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Digg Dialogg with Bruno

Not too long ago Digg announced that their next Digg Dialogg would feature Bruno, a fictional gay Austrian fashion reporter portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen. Being familiar with the character from Sacha Baron Cohen’s TV show, Da Ali G show, I quickly submitted my question, “What would you like to do to improve Kevin Rose’s geek apperance?” I figured if Kevin Rose was doing the Dialogg that it could lead to a funny bit where Bruno gives Kevin Rose a make over. Other users in the community saw this opportunity as well and dugg the question to the #1 position (it settled into the #3 spot by the end of the voting period).

Today, Digg posted the Dialogg (branded as a special edition) and I was surprised to see that my question was not asked. The host of the Dialogg, Andrew Bancroft, made a quick comment in the beginning about the being an issue with Kevin Rose and fish sticks and proceeded to ask a few select questions.

It wasn’t a big deal to me that my question wasn’t asked, but some of my friends rallied together on Twitter to keep my question in the top 10 so I tweeted the following:

Since my tweet was directed towards @Digg this lead to Digg sending the following email:

Hey Jon -

I saw your Twitter comment about your Dialogg question and wanted to reach out directly. I hope you'll accept my apology that your question wasn't asked. We did give the top questions to Bruno/Sacha Baron Cohen & his people - unfortunately, they chose not to answer some of them. Given that Bruno is a fictional character, and this was a special edition Dialogg, we felt it was OK in this context; less than ideal, but OK.

Again, please accept my apologies --

Jen Burton
Digg Community Manager

And my reply,

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to me. I do appreciate it.

I fully understand that Bruno is a fictional character and the interview was all done in good fun, but what's the point of having a voting system in place to select questions if the guest will pick and choose in the end?

I'm not so much disappointed in the Dialogg it's self, but Digg as a service. The entire site is based around this voting system and I believe it was put to good use when using it to allow members of the community to ask celebrities, politicians, musicians, and so on questions. I feel Digg is placing it's self on a slipperly slope by abandoning this model and letting the guest pick which questions are to be asked.

Anyway, I know I'm taking this too seriously and it's really not a big deal. In the end it's just some guy pretending to be a gay Austrian fashion reporter.

Thanks again for taking the time to send me an email.

Cheers,
Jon

Like I said, this isn’t a big deal and I’m not offended or angry at Digg. Digg clearly states that it was Cohen’s people that decided they would not answer some questions.

In the future, I do hope that Digg only does Dialoggs with guests that understand the Digg voting model and agree to answer the top 10 questions asked by the Digg community regardless of what they are.