Jan 27 2006
Digg v. Slashdot
Chris Pirillo asks a great question…
I believe that more Digg commenters have their own blogs, whereas Slashdot participants seem to live vicariously (and primarily) through that community. Slashdot threadheads happen to post more than a sentence or two on any given subject; Digg is all about the quick fix. In the Slashdot community, there are human filters in place at the thread’s initiation. In Digg, everything is ruled by the community. Digg commenters (overall) are more rude and disrespectful, while Slashdot commenters tend to float into condescension and sarcasm with relative speed.
My question: which community of commenters is worse?
My answer? The other one.
January 27th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I’m a big fan of Digg. I still enjoy Slashdot, but the populist approach Digg has taken is refreshing. Slashdot, as the venerable elder, is staid but a bit stale in comparison. Probably the greatest complaint of Slashdotters is story selection, which is governed by an oligarchy of
January 27th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Oops - I put a “less-than” bracket in my comment, which killed the following text… Re-post!
ahem…
I’m a big fan of Digg. I still enjoy Slashdot, but the populist approach Digg has taken is refreshing. Slashdot, as the venerable elder, is staid but a bit stale in comparison. Probably the greatest complaint of Slashdotters is story selection, which is governed by an oligarchy of sub-5-digit UIDs. This morning, for instance, all eleven front-page stories were selected and submitted by two admins.
One lesson Digg should learn from Slashdot is comment moderation. Slashdot’s democratic moderation (and meta-moderation) engine is great for weeding out trolls and bad moderators, and for keeping discussions more or less on-topic. Digg’s comments regularly turn into flame wars and/or fanboy bitchfests. I rarely waste my time in Digg comments.
Slashdot admins know they’re getting an ass-kicking, and are discussing ways to drag Slashdot into the 21st century, but as with all things Slashdot, progress is slow - probably too slow to remain dominant.
January 27th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
See, the problem with digg isn’t as much the commenters, although they feed the actual problem.
The problem is digg is very popular, and people not only post whatever the hell they want there tech-related or not, but then commenter morons digg the stories, so these non-tech-related stories end up all over the place.
I have to say, it’s frustrated me to the point where I barely give digg a more than cursory glance and at times go days without even checking in.
January 27th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Slashdot has far better comments and a much bigger community. Some of the best comments can be found at Seen On Slash. Digg’s comment system is a complete waste.