Personally I think the identity of those burying your stories should be held anonymous. I hate burying articles posted by ‘friends’, but unfortunately it happens occasionally when a duplicate is posted or submitted to the wrong section. My action may be different if my buried request was visible to everyone, it’s a good way to lose friends.

In the course of 1 week I went from having no articles on the front page to having 7 or 8 on the front page. The more time you spend on the site, the more friends you will build. The more friends you build, the more exposure your story has on the site.

And one more point: DONT SUBMIT YOUR OWN BLOG. That’s a huge no-no. The only person I have seen get away with this is Destructoid, but that’s an exception to the rule.

Another part of the problem, I believe, is that posting happens so quickly, it’s almost like you’re buried before you ever exit the starting gate. It seems that whatever the amount of diggs you’ve managed to accumulate before leaving the first (possibly second) page of “Upcoming Stories,” that is likely the most you’ll achieve. Once it gets past the third page, who will ever see it; and that happens in a matter of seconds, within less than three minutes, depending on the level of traffic at the moment, your story could by on the second or even third page.

The other think I’ve noticed is that it does seem rather cliquey. I’ve posted something that received only a few (3-5) diggs and someone else come along and post either the exact same or VERY similar article with no better title and they not only get the the front page but have hundreds of diggs. How is that? That is one to the taboos or Digg, posting something that has been previously posted. It’s who you know, now what you know!

And, as you’ve already mentioned, some pretty ridiculous stories, pictures, etc. get dugg to the enth degree. Some that have been utterly meaningless or senseless. Not only do they get to the front page with a gazillion diggs but they seem to attract the most discussion as well. I see some pretty useless stories with over 250 comments. (i.e. the Tostitos foreign object story of today, it currently has 2,234 diggs and 254 comments, for what looks to me like a big clump of the Tostito that didn’t get rolled and cut properly then got stuck in the frying basket. Big deal, in food preparation things don’t always go through the machine properly causing it to come out a little deformed.)

I’ve tried catchy titles, I’ve tried putting [PICTURE] in the title, I’ve tried submitting a basic picture, in short, I’ve tried all the antics the seem to get to the front page but with no avail.

Now that I’ve ranted a book’s worth, alas, I suppose it’s that I’m not a member of that exclusive clique.

Someone left me a comment on the Digg submission asking me what I expected to gain by seeing who has buried my stories. After thinking about it, I think the thing to be gained is the fact that many of the Digg moderators are quick to disable your account if you post too many of your own articles, Digg too many stories in a short amount of time, etc., yet it doesn’t seem there are any repercussions if you are a habitual burier.

It just seems like if you were to see the same person burying stories over and over that you might have some justification for reporting them to the Digg Gestapo… I mean the Digg moderators.

-Scott

While I don’t think I’m being “sabotaged” I do think I’m being punished for some rookie Digg mistakes (like posting too many of my own stories from my blog and writing on too many stories already in Digg, ect.) Which is fine, I can easily see where people were just thinking I was spamming Digg with posts from my blog, but yeah, it would be nice to see if it were the same people doing it. And I’m a “nobody” who has never gotten close to the Digg homepage. So if it’s happening to me, it may be more widespread then you think it is.

-Scott

Thanks for reading and submitting!