Both Reddit and Digg are vote based aggregators. Users submit article URLs, which are voted by the rest of the community. Most voted fresh articles get into the front page. But, these two sites have a big difference: the voting system.

What they have in common: Karma

Both sites are democratic, but their democracy is not like the usual one, votes are weighted, so, not all votes are equal. Users that submit the most voted stories get more karma than the other’s. The weight of your vote is related to your karma. In other words, the users that do more for the community, get more power.

The difference: positive and negative votes

Diggers can only vote for stories they like, on the other hand, redditors can vote for and against them. The consequences are important. The stories that make their way to the Digg front page are the popular ones, on the other hand, the Reddit front page is populated by consensus stories.

I love consensus because it is usually related to quality. Popularity is a more dangerous concept, it’s irrational, it’s populist. Think about newspapers, which ones have the biggest market share? Are they quality newspapers?

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