Isn't it just accepted from the big guys, yet frowned upon when the little guys do it? There are paid groups who'll Digg, cabals who vote up their favorites. I know Profy was perma-buried at least for a while, and I'm still not sure exactly why. Rose is fine with it as long as it's the Valley elite who get the hits. I'd have been more surprised if you told me that the Gawker properties DON'T do any of that.

Where do I Digg this story?

This post is the best, so glad to be a part of it. I'm also glad everyone gets to see how much we all suffered from Gizmodo digg spam. Some sites use that list a helluva lot more than others.

Jordon
I didn't leak a screenshot to Valleywag, I posted it on my personal blog (duncanriley.com) where I presume they found it.

PS when did you pop up here, and when is this site turning on full feeds :-)

I'm looking at a comments section with Jordan, Nick Carlson, and Duncan, and yet it's NOT Valleywag? I'm so confused. All it needs is a little Rachel Marsden now and The Standard will have pulled a Jekyll & Hyde. ;)

That subject list is amazing.

Funny how people will slam a person for self-posting blog entries, meanwhile this stuff is really the way Digg works every day. It's OK when the big boys do it, quietly.

My take is this: if you're going to self-post, go ahead and be up-front about it. My digg and reddit names are the same as the domain name I own where I host my blog, so it's pretty obvious (and, of course, immediately alerts people to the fact that my post is an attempt at self promotion.

So, here's an idea. Based on voting patterns and friending it ought to be fairly simple to separate people into "soft" voting cabals. Whenever someone diggs something, display their list of cabals so that people can discriminate (i.e. decide.) for themselves. Then let the voting take over. If people get sick of one cabal's self promotion, they can bury a story based on cabal.