Digg It

Michelle Malkin has launched a Digg campaign:

I encourage you to register and participate. One of the things I’ve noticed about the most buzzed-about user-generated sites–not just Digg, but also Slashdot, Metafilter, Fark, Del.Icio.Us, YouTube, etc.–is the dearth of conservative representation.

Why is that? Some lefties think it’s because most of the sites’ most passionate members are techies, and they theorize that techies tend to be more libertarian or liberal than conservative. Is that true? I don’t know.

Other commenters think it’s because most conservative Internet users/blog readers have day jobs/family life away from the computer, while the Kos Kidz and Kompany surf all day on and off the clock. Is that true? I don’t know.

If you take a look at the icons at the bottom of every Blogs of War post you’ll find Digg and most of the other social bookmarking sites listed. Digg is second from the left. Creating an account just takes a minute or two and aside from promoting Blogs of War (which is a worthy and noble cause IMHO) there are a lot of other benefits in using those services. Check ‘em out if you a haven’t already.

Dwight Silverman, tech guru at the Houston Chronicle, writes:

Not only can you vote for stories at Digg, but you can “unvote” for them by clicking a button marked “Bury.” Get enough “burials” and pages that were once marked as popular fall off the front page. Malkin links to a commenter at another conservative blog, Little Green Footballs, who says that there’s a “sinister burial campaign” on the part of liberals who click the Bury button on conservative-tinged stories, and urges that right-wingers respond in kind.

“Anyway this should be fun,” he says.

Uh, no. Watching true believers whack each other over the head with their fixed-in-stone worldviews is not my idea of a good time — particularly if it threatens to render useless a news tool that puts real power into the hands of users. This is first-cousin to the kind of selfishness that ruined Usenet with ugly flame wars and e-mail with scams and spam.

Kids, play nice, willya?

I get Dwight’s point but it’s worth noting that Digg’s architecture encourages this kind of idealogical warfare. They had to see it coming when they moved into the political arena. But, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that Blogs of War readers spend their days burying stories that they don’t agree with. The average Blogs of War reader is too busy for that anyway. Heck, lots of you are fighting a war. I’ll settle for you showing this site the occasional love with a Digg.

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