About Doug

What is Doug?

Doug is our way of paying hommage to Dougal Stevenson, one of the truly great New Zealand news readers. I think Julie says it best:

Dougal Stevenson didn't smile and joke with an attractive sidekick to let me know when the story was light, or grimace to let me know the story was serious, or banter with a cheeky weather presenter or get matey with the sports guy (and pretend to know about sport). He just read the news, dispassionately, from a piece of paper while two or three images were displayed behind him. More please.

What is a co-ranking (cooperative ranking) site?

A coRanking site is a site where you can share whatever you find interesting on the web and where you can also find what's interesting from people whose opinion are important to you. Everyone then can vote (rank) up what they liked, or vote down what they didn't like.

Everything on Doug is submitted by Doug users, and after they submit a story, other people will read it and give it a thumb up or down. If that story receives enough positive votes, it is promoted to the Featured page.

Doug also offers each user their own "Featured" page, and the stories promoted to their own "Featured" page page are determined only by the votes of the people this user has previously selected - these are what we call, the user's sources.

Just a friends network to share stories?

Doug is a place to share stories about the topics being discussed in Doug with people with similar interests. You can use it to learn or discover new things, talk with others about the stories submitted, meet other people with similar interests, etc.

What are the Doug values?

Four words:

• Share - Submit stories you find interesting.

• Rank - Vote "up" what you like, or vote "down" what you don't.

• Control - Select people whose opinion you trust.

• Discover - ...stories that are interesting to you.

Who's behind Doug?

[not completed]