilles’ heel.
I have been constantly receiving emails, PMs or IM messages asking to Digg something up. They mostly come from friends and fellow bloggers. Even if the message says “IF you like the story, please digg”, I am more likely to digg it than say seeing the article right on Digg itself.
But Digg does not want this kind of digging behavior, despite the fact that they actually encourage spreading Digg tools/features such as Friends’ Diggs, RSS onsite Digg buttons, and the like. Digg wants the whole process to be democratic but we all know that in any democratic system, there will always be politics. And part of this politics is convincing people esp. friends to ascribe to your idea or opinion, and in Digg’s case by digging his article or blog post.
Digg doesn’t want its members to follow the idea of reciprocal digging — I digg you, you digg me. But reciprocating favors is an inherent social behavior. In the plant and animal kingdom, they call it a symbiotic relationship or to be more specific mutualism.
So, which is it now — social or anti-social?
It’s social, unless it’s bots who do the digging now.
We should have a list of Pinoy stories to digg!