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A list of article burials on Digg, along with the users who buried them. One does note that one is seeing a very few users doing a lot of burying. See link above, on my list of bookmarks.

Not only allegations that a small group of hyperaggressive users (50 in total) are burying posts on Digg, but with a little unexplained hacking being alluded to, the members of that local cabal are allegedly named. The question this raises being how much faith we should put in strangers who don't explain their methods - but then, if they did, we wouldn't be allowed to link to this article, would we? The fact that a search turned up 16900 hits for "Digg" and "bury brigade" does make this a little easier to believe, though, and a little more of a source of worry for the Stumbleupon user when he hears a suggestion that Digg take over that other service.

Warning: Some profanity at the other end of the link, in the comments section, which should be seen at being a part of this post. A list of some of Digg's most active users, all of them recently banned, appears, along with a message from "Jen" at Digg explaining that this is because of script usage. As somebody points out in at least one of these cases, the facts don't support the charge - the user in question had hardly been posting at all during the time when script usage was alleged. In the audio interview on the previous site bookmarked, Zaibatsu discussed the issue of new diggers having a hard time being heard because established diggers had such an unfair advantage, going on to say that there were better ways of dealing with the problem than chasing off the users who had done so much to build that site. We are left with the impression that the Digg staff is more than willing to trump up meritless charges in order to do just that. Of course, you get to see the obligatory troll show up and play the "I'm not listening" game, and somebody drop by to drop a little mild antisemitism, but on quick inspection I found that the reasonable users seemed to be in the majority. That's always a pleasant surprise.

The blogger GigaOm argues that Digg would benefit from gaining Stumbleupon's content and users. The question he leaves unanswered is whether the SU users would be likely to stay, given semi-recent press about Digg. If one company takes over another, which of the two sets policy on the acquired company's site?

Chris Crum (the author) writes about a rumored upcoming Digg toolbar incorporating random search, and asks if this is bad news for Stumbleupon, as that is the service's key feature. Perhaps, but Crum hasn't given us reason enough to think so. Randomness, by itself, isn't a big deal. Webrings had incorporated it into their code long before there was a Stumbleupon. Carefully weightened randomness is what Stumbleupon does. Stumbleupon offers a blogging platform, albeit a seriously flawed one. Digg does not. Those who submit content to Digg risk loss of membership if the content proves to be unpopular enough; so far as I know, Stumbleupon users don't have the same worry, outside of a little political whackiness in the fora. I'm left with the impression that Crum repeats somebody who has read too much into too little, having little familiarity with the capabilities of the SU system, and with the policy differences between the two sites.

Alex Laburu raises a serious point about Stumbleupon; that perverse incentives are built in to the system by SU's business model, in which the company makes money, not from visits to blogs on their system, but by getting paid for "stumbles" - random visits to sponsor websites taking place through their system. Under such a model, Laburu argues, a well written blog costs the company money, because it is a blog visitors are less likely to leave soon via a stumble - and those following its links aren't stumbling. He raises a good point (among others), one that should lead SU users to view with concern the supposedly good feature that is the absence of advertising on our blogs on SU, because it provides SU admins with a short term incentive to side with those misusing the system at the expense of those using it constructively. Which does leave us with the question of how Diigo is making its money, does it? One might ask if many of the users bring this sort of thing upon themselves - listen in on the screaming when the very possibility of introducing advertising is raised, on some sites, as if the hosting service didn't need to make money. Perhaps when the subject arises here - Diigo is still in Beta as I write this - some of us might want to speak in support of that very sensible source of revenue for a company we'd like to evolve in a healthier direction than that being taken by some of its competition, at the moment.

The article points us toward a reason why the business model alluded to in links above (paid for stumbles) is ultimately unsustainable - those visiting bounce through without doing much more than briefly glancing at the pages they visit, very often. This is plausible. People get enthusiastic about their new toy, they get a rhythm going, and they don't want to stop.

A very brief testimonial from another blogger.

Bringing this down to the bottom line, yet another blogger shares his experience, of watching people bounce away without doing much of anything on his site. How much is traffic like that to a site, and how much will somebody be willing to pay to keep getting more of it? As the author says, "The problem is that when I stumble I am in the mood for some fast action. I don't want to be bothered with heavy reading and just want to be amused." a spirit that, as somebody in one of the sites bookmarked above argues, Stumbleupon's business model gives the company and its management a perverse short term incentive to encourage. But can one encourage impatience and then, moments later, hope that impatience will suddenly vanish the moment a visitor reaches a sponsor's site? Or does behavior, once reinforced, tend to linger? Does the company really expect those sponsors to not notice that their bottom line isn't being helped, just because they hope it will, and assume that it must?

See somebody doing something creative with her blog on Stumbleupon. Do you find yourself wanting to slow down and take the time to really read, not just this blog, but the pages it links to, because you're having a good time? You get a real feeling of the presence of the other person on the other side of that screen, don't you?

Another blog at Stumbleupon, this one with more of an even more of an emphasis on photography, and one reviews of other stumbleblogs. Much more pleasant than just looking at a stack of links, wouldn't you agree? jjjunebug is caile-girl's mother. (See bookmark, immediately above)

The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz is a Book I just finished reading- I was sent a review copy-It really defines Bitter Sweet Bittersweet refers to a combination of the standard tastes of sweetness and bitterness, and is often used as a metaphor for experiences which have elements of both happiness and sadness.  It is another addition to the never ending Saga of Our Africa-Poverty-Murder-Sadness-it is beautifully written by a Great Lady with A very Clear Conscience-I say our Africa since if we live on the Mortal Coil we own the complete coil not just a segment-Seth Godin who first discussed the Fund on Squidoo lives on the total coil-and Condition-Mortal coil is a poetic term that means the troubles of daily life and the strife and suffering of the world. It is used in the sense of a burden to be carried or abandoned, most famously in the phrase "shuffle[d] off this mortal coil" from Shakespeare's Hamlet.   I will pass my copy If you live in Royal Oak Michigan E Mail me at marshal.m1@gmail.com I will send you my copy or drop it off to you-then you can read and pass it on-or go to amazon and you can buy one-

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Jay Rosen Top Content Creator Jay Rosen (born May 5, 1956 in Buffalo, New York) is a press critic, a writer, and a professor of journalism at New York University. He is a strong supporter of citizen journalism, encouraging the press to take a more active interest in citizenship, improving public debate, and enhancing life. His book about the subject, What Are Journalists For? was published in 1999. Rosen is often described in the media as an intellectual leader of the movement of public journalism

Lest We Forget- Views on Nazism and antisemitism What drove Levi to write If This Is a Man was a desire to bear witness to the horrors of the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. He read many accounts of witnesses and survivors and attended meetings of survivors, becoming in the end a symbolic figure for anti-fascists in Italy. Levi visited over 130 schools to talk about his experiences in Auschwitz. He was shocked by revisionist attitudes that tried to rewrite the history of the camps as less horrific, what is now referred to as Holocaust denial. His view was that the Nazi death camps and the attempted annihilation of the Jews was a horror unique in history because the aim was the complete destruction of a race by one that saw itself as superior; it was highly organized and mechanized; it entailed the degradation of Jews even to the point of using their ashes as materials for paths. Primo Levi and Italian Jew wrote the Periodic Table -Primo Michele Levi (31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish-Italian chemist, Holocaust survivor and author of memoirs, short stories, poems, essays and novels. He is best known for his work on the Holocaust, and in particular his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz, the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. If This Is a Man (published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz) has been described as one of the most important works of the