Digg buries top user list

New York (NY) - In response to rampant criticism about fraud and manipulation in the system, Digg.com has dropped its list of the most active users.

Alongside the growth and popularity of Digg is an increase in people who manipulate the system. In some instances, people have been paying users to "digg" their stories so it would gain more exposure. The list of the most active users became a target for the critics, accusing them of participating in the schemes.

Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, said these people were not necessarily to blame. However, having a list of people who have spent thousands of hours on the site also made it easy for people to contact them and offer them cash or incentives for artificially inflating the ranking for their stories.

"We’re not surprised that with the gaining popularity of Digg there would be some that would try to manipulate the system for a variety of reasons. The number of users engaging in this behavior has been minuscule in relation to the overall size of the Digg community," said Rose.

Currently, Digg ranks at #19 in Alexa.com’s ranking of the top sites in the US, right under the International Movie Database (imdb.com) and directly above Weather.com and Flickr.