The swift growth of the Digg.com user-submitted and policed news site has suffered from spamming and attempts to game the system; Kevin Rose blogged that help is on the way.
Digg has enjoyed the benefits and the pains of rapid growth. To combat the latter, Rose announced that more user tools would be deployed to help improve the Digg experience.
Digg’s popularity has led to abuse by a couple of different types of users. One is the spammer, who loads the queue with bogus news stories in an attempt to get people to click to the site, where the usual assortment of ads appear. It’s a simple money grab. Other spammers just want to cause trouble and ruin the site for others.
The other type of abuser tries to game the system. By getting a story promoted to the front page of Digg, usually with the help of confederates and/or numerous bogus user accounts, that site gets an enormous popularity boost and thousands of hits. That can translate to a big ad-click payday or just bragging rights.
Rose wrote that Digg has been rolling out and deploying “automated fraud control methods” weekly. Along with that behind-the-scenes work, Rose wants to enlist the very active Digg community to assist:
Much like Wikipedia and Slashdot, we are going to be releasing some features that give administration of this fraud/spam to you, the users. In the near future, you will have the ability to join together and ban inappropriate content site wide…. Still, the idea is to harness the same power that makes Digg so fast and effective to help eliminate fraud equally as fast and effectively.
More details on the initiative should be coming soon from Rose.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
