This morning, Digg removed ranking information from user profiles. I commented on the story, pointing to my top users list for people who were still interested in their rank. Digg CEO Jay Adelson responded to my comment thusly:

"We no longer display that rank information, so don't be surprised if Chris's list is no longer accurate (or stays unchanged). (A Netscape developer?)"

Well, my list has been updated since then, so we can safely assume that I wasn't using that information (which I've said from the beginning). As long as Digg displays the name of the user that submitted each story, it will be trivial to determine the top users. I'll continue to aggregate the data until I'm forced by Digg (or asked nicely, with a "pretty please") to take it down.

Side note: I love the "(A Netscape developer?)" parenthetical that Jay included. I'm not sure of its meaning though. Is it "How did a Netscape developer manage to crack our code and get this information?" or is it "Netscape has developers now?" In any case, it's irrelevant, but I still laughed.

My restoration of Digg's Top Users page yesterday got a lot of press around the Web:

Both the list and my blog post about the list were submitted to Digg, but both were buried off of the front page. (Buried, or manually removed?)

Michael Arrington mentioned the list at TechCrunch, and the readers commenting on his post inexplicably turned against Netscape. Even though my actions had nothing to do with Netscape, the fact that I write code for them as well apparently makes my reproduction of the list "lame":

"If this would have come from someone NOT at a competitor (in this case Netscape), I would have thought 'cool!' The fact that this comes from someone at Netscape makes me think 'lame!'."

Deep Jive Interests (a personal favorite of mine) was the first to wonder how long it would be until I heard from Digg's infamous legal team. Nothing yet, but I'll blog about anything that comes in.

This blog somehow decided to go with the headline "Netscape Bringing Top Digg Users Page Back." I think if Netscape was sponsoring this effort, they'd want some kind of mention somewhere on the page. What? It only links to Digg? That's awfully strange.

Like many others, Technacular incorrectly reported that I was scraping user profile pages for the rank number that is displayed there; kudos to them, however, for being the only ones to update their post after I sent them a clarification on how the script actually works.

Additionally, my blog was linked from Techmeme, blurbed on Download Squad, and mentioned at ValleyWag.

Oh, and there's one question that I've been asked a few times that I'd like to address here: Sorry ladies, but I'm already taken.

I've updated the Greencode Wordpress theme (which I'm using on my site) to version 0.3. Since version 0.2, I've added a print stylesheet (screenshot of a printed page below), optimized the header image to reduce its size by half, and fixed a few miscellaneous bugs.

You can download the newest version from the Greencode homepage.

Digg removed its top users list this morning. However, as I mentioned yesterday,

It’s an exercise in futility. A competent programmer could easily throw together a page scraper to determine the top submitters, so when the dust settles, Digg will still have problems with pay-for-play, but the most prolific users will no longer be recognized by Digg for their work that makes the site so successful.

To prove my point, I've done exactly that: I've put together a script that displays the top 100 users at Digg, with the list being updated twice per day. You can see the list here.

Update: I do work for Netscape, but this has nothing to do with them. I did this on my own time and of my own volition.

Also, I didn't create this list for any mean-spirited reasons; I enjoy Digg and the service it provides, but I think Kevin made the wrong choice in removing the top users list. I'm not trying to profit off of this, and I'm not trying to scalp members from Digg for Netscape. I'm just proving a point - this data is easily attainable by anyone who is motivated to get it. Removing the top users list from digg.com does little in stopping people from finding out who the top Diggers are.

My latest teaser/progress report for Netscape 9 is available at the Netscape blog. More discussion at UFAQ.org and the Netscape Community message boards.