Kevin Rose started Digg specifically to give users the power to decide what's news. It must be a pain to see some of his top users quit the site and write an open letter charging him with "disregard for the Digg community," "lack of transparency," and "flagrant disrespect of top users." They were angry that a sudden change in the site had lessened their influence. This may seem like an intramural tiff, but these users are known for submitting thousands of stories to Digg, driving up to several hundred thousand visits to each story that makes the front page. Gawker Media alone owes millions of pageviews to Digg. And this isn't the first time top users have grumbled. So Rose and his CEO Jay Adelson made a surprisingly sensible move: Late last night, they chatted live with the disgruntled users. Here's why Rose frustrated his top users, why he bothered talking to them, and why it's a lesson for all online media.

The following is an open letter for Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson and the rest of the Digg management, given to us by a number of top Digg users who have been unable to get any sort of dialogue going with the company which operates the social news site. Valleywag does not endorse this letter, but we like the idea of hearing from Digg about what's going on. And because the whole ruckus is entertaining.

Yesterday, Digg went down for an hour in the middle of the day. Initially we thought it was an unplanned outage, but it turns out that a number of changes were made to the algorithm that controls which stories are "promoted" to the front page. The changes have started a mini-revolt among the top submitters reminiscent of the community uprising over Digg's deletion of HD-DVD unlock codes last year. We talked to several top diggers to find out what changed, why they're upset, and we have our own theory for why the changes were made.

Last night Pownce attempted to launch live to the public, but instead launched FAIL, a tipster tells us in an email with this error message attached. No, this tipster is not Uncov's Ted Dziuba, the Leah Culver-despising hero of all real programmers. We ended all that. Nevertheless, Dziuba's definition of the site remains useful.

"Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate." So reads the creatively capitalized disclaimer now placed on the Digg discussion page for "Digg's secret editors," in which I revealed that Digg's so-called moderators use their own judgment to override Digg's supposedly all-powerful algorithm. The consequences are stunning: Digg is not a democracy of news, and the way headlines make their way to Digg's homepage are neither fair nor transparent. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose weighed in with an oddly worded nondenial.

Why do some stories abruptly disappear from Digg? Duncan Riley of TechCrunch suspects "super users." But there's a much simpler explanation: Digg's shadowy moderators. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose has admitted that the social-news site, a supposedly democratic venue where users pick the headlines, employs moderators: "We have site moderators that ban spammers, remove illegal content, and keep an eye on things. Always have, always will." But what, exactly, does keeping an eye on things entail?

Probably by not watching shows like the newly launched "Digg Reel." Instead of letting you just watch the top-rated videos on Digg, "The Digg Reel" shows them to you — but not before it wastes 96 seconds of your life with a bumper and chatter from overly loquacious host Jessica Corbin.

This photo, taken right at 10 p.m. shows people still waiting in line to get into tonight's Pownce party at the Madrone Lounge, two hours after it started. Are they that desperate to hoist a beer with Kevin Rose? And do they realize they may be exposed to the jarring powers of Leah Culver's voice? One bored queue-stander has cracked open a laptop. That's hot, whoever you are. (Photo by Danny Bernstein)

Ron Paul, inexplicably, has locked up the geek vote. The quasi-libertarian crackpot has plenty of fans, affectionately known as "Paultards," from San Francisco to the Googleplex. Add to them Digg cofounder Kevin Rose, who listed Paul and Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama as his favorite candidates. (Blogger Will Chen noted the preferences on Rose's Digg profile page.) But I'd ask this: How much is Rose's support really worth?

"I'm going to get thrown under the bus on Valleywag even more in 2008 than in 2007," serial self-blogger Robert Scoble claims, because of Gawker's new traffic-based pay plan for Valleywag writers. Um, how to put this gently: No one reads our Scoble posts, as Robert himself has observed from his clickthrough logs. We do them out of love. But based on our most-read posts of 2007, I'll be throwing some guy named Kevin Rose under the bus every single day.

Notorious nerdbody Julia Allison, the Star editor-at-large best known for her geek conquests, has this to share with Valleywag: Digg cofounder Kevin Rose has asked her out on a date. Really, could she have come with a more thoughtful present for a gossip blogger? How sweet. Let me go out on a limb here with my prediction: This is going to end badly. Incredibly, someone has already registered kevinandjulia.com.

They were going to CHANGE EVERYTHING. Whoops. presenting five biggest technology disappointments of the past year. No, not Vista and the Kindle — you didn't expect anything there.

Digg has hired an investment bank in hopes of selling the company for at least $300 million. Digg users, in case you haven't heard, aren't happy about this. One of them, Tamar Weinberg, who ranks among Digg's top 50 users measured by success at getting stories to the site's homepage, has penned a rant on why anybody would be dumb to buy Digg anyway. Here's the 100-word version.

Miss your chance to catch the Digg Christmas dinner yesterday? Turns out Digg founder Kevin Rose will host another holiday bash tonight, this one for the folks at Revision3, his other startup. "They're having 2 of them. A Rev3 and a Digg," one source says. So what, Revision3 gets the leftovers?

We love a challenge. Supposedly Digg, Kevin Rose's news-discussion site, is having a party in San Francisco tonight. But we haven't pinned down the location. What is this, some top-secret rave? If you find out where it is, or just want to send in a report from the scene afterwards, drop us a line.

Diggaholics — a category that includes me and most of my colleagues — no longer have to mine through a clutter of text to get your fix of Kevin Rose photos. Every time he gets a new haircut, goes on a date, breaks his iPhone, or, as in the photo above, dons a tank top, you'll see it on the front page of Digg's new dedicated image section, which will launch tonight, Rose confirms on his blog. Submitting an image is the same as submitting video or news, except for a few details. As Facebook does when you share a link with your friends, Digg will scan the page you submit and offer a choice of thumbnails. This feature will also pick up images from news stories. (Photo by Sara Morishige)

Though the timing of Digg's deal with the Wall Street Journal was coincidental, we're told, it has sparked a new wave of whispers that News Corp. might be taking another look at the headline-voting site. We've heard a very specific number bruited about: News Corp., rumor has it, would pay $340 million to buy Digg. And there's a new angle to a potential deal: At the same time, News Corp. would take a stake in Revision3, the online-video startup which shares founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson with Digg.

We noted Digg founder Kevin Rose's tragic haircut when we first saw a glimpse of it in picture from last month's Lobby conference. We saw the entrepreneur at a party Saturday night and can tell you that the cut looks better in person than it does in pictures, though four weeks worth of growth probably helps. So why did Rose shed his trademark shaggy locks in the first place?

Digg has removed a posting to a site which features pictures and videos of scantily clad women and banned the poster. Well, it's perfectly within Digg's rights to ban adult content, isn't it? The only problem is the site, Fox News Porn, is a satirical collection of all of the skin and cleavage frequently featured on the attention-seeking Fox News network. If it made it past standards and practices censors at the red-state-friendly moral authority, shouldn't it be Digg-worthy? And isn't there more questionable content on Digg than Geraldo Rivera reading erotica? Digg doesn't agree — even after the site's creator politely tried to clarify his site's content and purpose. According to a site administrator, Fox News is broadcasting adult content. Someone tell Bill O'Reilly this. He could save a lot of money on loofahs.

"What would happen if a Web site's readers — instead of editors — could decide which stories should be published?" The Wall Street Journal posed that question nearly two years ago, in an article about Digg, the social-news website. Now, the Journal's editors are letting Digg users make those decisions for them. Articles on WSJ.com will carry Digg buttons, says Digg founder Kevin Rose in a blog post. When users "digg," or vote for, the stories, they won't require a subscription to read. Since it's easy to submit articles to Digg, this makes the entire website essentially free — or at least the stories Digg users care about. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, the Journal's new owner, has been making noises about dropping the website's subscription barrier. This deal with Digg pretty much tears down the paywall for him.