Despite the fact that I read Digg all day, there are several glaring things that are just plain retarded, and am very confused as to why they haven’t been fixed.

0. It does NOT keep me logged in. Why? I visit digg several times a day, everyday. Why can’t it keep me logged in more than 3 days then? Am I afraid someone’s going to sit down at my computer and cause massive fraud…. with my digg account? Oh no, he dugg that 137th story about the Wii to make it to the front page that I didn’t care about for the 137th time, my life is gonna be over. There should at least be an option that says “Keep me logged in, thanks”.

1. So, when I forget, and don’t notice that it logged me out for no reason, and I go to digg something … I get a nice little DOM popup that asks me to login. So why can’t that let me log in?? Why do I have to leave the front page? Just put a username/password form on the DOM popup and let me freakin login right there, and then record that Digg It I just clicked by the way too.

2. Why is the default view Technology, and more importantly, why can’t I set my own default? I like the videos, and the technology, and the world news. Its real annoying to have to click “View All” every single time I visit. If Digg is supposed to only be a technology news site, then get rid of the other categories. Otherwise, I should be able to view what I want by default, however I want.

3. That commenting system has to literally be the worst commenting system I’ve ever used. Obviously since we develop forum software we know a bit about this, but some of this crap is inexcusable. Like the semi-flat, semi-nested structure? What is this, a joke? Hi, I can reply to a post, and it will start a nested structure… oh but thats it, child, thats it. You’ve had enough nesting for one day, don’t you think? Now just go ahead and line up in a flat structure with the rest of the replies, so no one can tell if you’re actually replying to the parent, or to your sibling. It’s like they took the best of two good ideas, and then made it completely retarded.

4. This then leads to the next obvious question. Since the semi flat structure does exist, why can’t you QUOTE people? In nested structures, your reply is tucked under the parent. With flat forums, people use quoting systems. Is it that hard to make a quick and easy quoting system (no, its not, cause we came up with a badass one).

5. Why does it seem like the first comment on every single story gets modded down -267 points for no reason. Even if its a perfectly good comment, it gets modded down. Everytime. Are people just jealous that they didn’t get the FP? Well, maybe you should have been reading the upcoming stories instead of just waiting for other people to do the work to get the cool stuff to the front page, eh?

6. Why the hell can’t the story have a default link included that links to duggmirror? Hello, are we pretending like the /. effect doesn’t exist? I want to just read the freaking article, not have to sift through the comments to find someone who posted the link to duggmirror, cause I can’t even just GO to duggmirror and find it myself. Save the world, save some poor guys servers and just link to the mirror already.

7. Why is the timestamp associated with articles listed as when the person submitted it? I don’t care. I want to know when it hit, when it made it to the front page. If its on the front page, tell us when it made it there. If its not, then default back to when it was posted.

8. When you click the “Digg It” link on a story to digg it, why is it so slow? Well, I know the answer, cause its hitting the server first and then reporting back. Thats completely unnecessary though. When someone clicks that, just up the number by 1 immediately. Instant feedback is the holy grail of AJAX programming, waiting to contact the server completely ruins the whole magical effect. Once the server responds back with the new digg count, you can still update it then too. But having to wait 2 or 10 seconds makes me feel like “gosh did I actually click it? Whats going on? Anxiety attack!”

9. The avatars are too freaking small. Whats the point of having a 7 pixel by 7 pixel avatar. “Oh I know that guy, he’s the guy with the black dot avatar”. Yeah real freaking useful.

Digg, you guys had a nice idea, but you’re starting to turn into a one trick pony. The whole user moderated, user generated thing is great, but now you need to just make your site *work* the way a top Alexa-ranked site SHOULD work, especially since you’re pretending to be one of the forerunners of the “Web2.0″ revolution.