Obvious, but topical nonetheless considering the fanboy meltdown we’ve seen over Yahoo daring to use voting. Jason takes it on…

Let me point out a couple of things:

1. Kevin Rose did not create the concept of voting.
2. Kevin Rose DID copy the idea for digg from our friend Josh at delicious.com and has been very public about that. [ Note: I sad copy, not "stole.]”
3. No one “owns” the idea of social bookmarking or social news, and if someone does it’s Slashdot who really started the concept 10 years ago.
4. The “digg mob” is bunch of 12-year old kids–it’s best to ignore them.

I think what rubs me wrong about this is exactly what this link (also found in Jason’s post) says:

There is currently a story on Digg.com about Yahoo ripping off Digg which has led to thousands of immature & hypocritical Diggers spamming and tearing apart the Yahoo Suggestion Boards with spam about Yahoo ripping off Digg.

Kevin Rose needs to step up and stop this irresponsible mob scene nonsense.

Digg can no longer be used as a breeding ground for such malicious behavior and targeted hitlists.

Using Digg and its community as an attack tool is wrong.

The irony is that Yahoo Suggestion Boards are nothing like Digg. They only use Digg-style voting, which has been commonly adapted throughout the web, to prioritize user feedback.

* Users cannot submit offsite articles or stories, only suggestions and feedback for certain Yahoo channels.
* There is no social news sharing.
* There is no burrying.
* There is no marketing of the service.
* It’s more of an internal tool than anything.

Yahoo should be commended for using Digg style voting in a way that is beneficial to the Yahoo support and feedback teams.

Now, Yahoo can prioritize feedback more efficiently and if you have 100’s of Yahoo users voting on one suggestion, it’s probably worth paying attention to.

And this comment:

Digg wanted a user-controlled environment, they got it. It is now becoming a very nasty place with tons of useless and inaccurate information.

Well, the truth is it is a nasty place. An ugly place where if you dare question Kevin’s greatness, you’re buried, modded down, and trashed. Kevin’s a great guy. Digg is awesome now that they’ve allowed the idiots who didn’t get the concept to post their Bush bashes into a news section. My problem with Digg was solved and I was happily chugging along and reading every day.

But the ugly side of digg is bad. It has become the digital equivalent of a lynch mob and the one guy who has the power to settle it down is keeping his mouth shut.

Maybe it’s because he agrees with the mob rather than the sensible and rational commenters who don’t care about Yahoo’s move?

And before you rush to tell me how Kevin can’t control his users and he’s not supposed to, I’ll agree with you, but just say that I’m not asking him to control them. I am saying, though, that him coming out publicly and saying to let it go would go a long way toward ending the childishness we’re seeing now.

It’ll be interesting to see if he does that at some point.

Technorati Tags: digg, yahoo, kevin rose, jason calacanis

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 8:12 am and is filed under Obvious. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.