The data aside, the Digg link was fun and all but ultimately
insignificant. The Slashdot link brought significantly more readers to
the site, spurred many other sites to link to it, and appears to have
left me with a sizable chunk of new readers. As an online publisher,
having those new long-term readers is a wonderful thing.
This difference is due to the participation models.
Digg is very lightweight. The voting process is widely distributed and flat. The act of posting is open to anyone, and it takes only a minute to do.
Slashdot requires more work for participation and the approval process is hierarchical. Voting rights are given only to a few. And a second layer of moderators keeps an eye on the voters themselves. CmdrTaco may not be a dictator, but his presence at the top of the pyramid is felt by all.
Digg requires less commitment and therefore the dedication to the service and engagement with the content there is going to matter less to the participants. I bet they noticeably surpass Slashdot traffic before June '06, but a visitor coming to your site from Digg will have much less context for understanding your site.
Slashdot requires an investment of time and energy to participate and therefore the participants care a lot more about the content they visit. They are more likely to pass URLs around and blog about them on their own sites. So, it's no surprise that a visitor from Slashdot is going to be more engaged with your content.
The spectrum of source traffic might look something like this:
Of course, neither are impervious to devious SEM. I'm sure Digg is full of self-serving posts. Slashdot is harder to crack, but I've had some success in the past getting traffic-driving posts submitted on Slashdot.
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