Listening

Digg CEO, Jay Adelson

Digg the Blog: A couple updates… Digg the Blog is out today with an update on something that could or could not be a controversial move for their community. They are doing away with the top diggers list (I’m #276 with 21 front page stories out of 160 submitted).

Kevin says that Digg is doing this because:

“Which leads me to a disappointing trend that we’ve noticed over the past several months. Some of our top users – the people that have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours finding and digging the best stuff – are being blamed by some outlets as leading efforts to manipulate Digg. These users have been listed on the “Top Diggers” area of the site that was created in the early days of Digg when there was a strong focus on encouraging people to submit content. The list served a great purpose of recognizing those who were working hard to make Digg a great site, as well as a way for new users to discover new content. Now, as the site has matured and we regularly get 5,000+ content submissions per day, we believe there are better ways to discover new friends based on your interests and what you’re digging. So if you have been digging stories about digital cameras and Oolong tea, you will be introduced to other top users with those interests.”

And who knows if this is the right thing to do or not. It probably helps to make Digg a more democratic place and to this extent it probably is.

This story, as you would expect, made the front page of digg. And the single best comment that I’ve seen in the digg on this story? It comes from digg CEO Jay Adelson and is a silent comment that simply says (listening).

The story was submitted by Daniel Burka to digg (he works there).

So rather than immediately jump to defend their decision, or offer up all kinds of defenses, or set themselves up, etc. They listen. And to make sure that people know that they are listening Jay drops that note in there. That comment of Jay’s by the way has already been moded up 36 times (once by me included in there).

Listening to your community is an important thing. Whether this decision by Digg is right or not remains to be seen. But the fact that Digg does not immediately begin offering up every rationalization in the world why what they are doing *must* be done but instead just listens is actually a pretty powerful statement about the respect that they have for the people who made digg what it is, their community.

Digg on diggers, digg on.