I'm loving this Thing!!! I tried to set up a Digg account and was accused of "blowing something up" so I sought assistance from their support team. While I waited out the response I started in on Reddit and halfta admit it's pretty great, however I'm not too crazy about the interface.
I'm kind of a news pig and I end up reading news services and blogs A LOT. I like the fact that you can search by title, keyword, subject, etc. It's interesting the way stories are arranged by popularity, newest, controversial, etc. You kind of get an angle on the cultural "zeitgeist"; where "the herd" is located and where they're going. Being an election year and all, the "most popular" stories seem to be pro-Dems (read: Obama) and slamming McCain/Palin. Draw whatever conclusions you may from that.
You wanna talk credibility? Game on.
If something is popular is it necessarily more credible? No, not at all. Just because more people agree with an idea does not make that idea a "fact" (or even factual ((or factualer))). This is something that Stephen Colbert refers to as truthiness. Reddit is not a "fact checker"; it's providing a forum to view "stories" other subscribers like. Sorry to break it to you like this, but all that stuff you learned in those English classes, about considering sources, plausibility of ideas, agenda of the "author", etc., when assessing credibility, is still gonna be in play.
You can totally tell I'm a Librarian can't you?
[Have you noticed I have a tendency to take some liberties with punctuation? It's like a punctuation rodeo on this blog.]
I'll post an update after I get my Digg account up and runnin'.
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