Rose To Top Digg Users: We Still Love You

The top users at Digg are officially off the hook. Kevin Rose has cleared up some of the misinformation surrounding the controversial changes to his site's promotion algorithm.

In a post today on Digg the Blog, the Digg.com founder clarifies that the changes instituted to the site's algorithm were not in fact meant to prevent users from digging their friends' stories. Instead, the changes were instituted to encourage a greater diversity of posts from more contributors.

From the post at Digg the Blog:

Last week there were several stories accusing some of our users of gaming digg by digging each others' stories. The intention of the post absolutely wasn’t to point a finger at any individual or group. It was intended to openly highlight some of the things we’re doing to keep digg as useful, democratic, and devoid of misuse as possible... To set the record straight, we appreciate everything our long-established digg users have done to help build this community. There is nothing wrong with digging your friends' stories that you enjoy - in fact we encourage this activity through our friends features.

I think that most people involved in the morass of this Diggtroversy understand what the purpose of last week's changes were. However, as we reported last week, Rose's original post came shortly after some members of the Digg community posted articles accusing the site's top users of gaming the system by heavily promoting each other's stories. This resulted in the formation of a vigilante mob of sorts who, after mis-reading Rose's post, began burying submissions from Digg's top users.

The whole thing was really just bad timing. Now, the thrill is gone for many of the Digg elite. How far Rose's clarification will go towards repairing last week's damage remains to be seen.

In other Digg news, the site also announced a new "My #1 Story" feature that lets users highlight the story submission they feel is their most important.

[thanks to Curtiss Thompson]