Digg Taboo: why can't I Digg my own blog?

This has puzzled me ever since I first started Digging: Digg users hate it when someone submits something from their own website or blog. I didn’t understand the sentiment when I read that first vitriolic comment, and I don’t understand it now.

The way I see it, the point of Digg is to share articles you think other people will like. What better fits that definition than something you’ve written? If you find it interesting enough to write about, then you certainly find it interesting enough to submit to Digg. Plus submitting your own writing is truly “user driven content”, which is Digg’s central philosophy. So why should it be taboo?

Besides, it’s nice to see something you wrote on the front page of Digg. If it gets there, then people have read it and enjoyed it, and that’s good for them and good for you. If you hadn’t posted it, all those people may never have read and enjoyed it, which is good for no one. This is especially true if you have a new or small blog or website that doesn’t have much exposure. How can someone else submit it if you don’t have many readers?

The only argument against it that I can see is that it can be shameless self-promotion. Everyone knows that Digg can easily generate tens of thousands of pageviews, and to someone looking to generate pageviews it’s an appetizing target. But that doesn’t change the fact that to get to the front page you need to have a well-written and interesting article that people want to read and enjoyed reading. The pure self-promotion and garbage articles will get filtered out. Again, what’s the problem?

I think that Digg users need to move past this taboo. Digg is supposed to be a place where articles are judged only by their content, and that’s all that should go into a decision to Digg or Bury a story. Well, that’s my humble opinion, someone who disagrees can feel free to explain theirs to me.