[Air-l] Digg user 'riot' going on now

[Christine Moellenberndt]

Kevin Guidry wrote:
>    Compare with the similar experience Slashdot went through several
> years ago when Jon Katz announced that he was going to (or perhaps
> already had done so - can't recall) publish users' comments in one of
> his books without attribution or permission.  That seemed to be more
> of an ownership and copyright issue than a "selling out" issue but if
> your assertions are correct then there are some similarities.

For /. ownership and copyright was the big issue (I was involved in that 
to a degree, in fact I think my first ever /. comment was to that 
posting.. *sniff* MEMORIES!!), but I think the idea underlying that was 
still this idea of "selling out" users in order to make a buck.  And in 
that was a morality too... /. had always been seen as a "not evil" 
website, one of the "good guys" who "get it."  When Katz announced the 
book thing, it suddenly made /. part of "The Man" who just wanted to 
make a buck and didn't care about wider community issues and loyalties.

I've seen this in several online communities as well, and the passion 
that surrounds them fascinates me, almost as much as seeing how so many 
companies just don't "get it."  I was involved with an online comic 
strip for several years and saw it myself, and ended up as point person 
at one point having to answer the calls of "sell out!" myself.  That's a 
hard thing to do, because once geeks make up their mind you've sold 
out... it's hard to recapture their trust (please note that I use geek 
as a geek myself, and as a positive descriptor :)).  Geeks want to see 
their favourite sites make money so they can stay in business... but 
there's a fine line in how you can make that money and still stay "true."

I think Digg's blog post was a step in the right direction, and I do see 
the front page of digg starting to recover...  but I'll be interested to 
see if their volume changes over the next month or so.

This also reminds me of the DVD-encryption blowup that happened several 
years ago as well, where the MPAA got some kind of injunction to keep 
websites from distributing the code (it's been a while and the brain is 
fuzzy from end-of-semester stress).  I love enterprising geeks, instead 
of electronically distributing the code it was put on tshirts and all 
other sorts of apparel.  I have a great tshirt I got at a convention 
with the code on it, given away for free.  Ah, those were the days.

-Christine