It worked for me. I completely ignored the reddit and digg buttons (they are at the top of the story, before I read it).
This reminded me of them and I judged the article worthy of a digg.

There are a lot of crap posts around. That reminder is not one of them.

You bring up a good point. It would be handy to have the reddit and digg buttons follow the article. By all rights, they should only follow the article, because you should really have read the article before promoting it, but pragmatism might trump righteousnous here.