Its true … some of Digg’s functionality appears broken at the moment. Fortunately, its not critical functionality, so we will survive. It is a pain however.
Accordingly, in the remainder of this post, I’ll identify the problem, show the symptoms, discuss the implications, and propose a solution … much like an old boss said to me once; “don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions!”. I still live by that motto to this day!
The Problem:
The problem is simply that Digg ‘fails’ to update a user’s Diggs or Submissions in important indicator charts, which makes the user appear relatively inactive, and makes it almost impossible to tell that when friends have submitted stories. The system seems stuck or frozen … perhaps as long as a week ago. It bodes well for those who had a number of Diggs or submissions at that time, but actually works against all those who had less favourable numbers when the system broke.
To see the problem:
Symptom #1: Profile Page
goto your profile page, and look at the section titled ‘Most Dugg Topics (Last 30 Days)‘ (see screenprint below). Then, go Digg a few stories, refresh your page, and note that the numbers do not change. Personally I’ve dugg well over 1000 stories, but only a fraction actually appear.
Symptom #2: History Page (under ‘Filter’ section)
Now, goto your ‘History’ page, and look under the ‘Filter’ section. Once again, its showing only a very small fraction of the Digg’s I’ve made, and is showing no submissions or comments though I’ve been quite active recently.
Symptom #3: Friends Page (under ‘Friends’)
Finally, on the ‘Friends’ page, if you track it over some time, you’ll see its not updating or changing. Its stuck! Some friends are showing more submissions that they’ve actually made, some less, and many none … wow this hurts!
Why Does This Matter?
It matters for a couple of reasons:
1) if you’ve been alot more active lately, than in the time leading up to the freezing of these stats, your new efforts are not being reflected. You will therefore be viewed as a ‘less active’ friend, making you less attractive as a friend.
2) for those with few or no submissions in the 48 hours prior to the freeze, your friends and followers are going to be led to believe that you’ve had no submissions recently, when in fact you have. Of course, this makes your submissions less visible, and less likely to reach the all important Digg homepage.
Short Term Solutions:
If you have new submissions, this is the time to ’shout it’ out to your friends if you haven’t already.
Hopefully Digg will have this problem corrected in no time, and the Digg world will return to normal.
As posted in Social Media.
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12 Responses to “Some Digg Functionality is Broken … Ohhhh It Hurts.”
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Thoughts on Computing » Blog Archive » Promises, Promises … (broken) Promises Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:48 am[…] appears to be a partial failure, which is probably the most common in the SaaS and enterprise worlds (as I discussed yesterday). […]
November 28th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I’ve been seeing the same issues for recent submissions from my site.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
I am having a problem with the comments section. When I try to submit one, the box just grays out and nothing happens. I emailed Digg Support, and they said it’s a known issue that they’re working on. It’s pretty annoying.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
“If you have new submissions, this is the time to ’shout it’ out to your friends if you haven’t already.”
I would do. but shouts seem to be broken too.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
CAPTCHA is also semi-BROKEN
Type up a comment in a Digg post. If you take LONGER than say 120-180 seconds, Digg invalidates the Captcha but does NOT update the captcha image.
The WORKAROUND is to COPY your comment to the clipboard, refresh the page, FIND the original comment you were attempting to reply to (which may be buried by this time), and then PASTE in your reply. Reloading forced a new captcha, so you’re working again.
This is the WORST BUG EVER and not fixed by Digg. If it’s NOT a bug, maybe they should shorten the max characters in a reply.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Another big change, inadvertent or not, is that while I used to (judiciously) send out a shout or two a day to my friends list - and I’d say about 100 people accepted incoming shouts - the shout feature has now been broken or capped to around 15 shouts without any announcement. To promote a story, I now have to shout in batches of fifteen. Ohhhh it hurts… has anyone else experienced this?
November 28th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Sphinns? GHEYYYYYYY
November 28th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Digg is so overrated… now sphinn
But nice catch Jeff 
November 28th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Digg makes me log in 3-4 times/visit, tells me to reload page I’ve already “dugg” on, various other annoying stuff. Moving to Reddit.com soon. This is too much like work.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:17 am
you think you’ve got problems? Thats nothing.
I can’t Comment.
I can’t Shout
I can’t Submit
I have to log in multple times each thread just to digg other peoples comments, which is all I can still do, since I also have the problems you mention.
I use IE6 at work (SOE, not my fault) and encounter these problems greater then 95% of the time. Occasionally a comment will get through, but its so infrequent that Its not even worth trying any more.
I’ve discovered that if I restart IE, open only digg, log in quickly, keep IE front and center, without opening any other sites. I can comment slightly more often. maybe %20 of the time, but only one comment and then the whole proccess must be repeated.
imho Restarting IE 5 times to comment is not a viable workaround.
I would like to assure you that I am not exagerating these issues. At home, on Firefox 2, I have none of these issues.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:19 am
I should have said:
At home, I have none of these extra problems, only the ones you have mentioned.
November 29th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
@ Patrick A - I was surprised to see so many other problems too … thought they were just me.
@ Doug - I’m sure we’ve only scraped the surface. There are likely more not yet mentioned.
@ GBG - I can shout, but can’t reply to a shout???? Who knew there were so many issues?
@ Anon - Captcha too … wow!
@ Todd - While I can shout … I do find it confusing. Sometimes it sends, sometimes it doesn’t. If should also give me some sort of a confirmation or ‘in process’ message, but doesn’t.
@ AyeRoxor - I’m a big Sphinner too … love all the content being related to our industry.
@ Victoria BC Photographer - Hello fellow Canuck! Sphinn is good, but very limited in terms of traffic. Digg can drive some really good volumes.
@ Seeker135 - I’m really surprise just how plagued it is with problems. I had no idea.
@ p0ss - sorry, I can make out your comment - did you send it? hehe just kidding. I wonder how they can continue like this.