Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control.

News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ.

How it Works

Readers can view all of the stories that have been submitted by fellow users in the "digg/News/Upcoming" section of the site. Once a story has received enough "diggs", it appears on Digg's front page. Should the story not receive enough diggs, or if enough users report a problem with the submission, the story will remain in the "digg all" area, where it may eventually be removed.

Articles are short summaries of stories on other websites with links to the stories, and provisions for readers to comment on the story. All content and access to the site is free, but registration is compulsory for certain elements, such as promoting ("digging") stories, submitting stories and commenting on stories. Digg also allows for stories to be posted to a user's blog automatically when he or she diggs a story.

Originally, stories could be submitted in fifteen different categories which include: deals, gaming, links, mods, music, robots, security, technology, Apple, design, hardware, Linux/Unix, movies, programming, science and software. With the release of Digg 3.0 on June 26, 2006, the categories became divided into 6 containers: Technology, Science, World & Business, Sports, Entertainment, Gaming, with sub-categories.

Criticism

Digg has sometimes come under criticism in for varying reasons. Most complaints are centered on the site's form of user-moderation: some feel the users have too much control over content, allowing sensationalism and misinformation to thrive.[5][6] The site has also suffered the risk of companies paying for stories submitted to the site,[7][8][9] similar to the phenomenon of company-attempted Google bombing. In the same domain, the site has come under criticism for "Search Engine Gaming" and "cluttering Google search results"[6] (a Slashdot effect).

Others feel that the site's operators may exercise too much control over which articles appear on the front page as well as the comments on Digg's forums.[10][11] Some users complain that they have been blocked from posting, and their accounts disabled, for making comments in the user-moderated forums that conflict with the personal interests of Digg's operators.[12] The existence of the "bury" option has also been criticized as undemocratic and due to its anonymous nature, unaccountable,[13] which often leads to expungement of criticism of hotbed topics like evolution and global warming that does not mesh with the prevailing view of the community. Another criticism in this area has been[14] how a faulty or misleading article can reach many users quickly, blowing out of proportion the unsupported claims or accusations (a mob mentality).