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A petition by the Netscape community to bring back the old site instead of the new Digg-like "social news" is gathering steam.

The petition posted by Ernie Jenkins on in July last year has www.PetitionOnline.com has so far gathered more than 1,500 signatures.

“I strongly feel the new Netscape.com does not serve the needs of many long-time Netscape users, and I believe that many of us wish for the old Netscape.com to return,” the petition read. “As has been repeated many times by my fellow Netscape users in response to this change: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

“The decline in popularity of the Netscape browser does not suggest that the solution is to change the format of Netscape.com,” the petitioner argues. “Rather, it seems a more effective strategy to combat the loss of traffic is to increase the visibility of the Netscape browser and the services that Netscape offers.”

The petitioner suggests making the Netscape browser a real player again in the browser space, instead of being relegated to a “has-been” as this would clearly increase traffic to Netscape.com.

“There is no doubt the orchestrators of the new Netscape.com were motivated by the success of Digg, www.digg.com,” he continues, sites gives two reasons which will hinder the replication of this success by Netscape:

“1. Unlike the new Netscape, Digg did not start with a large, loyal, existing userbase (us!) that was used to a very different news format. I argue that having this pre-existing userbase, used to a traditional news format, is worse than starting from scratch. We have seen many websites come from nowhere and build a userbase based on the quality of their services: Flickr, del.icio.us, YouTube, and of course, Digg. Netscape hopes that all of its pre-existing traffic will be converted to the new Netscape.com, but this is a double-edged sword: if these users are unhappy with the new Netscape.com, then they will make their displeasure be known and generate a large amount of criticism and negative publicity. This has already proved to be the case, as the two most popular stories since the new Netscape has come out of beta have been ones which are very critical of the new format. If all this negative opinion leads to users leaving Netscape, as many users have already claimed to have done, then stories about how the new Netscape actually caused an increase in the loss of traffic will create a negative perception that will be difficult to overcome,” he argues.

“2. Digg's userbase is young and overwhelmingly male (94\%), while Netscape's audience skews older and is much more gender-balanced. This has been argued to be an advantage of the new Netscape, since it is "bringing social news to the masses." However, this argument overlooks the possibility that the demographics of Digg are no coincidence, and that its social news format is serving exactly the audience that wants it. The premise of a social news site is that its users scour stories from all corners of the Internet and vote on those which they find interesting. It's a fascinating paradigm, but it requires much greater involvement from its users, and doesn't lend itself well to users who just want the most important news of the day in a quick and easily digestible format. Guess what? Young Internet afficianados who spend a great deal of their time on the web are the ones who are most likely to participate in such a social news system, and it is perhaps not surprising that such people are largely male. The typical Netscape user, who is likely older and works a regular job, perhaps checks out the site for a few minutes throughout the day on their lunch or coffee break. Not many of us are going to be seeking out stories on other sites for other people to read. Why not just go to a different site which has editors who do that work for us?”

Jenkins warns that unless Netscape listens to its loyal userbase, they “will be regrettably forced to seek out a new homepage to serve my needs.”