Friday, November 25, 2005

Digg's blurbs need improvement.

Digg.com, like Slashdot before it, is known for cool tech news items and crappy descriptions of them.

Whenever there's an interesting story with an incorrect, unhelpful, or otherwise sucky description, it would sure sooth my nerves if I could click on "Problem?" and select "Bad blurb! Bad!!"

But here's another idea. Diggers should be able to submit alternative descriptions (optionally, with a new headline), and then other users should be able to digg the new description, in much the same way as they digg the story itself (although you shouldn't have to actually digg the story in order to digg a new description).

These blurb proposals could appear in the comments section, inline with regular comments, except with a "vote for this blurb" button. Once a certain number of votes is obtained, the blurb would be promoted to replace the original blurb, and the original blurb would be demoted to become the first comment of the story (where users could vote for it to be reinstated, if they want). The number of votes required for promotion is something the administrators would have to play with, I suppose. If multiple suggestions have passed the threshold, then the one with the most votes at any given instant should be the main blurb. Users should be able to vote for more than one description, if they wish, or cancel a vote if they decide that another blurb is more worthy.

Also, sometimes the link is not very good. For example, sometimes you'll see a story about a specific blog post, but it links to the blog itself, instead of to that particular story. Or, you might see a story about a cool new program, but instead of linking to the home page of the program, there is a link to the download page. Perhaps there should be a way to propose better links.

If you have other ideas, feel free to leave a comment.

P.S. Might Digg benefit from a moderation system?

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