Akkam’s Razor

Which is it, "mob mentality", "a few bad apples", or "the cream wising to the top"?

There's an interesting converation occuring surrounding Kevin Rose's digg and Jason Calanacis' Netscape.com and the nature of socially ranked news stories.

Calanacis' developed  [AOL division] Netscape.com (story at Techcrunch) and promptly hired away the most prolific diggers (calling them Netscape Navigators, natch], on the theory that they should be paid for their hard work, based on the 1% Rule of Social Participation.   Several digg users hypothesized that there was a measure of collusion amongst top diggers to influence stories (particularly deeply-partisan political ones, such as those from LewRockwell or mises.org, as well as Thinkprogress, Free Republic, and others).  He also attacked the changing of digg's algorithim to avoid the gaming of digg via mass submissions by top diggers, based on the logic that is should be one person, one vote, and if a group diggs simoultaneously, then their sum votes should be recorded as such. Once this came to light, the other diggers promptly started burying the stories of the elite diggers, reacting as a check to balance the elitist group's influence.

Are either of the models right? Should paid commentators be given more weight due to their "achievements", or considered biased? Has digg quality or quantity changed since the post prolific diggers left? And are the great unwashed smart enough to make their own conclusion, or will the look towards trend setters to lead the way? Also, are there any other real world social, economic, and political metaphors to be made?

[Other recent "angry villager pitchfork and torches" incidents: Facebook #1 and #2, Fatwallet, and the coming MySpace controversy.]