Digg users spurred to register and contribute

My story yesterday, “Digg’s 8 million “social freeloaders”, in which I discuss the Social Web’s very low user contribution ratio, has spurred passive Digg readers to become active Digg contributors!

Registered, active Digg user “kazzyD”, submitted my story to Digg yesterday and he engaged the Digg community about their “digging roles”. Here are some of the posted comments:

• 1. There's a lot of inertia on the web. I have a photo on Flickr that's been looked at 20,000 times (yes...it's of a cute girl) and commented on 23 times. Either there's nothing much to say... or it takes too much effort to say it. I don't know which. 2. People are kind of scared off by the general snarkiness of sites like this. Let's face it... people mod down or are rude for political affiliation, having a contrary opinion, or just because they happen to be in a bad mood. Hell... I've done it myself. Digg makes it pretty easy to make people feel like losers because of unlimited individual comment modding. And who wants to register for abuse?,
• Currently the majority of active posters and commenters isnt a good cross-section of the community who reads. For instance Xbox and Nintendo fans dominate and are the most vocal in the Gaming area. Compare that to the actual gaming public overall, and you would see how skewed that ends up being. To me Digg is like Fox News on the surface, and International Press underneath. The frontpage gives you alot of junk that is potentially biased or skewed in some way, but if you take the time to look, you find alot of quality informative stories. So it takes a little commitment to find consistently good stuff, since you have to wade through alot of lame/old/innacurate stories, but the overall experience can be rewarding,
• Commenting means getting attacked by jerks. Why bother? When that problem is solved than there will be more feedback,
• This reminds me a lot of America. A small portion of society takes action, the rest watches,
• The main reason I think people don't submit stories is for the fear of seen their story not get noticed and not being dugg. I mean I'd be pretty disapointed if i submitted a story and it wasn't dug or anyone payed attention to it.So it would lead to me not submitting stories if it has no point of attraction attention. But thats just me :T,
• The difference between ZDnet and Digg is that ZDnet actually produces content. No, "comments" do not count as produced content. For intents and purposes Digg is just another multi-user blog that still links to content on sites with writers. It's a misnomer to call Digg a "news" site because Digg doesn't have writers. Nobody on Digg is doing investigation or reporting,
• Whoah there buddy. Being the first to submit someone else's story isn't exactly winner's circle material. It's slightly obsessive, very appreciated and it's the meat and potatoes of the site. But winners and losers? Spending part-time job kinds of hours submitting stories to a site that doesn't pay you anything isn't my idea of winning. But I'm endlessly appreciative that some love the site enough to do it,
• The problem isn't necessarily with digg. It's the age old problem of having something "for the people, by the people" turn into something run by the 4 percent elite. Sure, it's not necessarily digg's fault (though specific action could be taken to minimize the issue). It's just an intriguing paradox worth thinking about...,
• Maybe the people who register at Digg self-select on the basis of wanting to be elite (i.e. they are elitists). In questioning why community blogs always fall to the left, it has occurred to me that the participating sub-section of total users by definition want to shove their opinions down your throat. Maybe online social experiments only attract the worst elements of society,
• But every system has weaknesses. ZDNet is making an interesting observation that can't easily be dismissed by irrational pro-Diggers,
• Leaving "submitting news" aside, the point is that not even 4 percent of readers bother to register and digg articles they like. Submitting stories can be a pain for the reasons you mentioned, but isn't the 4 percent activity rate problematic for a site supposedly "social" or web2.0?,
• OK, i just registered. are you happy?,
• 7.99999 million other friends? He must really throw the average of friends from 2.08 really far off." He brings the average *up* to 2.08. It makes 300,000 digg users with no friends seem close to normal,
• I've registered more than once - hmm 4 times? five times? who knows. I'm sure I'm not unique in that respect. Register, make a few dumb comments, then say "I don't want to be that person anymore". Shoot,... now I have to ditch this alias too. This one was kinda growin on me,
• Thanks for making me feel better. Out of pure guilt, I finally took the time to register. Considering I read 20-30 articles a day, I'm a serious freeloader. Time to contribute,
• "I do my part by writeing usless comments." And I do mine by writing sarcastic comments: Nice spelling, there!,
• bet there are 300,000 active users, and 8.2 million NSA agents spying on them,
• Surely Digg itself is a "freeloader" -- it doesn't provide any content, or much of anything. It lists some URLs and allows people to comment on them. What value is it adding here?

Thanks Digg users, for the 168 comments and 1236 diggs, and counting!

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