Top 10 Digg Front Page stories this week that FAIL


added by JD Rucker on June 6th, 2008

Sometimes submissions will hit the front page of Digg that just don’t belong there. Some are pushed to the front page because of misleading titles. Others are bad but got there because they were pics (which seem to have an easier time hitting and subsequently moving to the top). A few were simply spam and were artificially promoted by armies of paid diggers.

This is not meant to insult the submitters. Many if them hit the front page often because they submit great content. These ones, however, weren’t as good as what they usually post.

Either way, this, the first list of many that will be posted weekly, should be the worst list we post. Why? Because we need YOUR help.

To the right, you will see portion of the sidebar called “Got a Story.” This is a way to contact the administrators and “submit” stories that are either great and didn’t hit the front page or terrible ones that should never have hit.

Without further ado, the list…

10 -Sell a Sex Toy - Go to Jail (in Alabama)

http://digg.com/people/Sell_a_Sex_Toy_Go_to_Jail_in_Alabama - 247 diggs

Mildly interesting, but not digg material. This one was buried from the front page and removed.

9 - Pacman could be fully reinstated by Sept. 1 if behavior hold

http://digg.com/football/Pacman_could_be_fully_reinstated_by_Sept_1_if_behavior_hold - 324 diggs

Pacman Jones is an interesting character, one who gets in trouble a lot, has a world of potential in football, and usually doesn’t seem to care. Of course, football pre-season hasn’t even started and it looks like he’ll be a nickle back or 2nd stringer when it does start, so we really don’t care. But hey, it’s sports. Easy category to hit on without a ton of diggs.

8 -What Do Japanese People Really Think of Eric Clapton? (PIC)

http://digg.com/music/What_Do_Japanese_People_Really_Think_of_Eric_Clapton_PIC -1458 Diggs

Stong submitter. Not a strong submission. You can’t win them all!

7 - Image of the Purported Alien

http://digg.com/space/Image_of_the_Purported_Alien — 2242 Diggs

This added a little value to the site. Not much. It’s obviously fake and it didn’t really say anything.

6 - This was how the big panda survived in the earthquake[GIF]

http://digg.com/pets_animals/This_was_how_the_big_panda_survived_in_the_earthquake_GIF — 3632 diggs

And?

5 - Indiana Jones’ Crash Course in Wooing Women

http://digg.com/movies/Indiana_Jones_Crash_Course_in_Wooing_Women - 532 diggs

I love Indy, but what a boring story. Played on the popularity of the buzz with a great title. Story didn’t match in quality.

4 - MAN RIPS OFF BEARD (looks like newborn babe afterwards)

http://digg.com/music/MAN_RIPS_OFF_BEARD_looks_like_newborn_babe_afterwards - 1257 diggs

sigh

3 - Evil Bunny [PIC]

http://digg.com/pets_animals/Evil_Bunny_PIC — 3289 Diggs

“Evil” + “Bunny” + “Pic” = FRONT PAGE!

2 - ahhh! Me iz Sleepy, Whatz about you?

http://digg.com/pets_animals/ahhh_Me_iz_Sleepy_Whatz_about_you — 1617 diggs

I thought we were done with lolcats? I know for a fact that Digg was supposedly done with crappy lolcats, and this one wasn’t that good.

1 - Southern California Skateparks

http://digg.com/travel_places/Southern_California_Skateparks - 601 Diggs

People complain about top users getting paid for diggs. Then, stories like this pop up that someone clearly promoted. It is spammy, uninformative, had a terrible, local title that 99% of the Digg population wouldn’t care about, and the opening batch of comments were so obviously planted there as paid comments it’s a wonder that they even tried to act interested in skateboarding. FAIL!

fail Top 10 Digg Front Page stories this week that FAIL

popFAIL is a repository of submissions that should have become popular but failed for one reason or another.If you are interested in contributing, you can just sign up and start contributing straight away!

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14 Comments

  1. don’t like anymore digg

    #1 Ionela

  2. aww man
    get a life and stop being an internet POLICE.
    I bet you have better stuff to do than checking which story is good or not..
    go get laid punk

    #2 Loser

  3. Well, I give everyone that submitted an article an A for effort. Keep trying, and the only people that FAIL are the people that don’t have the balls to try.

    #3 LewP

  4. Don’t digg them if you don’t like them.

    #4 Dustin

  5. Interesting analysis. I’ll be looking forward to the next top ten.

    #5 ThinkingSerious

  6. This is one of the problems that digg suffers from, a crappy story will hit the front page only because the submitter was a top user, like MrBabyMan could submit an image of a pile of crap and write the cheesiest title/description ever, and it would hit the front page, only because it was submitted by him. content isn’t a main factor of the equation.

    There are of course also some regular topics that are always sure to hit the front page no matter of the quality, like XKCD cartoons, Zero Punctuation, NASA image of the day, these will almost always hit the front page no matter if they’re interesting or not.

    #6 bakkouz

  7. @bakkouz
    Exactly, thats one of the reasons why we created popFAIL - so that stories that did fail to go popular, but were worthy of a spot can get some love too.

    We’ve also decided to keep the blog as open as possible. We feel that Digg is a community effort, and sometimes the algorithm can be biased (for whatever reason), so this blog should really be a community effort, and not just the viewpoint of a couple of people.

    It just appears that the blog is just the viewpoint of a couple of people right now, because the blog is so new.

    So for anyone that wants to contribute, please do!

    #7 Mark Lancaster

  8. I’ve stopped logging into Digg anymore since submitting is pointless unless you add every user you see and agreeing on mutual favors of digging each others submissions whether or not you like the other’s submission just to have your submission seen.
    The only other useful thing logging into Digg might be useful for is to join in discussions about topics but apparently, the only discussions Diggers are interested in having is singing the next line of the Portal’s song, copy-pasting ascii images and typing out direct quotes of the week’s Yahtzee’s video.
    I still go to Digg, but I don’t bother logging in since there really isn’t a point to do so anymore. Sorry for the long rant, thought I’d share my thoughts of why I think Digg is nosediving passed mediocrity to a new all time low.

    #8 xTRUMANx

  9. [...] [via popFAIL] [...]

    #9   Top 10 misleading Digg stories title — winandmac.com

  10. I guess it all depends on your point of view and preferences
    I find Digg a useful service and tool to find stories and sites on the internet , that are in my areas of interest and sometimes serendipity that I most likely would not of found elsewhere
    Its one stop shopping

    #10 St Vital

  11. Twitter and Reddit are to Digg today as
    Drudgereport was to CNN in 1997

    #11 Chanonymous

  12. I find myself looking through the upcoming lists more often these days. I tend to find better stuff there.

    #12 Greevar

  13. Wow great list thanks! Very informative.

    #13 Justin Hernandez

  14. [...] Top 10 Digg Front Page stories this week that FAIL (tags: digg socialmedia *) [...]

    #14 links for 2008-06-10 « Simply… A User

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