For those of you that don’t know Digg is basically submitting anything on the web for rating by giving it a Digg. The art of digging yourself will always smack of desperation to me. i know why people do it, but asking me to Digg without letting me make my own judgement will always result in one foremost feeling in me – that you are desperate. Amongst the web annoyances the cry of “please dig me” is getting a frequent contender for the top ten rating. By stating “Digg this” you are only making me have the assumptions along the lines of – you need the hits, your site isn’t being commented on, your content isn’t good enough to get digged without people actually making own mind up.
On the other hand, if you ask me to read a post I will and if I like it there will always be a potential Digg. This way you also don’t get back ups before reading even happens. Rating something just because a person tells you is to me pointless. Digg itself is a lot like a popularity contest. I prefer my own corner of Digg to be based on the content not on a request. On that note, don’t demand I Digg you – that results in me not even bothering to read your content. Most people don’t react well to being ordered and I fall into that category.
I admit that once I did post myself on DIgg. This was something I did as having a bit of a sheep moment and regretted. It just didn’t sit right – too much llike shouting “I’m great” or “I need hits”. I firmly feel that if you are good enough people will DIgg you – so what’s the point in begging? Yes, there is a stupid amount of post noise online – but is annoying people and begging going to make you be heard. If it is, is that the reason you want to get anywhere?
I like to see Digg as something to give me gems and duds – unfortunately due to the self publicising nature of it, often it’s a dud. Let your content speak for itself and don’t devalue it by pimping yoursellf with a begging Digg bowl. Leave the fate up to the Digg god’s. It feels really nice if you get on Digg just by others not because of self promotional ordering. I will never ask someone to Digg unconditionally, if you feel something I write is good then Digg it.
Good point. But sometimes you might digg your own post to get the word out on something. Say a post about a bug in something, or something that will really help a lot of people, maybe the post was unnoticed for the most part and digging it yourself and asking a few friends to digg it will get the digg crowd to notice and they’ll take it from there. Because even if you ask a few friends to digg your post it wont get to the frontpage unless the digg crowd deems it good.
I think you have a valid point, only issue is that it’s a minority case. I guess my blanketing is the problem and you have to see both sides to make your evaluation. Digg is not evil – it’s simply a tool open easily to abuse.
I do feel it is an indicator at the lack of manners online. There is too much demanding and not enough reaslising that if everyone clicked every link they were shown they would never do any work. The simple word of please hurts nobody – I know feel soooo old for saying that.