Kevin Rose wrote another post about gaming Digg. It was a policy statement with no real news, but, still,it needed to be said. The gaming of Digg is real and sometimes bad.
Some people have said that recent efforts to calm the bad gaming are killing Digg, other people seem to not understand the value of gaming at all.
The "bigg" news? Kevin says they are scrapping the Top Diggers list:
So what does this all mean? After considerable internal debate and discussion with many of those who make up the Top Digger list, we’ve decided to remove the list beginning tomorrow. As for what’s next, we’re currently working on designing and refining the technologies required that will help enable our nearly 900,000 registered users to make real connections that we believe will greatly enhance the Digg experience – whether you’re brand new to the site or have been on Digg since the beginning. We plan on rolling this out in the coming months along with features and programs that do a better job of rewarding positive contributions to the Digg community.
This is a subtle shift - well, as subtle as a brick to the head, anyway.
One rule about community is that you don't remove central features of a community without replacing it with something else. This is why nation building is so hard, you can't immediately replace one government with another and in the interim uncertainty and doubt are all people have.
In an on-line community, uncertainty and doubt are not good design.
So, the top users list, yeah, it's a bit monolithic, it doesn't represent communities, and it rewards cronyism and power-brokering. So, it's not so good.
Here's a couple of other metrics that will allow healthy gaming and reward site usage:
1. Best Unique Networks - Not the largest network, but the largest unique networks. If handled right, this would measure the people who are the nodes in various sub-communities on Digg.
2. Most ReDigged - If I bring up three stories in a month, but each routinely gets 20,000 Diggs - that makes me pretty special. I'm bringing quality as opposed to quantity to Digg.
3. Best Community Members - These are people that really live on Digg itself. They comment on dugg stories, they keep the community rolling.
But guys, you gotta do it quick. Every day that people don't know what the metrics are, that's a day where you don't have a system to game at all. Games are fun.
People like Games.
People don't like Work.
Killing off all Games makes it Work.
Blogged at Gray Hill Harbor Offices in Seattle using Windows Live Writer
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