A heated debate has broken out among users of Digg, the groundbreaking social news site. At the heart of the issue is the question of whether a small number of very active users control which headlines make it to the Digg front page. The uproar began (according to TechCrunch) when conservative blogger Michelle Malkin criticized Digg users for liberal bias in their story selection. This seems to have spurred the blog jp's domain to do a fairly thorough analysis of Digg traffic and conclude that, sure enough, "a small 'aristocracy' controls the vast majority of the content that gets on Digg," and, somewhat more ominously, that "every day it gets harder and harder for new users to have any kind of an impact." While jp's domain was careful to note that it wasn't accusing the most active users of a willful conspiracy ("all this may be innocent"), it struck a chord, and the debate quickly spilled over to other blogs and on to Digg itself, prompting the site's founder Kevin Rose to weigh in with a commitment to change the Digg "story promotion" algorithm to promote greater diversity. This in turn annoyed the site's active users - at least some of whom resented being blamed for their long hours on the site. In fact, the top user, P9, said a bitter goodbye to the site in a public letter to Rose: "As a direct result of your blog this evening. I will no longer [be] supporting Digg going forward. I bequeath my measly number one position to whoever wants to reign."

Who said user-generated content would be easy? This sort of public battle makes newsroom politicking look quaint.