Neothoughts

After having used Netscape heavily for over a month now, I have noticed numerous differences between it and Digg. One such difference is that Netscape does not have a method for users to mark stories as lame. Anchors have the final say on when a story is removed from the system. This is pretty key because it means that Netscape users only have the ability to increase a story’s importance in the system, whereas on Digg, users can act as moderators on stories as well, actively decreasing a story’s importance.

Here, I will explore the benefits that I have noticed each site has experienced as a result of this differing quality:

Benefits for Digg

Leaving the moderation to the users gives Digg (the company) less work to do. Why moderate the system when you can have your users do it? It saves you the cost of having moderators on staff. Here’s a handy formula:
Have users create your value for free => ??? => Profit!

This might be an obvious one, but it should be said anyway: stories that the community thinks are lame are removed from the system. Democratic moderation produces front page news that is more indicative of the community’s interests than professional moderation.

There is less chance that spam will see the light of day on the front page of Digg because users can act instantly on any they see. Having people democratically remove spam in large systems is more efficient than having a group of 8 professional moderators do it.

Benefits for Netscape

You’ll notice that stories on the front page of Netscape regularly have hundreds of comments. And people continue to comment on stories for weeks after they’ve been on the front page. One of my submissions from 34 days ago is at 600+ comments and is still generating discussion daily. People come to Netscape and debate issues at great length rather than just leaving a “marked as lame” comment and moving on.

Users can only act positively on stories. Anything they do to a story (submit, vote or comment) increases its importance in the system. I am convinced this produces a more positive environment than one where users are constantly concerned with the quality of stories in the system. It also prevents elitist attitudes from popping up and declaring that “this content isn’t good enough for Netscape!”

Users are unable to band together and mass-report something, thereby suppressing articles they don’t agree with. What stays on the front page is ultimately decided by employees of Netscape who are paid to be concerned about the quality of the content.

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Both methods have benefits from a business perspective and from a user perspective. Both also result in the users engaging in the system in different ways. So if both methods are so good, why not employ a mix of both instead of one or the other? Can social moderators and professional moderators be more efficient together than they are apart?

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