Not all is well in Digg-town this morning. Yesterday a bug gave one smart Digger the ability to peer into the system and extrapolate the inner workings of the community. Namely, David LeMieux found a way to highlight what users were burying and why.

In about two hours LeMieux got the data on 1,708 buries, fueling growing concern about the benefit of the bury tool in the first place. The “Bury Brigade,” where anonymous groups of users bury Digg stories they find ideologically unappealing, has become common nomenclature.

With all the secrecy around buries, LeMieux’s hacking could provide insight on what is happening inside the community. But it seems even discussions about the bury effect have been closed off.

One user, Supernova17, was even banned from Digg for submitting the highly controversial link as a dupe (he has since been re-instated).

More interesting than the drama of a large social network trying to come to grips with itself, however, is the workings of networked citizen journalism effort that has sprung up in immediate reaction. Muhammad Saleem followed up the data with the post “The Bury Brigade Exists and Here’s my Proof.”

That title might be jumping to conclusions; that buries are submitted by a regular group of users, but number crunching has begun. Baron VC has compiled a list of the top 50 buriers.

There is no telling the ways in which this information, usually gaurded by Digg, can be scrutinized. With enough long term data the air could be cleared and Digg could move forward.

The data that has been exposed is more than one person can look at alone. But engaged Digg users are finding each other and sharing the info to try and attack it from different angles.

If anything this incident doesn’t prove that there is a “Bury Brigade,” but that Digg users are passionate about the community and are willing to investigate possible flaws themselves. Watch out Kevin Rose, your Digg-army has grown up and they want to be self-sufficient.

Amid all the claims that Digg has a biased Bury Brigade, it’s actually reassuring to know that a network of Digg users has risen up to try and get to the bottom of this.

I suspect they will just find many lone bury agents, not a “network” of buriers. But the natural investigation is what interests me. This sprung up from nowhere, has no center or leader. But somehow remains focused, with an end goal in sight.

Update: I couldn’t help but submit this story to Digg. It was rising very fast and then suddenly buried. Then I noticed that all submissions which link to the “offending” article have been burried. Is this an act of the community or censorship? Digg does have silent moderators and there has always been rumors that they delete submissions which overtly threaten Digg. My advice — information wants to be free and if this is censorship, shame on Digg. If it was the community, I’m curious as to why all discussions related to the bury problem are themselves buried? Does the community not want to confront these problems? Either my thesis is wrong “Digg users are passionate about their community and are willing to investigate possible flaws themselves,” or Digg’s staff is trying to throw every obstacle in the way to impede this ad-hoc citizen journalism network.

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David is editor of NewAssignment.Net’s blog and in full disclosure, a Netscape Navigator.