Do you believe that? I was working on a longer article about the Digg.com bans, because ReveNews.com, a blogger News site with over 20 Bloggers was banned from digg.com because of one authors action. Multiple attempts were made to get the site unbanned without success.
I needed a screen shot that shows the message that the URL is not allowed for the story and attempted to submit my latest story at ReveNews.com.
To my surprise did I not get the error message. I thought that I maybe not remembered correctly and only get the message if I actually submit the story, so I entered a title and funny short description and submit it.
End of story!
I did submit it. Here is the Link and below is the screenshot.
Is that a glitch or is ReveNews.com unbanned? Less than a week ago did Dave Naffziger publish a long list of 183 sites and blogs that are banned from digg.com. He checked over 10,000 top sites (based on Alexa ranking) and a lot of famous blogs and sites are on that list. Are other sites from the list unbanned as well?
Did the Digg team finally realized that banning whole sites often on grounds that solely based on gossip without any hard evidence to backup the claim of bad intend?
If this is the case congratulation. That was very smart of you.
Regarding the reasons for the bans did I do some checking after I read a post by Muhammad Saleem, a top digger, who started a list of sites that got banned from digg with quotes from the sites owner and their notes that their site got banned. Most of the comments are nothing unusual. Some had statements that made it pretty clear why the site was banned in the first place.
Or is it so clear?
Reasons such as:
1. Submitting your own stories (what I just did, oops)
2. Promote the fact that I did digg it to friends and colleagues that they go and digg it, working as a “digg team”
3. Having multiple accounts
… etc. I don’t have to mention the submissions that are legally questionable, like infringing copyrights or other laws.
John Chow wrote at his blog what reply he got from Digg support to his question why is site was banned:
When submitted stories are consistently reported as spam and users complain via our feedback email about
submission spam, we ban the domain. The domain will not be unbanned. The domain would consistently get
reported as spam otherwise. Please review our FAQ (digg.com/faq) for more information.
–digg support
Okay, a start to verify that those things get your site banned and off I went checking the Digg.com FAQ
Nothing really to spam. It has an email address to leave a feedback if I don’t like something. Also that the community might buries a story I submit. Well, the support must have pointed to the wrong document.
Next stop, Digg.com Terms of Service or TOS. A lot of legal stuff, great. A ban is pretty severe and should be mentioned in the TOS somewhere you might think. That’s were advertisers and affiliate networks put their penalties and rules about what their affiliates are allowed to do and what possible consequences are for violating the TOS.
Yet again, Nada. Not even the mentioning of any cause that can get a site banned from news submissions. I was running out of places to check at Digg.com. I mean official places where a user or webmaster would check to learn about the rules, Doe’s and Don’t does. Last hope, the “How Digg works” page.
Nope, but I found something else that is interesting:
3. Share
Email your friends (Diggers or non-Diggers) when you find something you Digg.
Build a friend list; then your friends can track what you’re Digging. They can also subscribe to an RSS feed of your submissions and/or your Diggs.
Isn’t that reason two on my list? Wait a moment, how can I get a site banned by doing what the site is supposed to be for and is even encouraged on the site itself?
I found references to what is needed to submit a story (account) and also some references what not to submit which violate other laws already and have probably never been the case for much of the 183 banned sites.
Even three is not even mentioned. Is it shabby and unethical to create multiple accounts? Sure, against the TOS? Actually maybe.
It states in section 3. “YOUR REGISTRATION OBLIGATIONS” the following:
“… You shall provide Digg with accurate, complete, and updated registration information. Failure to do so shall constitute a breach of the Terms of Use, which may result in immediate termination of your Digg account. …”
The Profile has a field for “Real Name”. Real Name… mhh… what real name? My First Name? My Last Name? My First and Last Name? My Birth Name? My Moms Maiden Name? I can’t tell, because it does not say.
Could be considered First and Last Name and if not provided or a false name of given, reason for account termination are given since Digg can not even attempt to de-dupe duplicates. John Smith would be screwed unless “Location” means street address, although I think its more meant for City, State or Country, if even that.
But that would get the account removed and probably all diggs (votes) discounted, but a site ban? Nope, nothing.
“Doing whatever we want no matter how biased and wrong it might be is our given right.”
I am no lawyer, but as a business owner with a business website that is used by millions and thus has a pretty far reach has some legal responsibilities.
Add on top of that the claims that the community decides what submit stories are junk and what’s good stuff, unless it does violate or infringes any laws and you start getting a pretty solid case here.
A minority is being singled out and treated different (worse) than other users of the site, because it is not the flavor of the day. Singled out, because banning a site completely no matter what the content is and denying the right to let the community decide if it is junk and burry it is singeing out, or is it not?
I hope that I really can throw away the other half of my originally intended post that demonstrate the “singeing out” part a bit more specific. I hope that it is not a stupid glitch or something like that. It would have been the right thing to do. Now you can start working on fair methods and transparent rules that penalize cheaters and unethical users. Complete sites should only be banned as an exception and very solid and good reasons.
Temporarily bans might be warranted in mass spam attacks. Look at Wikipedia. They do have a ban list to. Site URL that can not be added in a way that it becomes a link.
