A famous Indian politician once said in a protest to build a dam, “We won’t allow you to take out electricity from our rivers. If you will take out the electricity from the water, what will the poor farmers get?”



This person made it to the top ministries in the government. This can only happen in great democracies. India is a democracy. The problem is not with the democratic setup, which is excellent. The problem is most of these people are not very smart.



Take Digg.com, for example. If anyone cares to monitor top stories on Digg, you will discover the prominence of silly stories. Any way, moving on, you must have heard about this story about ForeverGeek having discovered an army of ‘diggers’ who promoted identical stories on a regular basis. However, Kevin Rose, founder of the Digg jumped in the pit defending the Digg system:

Digg gets anywhere from 500,000 to 800,000 readers a day. 16 (or 19) identical diggs for two articles by the same author? 22 of the first 24 diggers being the same for both articles? Somehow I don’t think that is a coincidence.

Currently, this news item has made to Slashdot, BoingBoing, and Guardian and has duly received thousands of digs.



Digg is a fantastic idea, one of the best time wasting resources out there. You are sure to find some appealing and cool links out there. With no editorial control, users feel more powerful. In comparison to similar news site Slashdot, Digg.com reportedly does not hire editors but instead relies on its members to promote stories. Supporters of Digg commonly cite user-control has the reason why Digg has supposedly scored over Slashdot, which practices editorial control.



Guardian puts it right. A full-throated democratic news setup such as Digg can never control what stories go into the system. Moreover, just like a democratic system like India where you can’t prevent scum rising to the top, you can also not prevent silly, at times abusive stories going to the top of Digg’s ratings, to the vaunted Digg home page.



Let us put it this way: how can we have the best of both worlds? How do we blend better editorial quality with more user participation? The media world anxiously awaits the ideal solution.