Digg town hall meeting is over - fighting spam answers all questions

As promised, Digg held its first "town hall" meeting yesterday (via UStream), and although it was fun to see founders Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose answer questions in front of a camera -- laptops in hand, Diggnation style -- we didn't really learn much new.

Almost all of the key questions (Bury Brigades, the algorithm, moderators etc.) can be answered in one sentence: Digg's main priority is fighting spam.

There isn't an auto-bury feature but Digg does maintain a black list of sites that are deemed repeat spammers or have tried to game the system. Digg does employ moderators - only one is on shift at any one time -- the job of which is to weed out porn and other illegal content. Digg's algorithm works hard to combat spam and encourage diversity by taking into account how diverse the pool of Diggers are for any one story. Nothing new learnt here.

On the issue of most importance to me - why Digg doesn't display who has burried a story as it does for whose dugg it - the answer given is that it would encourage community fighting and unrest if you could see the people who spoilt your submission. In the future Digg may at least display a bury count.

For more coverage check out Deep Jive Interests.