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Fair Process and the Digg Revolt
Submitted by Josh Ross on Thu, 2007-05-03 10:14.
Business Practice | Community | web 2.0
I am enjoying the debate regarding Digg’s decision to follow legal advice and pull code from its site (and then back down after a user revolt). The issue in a nutshell (and from this Chronicle article ) is this:
"The news site, Digg.com, removed a number of links to stories its users had posted that detailed a secret computer code that allows movies and television shows on high-definition DVDs to be copied. It took the action after an entertainment industry trade group complained. The site's readers, who collectively pick and choose which stories are displayed most prominently on Digg, rebelled against the perceived censorship by repeatedly reposting the code in question."
Poor Digg then relented by saying they would leave the posts and deal with the consequences. Many articles have used this as another angle on why communities can’t police themselves etc. which in my opinion totally misses the point. The point is that Digg never made its dilemma a topic for community discussion.
One of the nicer responses I have seen comes from the blog Satisfaction where Thor writes,
“The enlightened path should have been obvious to them: be completely transparent with users from the beginning. Before it took any action that stripped power from users, Digg should have shared its dilemma with the community, explained the conundrum and the legal advice it had been given, and then solicited candid feedback via its forum. Debate would have ensued, but everyone would have felt like they were part of Digg’s ultimate decision, even if that was deletion of the code. More than anything, passionate users want to be heard.”
Amen. This harkens to a simple concept known as “Fair Process”. HBR published a piece ten years ago titled “Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy” that essentially states what is common sense; people want to understand the process by which decisions are arrived at and feel that those processes are fair and transparent. What is remarkable is that the study found that the process is more important than the decision… In other words, it is generally more important to people that the process is fair and transparent than that whether the outcome favors them.
Digg has totally missed the point and taken this as some call to arms for the freedom of information and fighting "the man" – when in my opinion, this is about the lack of transparency in their own business decision-making.
"The news site, Digg.com, removed a number of links to stories its users had posted that detailed a secret computer code that allows movies and television shows on high-definition DVDs to be copied. It took the action after an entertainment industry trade group complained. The site's readers, who collectively pick and choose which stories are displayed most prominently on Digg, rebelled against the perceived censorship by repeatedly reposting the code in question."
Poor Digg then relented by saying they would leave the posts and deal with the consequences. Many articles have used this as another angle on why communities can’t police themselves etc. which in my opinion totally misses the point. The point is that Digg never made its dilemma a topic for community discussion.
One of the nicer responses I have seen comes from the blog Satisfaction where Thor writes,
“The enlightened path should have been obvious to them: be completely transparent with users from the beginning. Before it took any action that stripped power from users, Digg should have shared its dilemma with the community, explained the conundrum and the legal advice it had been given, and then solicited candid feedback via its forum. Debate would have ensued, but everyone would have felt like they were part of Digg’s ultimate decision, even if that was deletion of the code. More than anything, passionate users want to be heard.”
Amen. This harkens to a simple concept known as “Fair Process”. HBR published a piece ten years ago titled “Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy” that essentially states what is common sense; people want to understand the process by which decisions are arrived at and feel that those processes are fair and transparent. What is remarkable is that the study found that the process is more important than the decision… In other words, it is generally more important to people that the process is fair and transparent than that whether the outcome favors them.
Digg has totally missed the point and taken this as some call to arms for the freedom of information and fighting "the man" – when in my opinion, this is about the lack of transparency in their own business decision-making.
Community != Democracy
Submitted by Leon Atkinson on Thu, 2007-05-03 19:56.
It seems like the MSM is making the mistake of equating community with pure democracy. The sad thing about this is that Kevin Rose and the Digg management team don't seem to be part of the community they built.
Mike Arrington offers a good analysis on TechCrunch with the post Digg Surrenders to Mob. It reminds me of Wynand's surrender at the end of The Fountainhead.
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Of course mainstream
Submitted by Mark Celsor on Thu, 2007-05-03 14:32.
Of course mainstream newspapers and other media outlets like the Chronicle are jumping all over this story to show how the democracy of web 2.0 just can't work. Here's a quote from the article by Andrew Keen author of The Cult of the Amateur:
"Uber-democracy isn't viable in the long run. There have to be editors,"
I couldn't agree more. I think I'll post that in a comment to his blog and then del.icio.us it and post it to digg for good measure. ;)
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And of course the non-mainstream elements...