Digg’s opinion of power users is quite obvious. A user’s activity on the site is encouraged until he participates (by Digging or commenting) too much — and then the amount of activity allowed is restricted.

So, it’s quite interesting to hear that Fark takes a completely different approach to its power users. The site embraces them. According to the article, “about ‘20 to 30 people submit about 80% of the stories’ you’ll see on the Fark front page.”

That’s huge. That means Fark trusts those users.

But is it unfair? Does a limited number of power submitters also mean limited content? Or is Fark simply acknowledging that certain people have better taste?

You decide.

According to Digg founder Kevin Rose, it was meant to encourage and recognize users who were submitting quality content to the site.

It was also one way for users to find and connect with one another. But after a few years Digg removed the list from the site (lists accessing Digg’s API can still be found online), claiming there were other ways to find friends with similar interests.

Needless to say, other Digg Top Users lists are still quite popular. Why? Because power users who spend a great deal of time on the site are competitive. Part of their success comes from other users recognizing their success. (Why else would they submit so much content? -Other than for money or other personal gain, that is.) These competitive users want to become Top Users – for public awareness and personal satisfaction.

And now it looks like the topic-specific social news site Tip’d is doing the same.

The financial social news site now features its own Top Users list. Since several top Digg users helped create Tip’d, I can only imagine the top users list was created for similar reasons. So, I’m interested to see how this plays out — if the list one day retires like Digg’s, or if it’s never an issue.

Here we go again.

Every so often you’ll watch someone get up on their soapbox and talk about how Digg is controlled by X number of sites. While that’s true, I think the authors of those types of posts could really delve deeper into WHY these sites are the most popular.

Thanks to di66.net, users can see the most popular submitted sites, words (from descriptions), Diggers, topics and more. It’s true that certain users and topics tend to be more successful than others. When it comes to users (who ultimately decide on the sources they submit), there are some who are known as “power users” – those who have mastered the system, and stay on top because they submit quality content.

And that’s the key: Quality content.

I’m certainly not saying that everything submitted by a power user is a quality story, photo or video. But these users do know where to find the best of the Web – how to find it quickly – and how to submit it properly.

So when it comes to which sites dominate Digg, I think it’s important to keep the big picture in mind.

Yes, certain domains are popular. 1) Again, because they have great content. 2) These sites are generally popular. Ask a friend (probably someone more “techie”) where they find cool stuff. They’ll list these sites. Since these are more popular sites, it’s more likely that more people are visiting them and submitting from them. Hence, you experience “domain domination.”

It was a question posed today that took me off guard. You see, Digg’s been going through a number of changes during the past year, so I was curious what this author had to say.

In the post the author highlights several changes (mass bannings, Digg limits) along with what he says is the most recent: Digg has removed personal links from user profiles. Since I haven’t seen that happen on my profile (or on my friends’), I’m skeptical. (This inconsistency also made me wonder if the author simply wrote a controversial piece to get traffic, but that’s another issue.) I feel like I should also note here that the only time I haven’t seen personal links on a user’s profile is if I’m not logged in.

Either way, I think it’s an interesting concept. Many users contact one another through these personal IMs or sites, which encourages private interaction–or interaction Digg can’t control.

By deleting these links, it would cut back on the ease of accessing another user’s contact information. I can understand Digg doing this as an effort to prevent people from asking for votes online, thereby somewhat “gaming the system,” but I think any damage that could be done, has been done. Besides, users can easily connect with one another on other social sites and communicate through those.

So we’ll see what happens, but if you’re looking for “personal links,” just head to mine.

Well, if you’ve ever wondered what that means, or how they do it, atomicpoet has revealed several “Evil Digg techniques.”

My first reaction is a combination of “The first rule of fight club is…’” and “Why on earth would you share that?” But I agree with atomicpoet in that Digg users have the right to know what’s going on. These methods to game Digg are certainly wrong, and Digg has taken steps to ban users who have violated the site’s TOS by using some of these techniques.

What do you think? Should this information be shared? What do you think of the techniques? Which are the most clever and which spell disaster?

Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners – These tips are truly helpful for those starting out on Twitter.

COOL TOOL: 31 Power Tools for Twitter Lovers to make life easier – Cool. Well, I never have to post another Twitter cool tool link. Joking, but this site is a great resource.

Kittens inspired by kittens – This video of a little girl narrating a cat book is hilarious. A must see.

Stumbleupon Traffic – The DON’Ts – I love social news networks and dislike bannings (on Digg and Stumbleupon), but this post just seems a bit much. I know people love participating on these sites and are afraid of getting banned, but sometimes I think they freak themselves out.

How Village Voice Media Uses Digg To Game Their Traffic Numbers – I know this is a few days old, but it’s still important. I don’t like how “insider” information like this is printed as a way to game Digg. First rule of fight club.

COOL TOOL: Twopular – Twopular is another tool for keeping track of Twitter trends. I like Twopular because it shows you if a term is increasing/decreasing/holding consistent in popularity; it also tracks the popularity of trends since the site began (Dec. 5, 2008).

I Can Digg It – After you spend enough time in the social media sphere, you become familiar with social media “celebrities” – or power users. MrBabyMan is one of these and is famous for his success on Digg. If you’re looking to learn more about Digg users, or social media in general, this story is a must. It provides a good history of Andrew Sorcini (MrBabyMan) and explains why social media can be so complicated.

How to be a better Tweeter – New to Twitter? Still don’t get it? Here’s a great post that explains how to offer more to the community than your daily breakfast Tweets.

Guideline for Cats – This is right on the money. I can’t say much more without ruining it, but here’s a quick snippet: “Always accompany guests to the bathroom. It is not necessary to do anything . . . just sit and stare.”