You can tell it's a slow news day when the thing causing a stir in the online community is yet another childish reaction from Digg users.  But that seems to be the case this morning:

Yahoo announced the availability of a new service yesterday called Suggestion Boards.  The Suggestion Boards are basically pages that Yahoo users can use to make suggestions and comments to the teams behind various Yahoo products.  They use a "Digg-style" voting system to allow folks to let Yahoo know what's important to users.

Apparently the Digg community isn't too thrilled about Yahoo using "Digg-style" voting.  This article is currently sitting at the top of the "Top 10 in All Topics" column.  It's called "Yahoo Shamelessly Rips off Digg and Brags About It".

There are a couple of things that are just completely and totally wrong with that title.  First of all, there's nothing "shameless" about Yahoo's announcement.  They credit Digg with the voting style.  That's not shameless ripping off.  That's a credited nod at an influential product.  I also don't see anything in the Yahoo post that suggests they were bragging about "ripping digg off".

The author of the Digg submission has a website.  I stopped by to see what I could find out about the person behind the whole mess.  It was actually pretty funny.  Now that several popular blogs have called the whole thing out and made the Digg community look like crying infants, the author has posted something on their blog saying that the whole thing was an "exercise".  I don't buy it.  Not at all.  You don't like being the person behind such an immature and ridiculous attack on another company and now you want to save face.

Well here's one person that isn't fooled.

Now on to the Suggestion Boards product itself… 

First of all… I think it's a great idea.  We've talked about the importance of gathering feedback numerous times here at the Internet Marketing Monitor.  Yahoo is not only doing that with their Suggestion Boards, but they're also giving the users a voice in what should be the company's priority.  Great idea, Yahoo.

The second thing that just has to be said is that, as many in the blogosphere have pointed out, the Suggestion Boards service isn't even the same kind of product as Digg.  It's a feedback and quality control product that is more for Yahoo's internal staff than anyone else.  Sure… some design elements are similar.  But honestly… in the grand scheme of things… who cares?

I think the idea is a great one and, although it is aesthetically similar to Digg, quite unique.  Unfortunately that perspective is so often lost on the community at Digg.  They'd rather attack and deface another service like a band of gang members in the train yards than communicate in a professional and adult manner.  It's that silly fanaticism and  juvenile behavior of more than a few Digg die hards that keeps me (and many others) turned off and avoidant of the service.

It's a shame, too.  Because Digg really could be a great place to find information.  But why would I want to read my news surrounded by screaming gang members when it'd be much simpler and nicer for me to go elsewhere.