Required --- GUI Designers for Yahoo! ;)

I was trying to get an update on what's been on off late on the super sublime world of web, and came across some stunning criticism of Yahoo's new read-vote-submit system in place for their suggestion board. Well, on the first look it does look strikingly similar to Digg and yeah, at once I wondered what Yahoo was upto. Yeah, I do understand that Digg doesn't hold a patent to their system and there must be a zillion websites employing the same technique. But then, Yahoo ain't just another one of those zillion ones.

However on another thought, I wondered if this criticism was really asked for. Yahoo is not putting this system in place for polling for stories from the web.. rather, its just used for folks who visit their suggestion board, where the suggestions are marked by their popularity. Now that ain't a crime..

The only potential problem that I felt was the user interface presented by Yahoo. Now I have been workin' as a software engineer for almost 3 yrs, and have seen this fact - no matter what code goes in the backend, but the questions are raised on the interface designers, coz thats precisely whats visible to the end user. Now, although the algorithm, design, blah blah used by Yahoo might be strikingly different (perhaps better) from that of Digg, but damn.. the interface is so similar. Its just a 'another_template' version of Digg. This really forces me to wonder, what were their GUI designers doing, or probably too inspired with Digg.. In that case, its a compliment to the Digg Developers.. :D