Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant?
It really is heart-warming to hear of all the good that those on Reddit have done. But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place — discussions got extremely polarised very quickly and there seemed to be very little room for reasoned dialogue.
The article makes it sound like a good thing that "comments are generally downvoted by dozens or even hundreds of people with remarkable speed, pushing their noxious posts down into obscurity within minutes". But, since everyone can downvote — hell, I have even see non-controversial statements get downvoted heavily — the quality of dialogue often ends up being at the level of the lowest common denominator.
Perhaps compared to HN. But I would characterize Reddit (as characterized by what's voted up into default visibility) as fairly open-minded, even compulsively contrarian. While a large proportion of the up/down-voting is from petty agreement, there is still a strong enough core of "productive discussion" voting to overcome it. Especially with knee-jerk outrage stories, there's as much skepticism as I've seen in any online community (and more apparent reservation in judgment than I see in many fairly reasonable people I know personally). There's a lot of good research that gets done (when possible), and it's usually voted above the froth very quickly. Sensationalism will almost always get called out hard.
I really can't conceive of any way a forum (online or afk) with sufficient mass (with the accompanying noise, groupthink and trolling that any community of people will pick up) to accomplish the things that Reddit has/may yet could turn out any more reasonable.
> But I would characterize Reddit (as characterized by what's voted up into default visibility) as fairly open-minded, even compulsively contrarian.
Have you been there recently? They're "contrarian" in the sense that they disagree with the non-Reddit mainstream, but they hardly respect contrarianism to their own views. I definitely would not call them "open-minded." (At least, not in the main subreddits. There are smaller, more intellectual communities within Reddit for which this is not as true.)
Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded?
I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are better it's still the best.
Even HN isn't that much different imo, especially outside its core competence of technical discussion (which is quite good). Discussions about economics, government, education, etc., on reddit and HN are about equally annoying to me (though I occasionally seem to fail to abstain from them at both places), with a lot of mob-mentality, up/down-voting based on agreement/disagreement, and not very well thought out knee-jerk responses. Reddit definitely has more non-serious discussion (e.g. long pun threads), but on the threads that are more serious, I don't see it as that much worse.
The main difference seems to be a different political skew: Reddit has a lot of democratic-socialist types, while HN has a lot of libertarian types. On Reddit it's unlikely you'll be upvoted if you're right-of-center, but on HN it's unlikely you'll be upvoted if you're left-of-center. Conversely, you can get upvoted on Reddit for a generic "corporations suck" comment, and you can get upvoted on HN for a generic "unions suck" comment.
The technical discussion on HN is not better than on Reddit. There is more noise on Reddit, but the level of expertise in the top is often higher. The people on Reddit in technical discussions are often more knowledgeable and more open minded (the tone of the discussion is less serious). HN has more groupthink and hero-envy.
HN also has a much stronger focus on entrepreneurship (understandably so).
The level of technical competence on HN is very high, and there's way less noise, so if you're a technically competent person with a business side (or if you're just interested in the business side), HN has a plethora of good for you.
As you note, the level of technical competence in the subreddits and threads that pertain to technical matters is higher on Reddit. Articles and discussions about just about any facet of any field that requires long-studied domain knowledge will have at least one commenter that really knows their stuff and wants to help people understand it.
This does come with the problem that someone who is just crafty with words can create detailed troll paragraphs that laymen can't easily distinguish from legitimate information (and this does happen, and is arguable inevitable once a discussion community grows to contain some ill-defined number of members), but that is a problem endemic to language itself, and it seems like at some level you have to assume that people know how to critically analyze what is told to them and be able to make a fair guess at legitimacy, and know to defer to well-sourced data (in addition to being able to identify good sources....)
The problem with groupthink and immaturity on Reddit is something that occurs in almost every large(r) online community I can think of (/. anyone?), and has many causes, not the least of which is that it's comprised primarily of young, idealistic, nerdy people -- and we all know that it's much easier to be loud and passionate and blunt-to-a-fault when you haven't gotten past whatever developmental phase it is where you get over yourself a bit and stop being so reactionary. In addition, you have group psychology and a large percentage of users that aren't the most socially well-off folk. In addition, a bunch of other stuff.
In short, it seems to me that Reddit is more a force for "good" than not. There are "bad" things, and the community can be swayed and manipulated like any other -- but they're largely more aware of that than other groups, and seem to be more willing to actually listen to well-reasoned arguments than others.
They also have the benefit of becoming a very popular site at a point in time where the internet seems to be becoming a major player in social and political action, but that's a different can of worms.
> As you note, the level of technical competence in the subreddits and threads that pertain to technical matters is higher on Reddit. Articles and discussions about just about any facet of any field that requires long-studied domain knowledge will have at least one commenter that really knows their stuff and wants to help people understand it.
This is exactly what I mean. For example in a discussion about D, Walter Bright (the creator of D) joins in. In a discussion on Scala Martin Odersky joins in. That's pretty awesome.
> This does come with the problem that someone who is just crafty with words can create detailed troll paragraphs that laymen can't easily distinguish from legitimate information (and this does happen, and is arguable inevitable once a discussion community grows to contain some ill-defined number of members)
Yes, although surprisingly often the crowd will choose the good comments will to be upvoted. There are exceptions of course. For example jdh30 nearly always gets downvoted no matter what he says, even if his comment is helpful and correct.
> HN also has a much stronger focus on entrepreneurship (understandably so).
Yes, on entrepreneurship topics HN has better discussion. Reddit is a bit anti-entrepreneur (especially anti-bigco).
Parts of it, certainly. It definitely has a generalized semi-anti-capitalist vibe, and yes, anti-bigco. I don't think too many of those people are against entrepreneurship in the sense of individuals (or small groups thereof) making a living for themselves doing what they are passionate about; I would imagine that the crankiness would tend to arise when an individual or company started going past providing for themselves, to providing for themselves in gross excess at the expense of the livelihoods of other individuals -- possibly many other individuals.
It's not about the size of the business, it's about putting profit motive for a small amount of individuals over the lives and/or well-being of many individuals.
you cant really be for one and against the other.
This is like saying that a cup of water with a drop of red food dye in it and a cup of red food dye are equivalent because they both contain red food dye. One of them is going to be much more beneficial upon ingestion. That's a terrible analogy.
It just so happens that the majority of "big businesses" doesn't really give a fuck about how much suffering they create -- their primary motivation tends to be profit and power, where as the majority of "small businesses" are primarily concerned with providing for the livelihoods of the people in the business, because the people are passionate about whatever they're doing.
Don't mistake an argument against viewing people as dollar signs as an argument against big businesses, and don't mistake the tendency for most of the businesses criticized as sociopathic to be big businesses to be indicative of the criticism being of big business itself.
People who are anti-bigco tend to be so because of the whole "profit is the only imperative" thing, not because they are businesses that grew.
Really? I had to -frontpage proggit a few weeks ago because I was sick of the trolling, circlejerking, and general asshattery. I still read several subreddits, but overall...
The difference between Reddit and HN though is that a well-reasoned "corporations suck" comment will not get downvoted, while on Reddit a well-reasoned "unions suck" comment will get downvoted.
Reddit has bouts of reasonableness, but I've never found a subreddit that is free of the mob.
on Reddit a well-reasoned "unions suck" comment will get downvoted.
I'd imagine that would depend on what subreddit the thread was in. Frontpage? Yeah, probably. Then again, if it is well reasoned, there will also be people pointing out that the downvotes are frivolous, and agreeing with points and debating.
That was not really the best example. I was playing off the parent's post.
Reddit's biases overlap a fair amount with HN's. Pick a topic where HN and Reddit agree, and you will see the effect more clearly, since the HN crowd on Reddit otherwise serves as a bit of balance.
Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded?
No community is perfect, but I'd say that Metafilter is considerably more tolerant and open to a wide range of opinions on a subject. You can't downvote others if you disagree with them, and baseless attacks are simply deleted by moderators; it forces you to build a well-reasoned argument if you want to debate.
Sure, Reddit's problems are caused by its size, the same way that Digg's are caused by its size. But this does not make the groupthink, mob mentality etc. any less irritating.
We're having two discussions in parallel: on the objective value of Reddit given its circumstances, and on our own personal taste for using it. You're probably much better off in many ways for not visiting.
I would like to know how informed abstainers see Reddit. I feel like given some contrived option to identify themselves with the heritage of their birth culture or nationality, or by their careers, or by where they would fit into traditional subcultures, very many Redditors would identify as Redditors, by interests and attitudes in common with a sufficient critical mass, even with dissent. The Colbert/Stewart rally, more than the individual acts of kindness, has fed a zeitgeist within Reddit that they are a community awakening to their own political power. Momentum is currently building to a campaign in protest against the TSA (which will probably fizzle, with much disillusionment for all). But I think 4chan has showed online subcultures with some chaotic convergence of will can increasingly effect the world outside their own community. And I can't conceive of any way a community, online or off, could come to be sufficiently large to find political feet, and turn out any better than Reddit has.
Regarding HN:
HN still has a higher signal-noise ratio, but as HN gets more popular (with many coming from Reddit, I presume -- and going the other way, as I did), I find that the difference between HN and applicable sub-reddits is dissolving. In particular, I feel like there was some suppression of humour on HN that has weakened since I arrived, which as lame as it seems was a not insignificant differentiating factor.
I'm not sure what you mean by informed abstainers, but if you mean informed abstainers of Reddit then I can speak for myself.
I see Reddit as a self-aggrandizing media outlet. Members generally accept liberal values as status quo. Meaningful discussion imitates base prime time political discourse.
Some of my specific gripes are:
1. Racism on Reddit is an acceptable subtext, as long as the subtext is funny.
2. Sexism on Reddit is acceptable as long as your mother, wife, or daughter are not directly considered.
3. Israel is wrong on Reddit.
I know I'm painting a pretty nasty picture of a lot of people, and I apologize to those who don't deserve it, but I've seen group think plenty of times before in my life and Reddit is it.
I think it's more that making racist/sexist jokes is acceptable, as long as people aren't offended. Telling racist/sexist jokes is not the same as being racist/sexist.
There are a lot of people (myself included) that do not think that there are taboo topics of conversation, or taboo topics of jokes -- humor relies at least partially on delivery and unexpected turns / clever twists, which are largely independent of subject matter.
That said, that doesn't mean that I think it's necessarily appropriate to make racist jokes on a board like Reddit -- it's a textual medium, and depending on the context could be extremely unintentionally offensive to people.
That said, I can't say that jokes of any subject matter bother me on Reddit. There is some actual misogyny, and some interpreted-as-misogyny-when-it's-not drama (and you can replace misogyny with just about any "going to offend people" term here), and it detracts greatly from having useful discussion.
Then again, although the primary purpose of Reddit was useful discussion, it's really more like a pub filled with pretty smart drunk folk. It's a social gathering place, and great stuff can be found, organized, talked about, and done -- but there's also going to be some guy slurring something about his genitalia and women or whatever.
I agree, it depends though. I think mostly the jokes manage to not offend, and offensive jokes are downvoted. There's not really so much misogyny as bias to side with the submitter. When someone says "my girlfriend cheated on me" everyone goes "dump that bitch/X that Y", but if a woman says "my boyfriend cheated on me", people will again say "dump that SOB".
It's not that they're against women, they're against whomever is not telling them their side of the story. It's only natural, if a friend tells you that their boy/girlfriend did something bad, you'll side with them, and so will the other party's friends. Usually both parties have a share of the responsibility, but it's human nature to usually take the side of the person who tells you the story.
I personally don't tend to find those types of jokes very funny, but I think that's mostly because I've heard a lot of them.
I think that what you state here absolutely happens, but I think that there's also a good bit of actual nerdy women-are/men-are angst floating around that at least gets interpreted (or is interpretable) as misogyny/misandry. Not as bad as it used to be, and it always gets called out (at least recently as far as I've seen), but it's there.
I figure it's largely just a function of relative immaturity, and that it's not a serious thing as long as it's called out and it's obvious that the vast majority of people on Reddit don't actually think like that. I definitely don't think that Reddit is a bunch of ridiculous sexists -- it's one of the most egalitarian groups of it's size I've ever seen.
Edit: To clarify, I don't think there's a very large overlap between the people who are making "offensive" jokes, and the people actual displaying misogyny, misandry, or other forms of bigotry (whether realized or not) in the Reddit community, although some of the former certainly gets interpreted as the latter here and there. It can be hard to tell sometimes.
Honestly - I don't think that Digg's issues were necessarily size-specific as they were both architecture and community specific.
Digg had a hell of a lot of momentum in the space - but they were too focused on trying to polarize interests around the articles that were submitted - and much much less focused on the community that was providing the interest.
The beauty of reddit (much more a /. approach) was to provide as free a forum for the opinions on submissions. Digg really was submitter focused (which I believe to be too emulative of traditional media) - whereas reddit does an excellent job of the true meta discussions that would occur if you had a crowd in a public square that were presented a story on, say, a billboard and documenting the ensuing conversations.
Reddit truly emulates how people in a quorum would act. Digg tried too hard to play both the publisher and consumer side of media, with too much publisher bias and we see where that got them.
>Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded?
Exactly; HN is very myopic - to the point of exhibiting aspergers. HN actually is too 'geek centric' -- whereby the community here is too focused on looking like the in crowd of the YC/FB alumn...
For the N-hundredth time, "aspergers" is not the same as being a nerd. It's an autism-spectrum condition that carries with it a substantial sensory integration disorder (among other things), which you'll notice most nerds don't posses.
How so? Yes, I understand it is geeky to protest a semantic inaccuracy for spite of which the intended meaning of the original point comes through. But you'll see the same thing on any forum (I've seen people who fail to capitalize the beginnings of sentences loose their shit at spelling errors), and I don't see how cynicalkane's not-unreasonable correction (continuing to use "Asperger's" as a synonym for "Nerd" does get a perpetuate its use as an unhealthy crutch for the socially-awkward neurotypical) trips anything but the most wildly flailing, meat-free interpretations of your protest.
To your point itself, very few stories on the front page of HN at any given time have members of HN, or people you would accuse members of HN of playing fawning court to, as participants. Many of them have one or two comments that say "Seriously guys? This isn't Reddit." They're usually buried gray at the bottom, forgotten under a mound of productive discussion on whatever the topic is at hand.
I disagree. Sure, it's susceptible to groupthink, but one comment by someone pointing this out is enough to turn the scales. I have never seen a single "don't downvote this guy, he's making a good point" not reverse the downvotes and lead to the person being upvoted (unless he wasn't making a good argument, but I've never seen that).
Do you read with no threshold, and read through entire threads? Read sorted by worst (or lowest or whatever it is)?
I used to. I stopped when the noise got too annoying to sift through, but I would see good comments hidden to most people by downvotes more often than never.
The "don't downvote this guy" reversal happens often, and it's really a very nice thing about the Reddit community, but a solid comment or argument is not guaranteed that treatment by any means, and sometimes that reversal doesn't actually work.
Sure, but the vast majority of the time I've seen (and done) it, it does work, and that's commendable. I firmly believe that redditors are a nudge away (if that) from great discussions, and a "he's making a good point" is enough to make redditors say "wait, I downvoted him because I disagree, not because his point is bad. Let me undo that".
That's simply an overexaggeration. I wouldn't even say that reddit likes to go against the mainstream. Liberalism, pro-gay marriage, pro-pot. These things don't fit with the current law, but they certainly are not minority views in the broader public.
Even then, go read /r/trees, it's full of people who are very sensible and will contradict other "Ents" if they're being stupid about their use of cannabis. They chastise other Democrats for having extreme views.
It's cheap to sit on the sidelines and classify reddit. If you're only reading the headlines and not participating in the discussion then you're missing the point. Similarly, if you're only subscribed to the default subreddits, you're missing the truly good stuff.
It's unbelievable how much GOOD content appears in the android, ubuntu, electronic music subreddits that people never see because they dismiss it they way you are.
Reddit is not a place to have dialogue. Community-moderated areas just aren't very good at it. Even HN has been accused from suffering groupthink. If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place to have it.
Reddit is a very good place to have a discussion with a small group of people -- thanks to the orangered envelope you get whenever someone replies to one of your posts. HN, by comparison, discussions last only as long as the link remains on the homepage. On reddit, I've had conversations go on for weeks.
> HN, by comparison, discussions last only as long as the link remains on the homepage
Maybe if you don't check your threads for replies. Granted, not everyone does that, but I've conversed with more than a few folks long after the original story vanished.
I check the threads link periodically (for example, right now) but I find most other participants in the conversation do not and almost 90% of the time the conversation is dead by the end of the day.
I guess it depends more on who you converse with. I mean, just now, I got here via the threads link and I've already forgotten what story this was under.
> If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place to have it.
Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system. Perhaps only Slashdot is the only community I've seen where points are awarded to comments not based on agreement, but on general merit. Admit it: you've downvoted people you don't agree with. When enough people do it, you get groupthink.
Forums/mailing lists don't have that problem. Every post is given equal merit in the number of eyeballs that read it. Those comments that are not interesting can get ignored, those that are interesting will either merit a "yeah, I agree" response, or a "you're wrong for [x,y,z]". That is a dialogue. Community moderated upvoted/downvoted discussions are not a dialogue. They are a "here's what we all think" metric.
Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system.
I'd almost argue that groupthink is inherent in human interaction in groups larger than one. Almost.
Forums and mailing lists are certainly susceptible to it, even though it occurs less often, but I suspect that has more to do with the size of their memberships. SA, for instance, has tons of it.
Oh, and /. had a serious problem with it for a long time. Their moderation system helps, and maybe it's gotten a lot better (it's been a while since I was active on it), but oh man when /. was the site, it was pretty bad.
/. is a good example of what seems to happen to a lot of online communities -- a small, competent, awesome base of users is very active for a while, things snowball, you then get a huge upsurge in users and activity and trolling, and then that eventually fades and your userbase stabilizes at a point where the userbase is pretty solid and there's not too much in the way of ridiculousness going on.
Hmm... more specialized fora will have the more concentrated focus of intentionally-informed people who've gathered explicitly to discuss a topic. Too much off-topic noise will get you shunned, because people come there for the signal (Reddit, though I love it, is noise incarnate). With far fewer threads, people maintain a discussion rather than post and run. In far smaller communities, with active posters within Dunbar's number[0], will call you out on your shit or for bailing whenever you get shut down.
Or use Google Chrome/Chromium and get the Chattit extension so you can bicker in real-time!
But seriously most people are members of Reddit, Digg (well..), HN etc. it's not like each website only has the same guys and girls (yes girls!) whether people admit it or not some if not most people read many types of social news websites.
I've actually switched from reading HN to mostly reading Reddit.
The level of discourse increases quite a bit in subreddits, and you can usually find good discussions on even obscure interests. On the other hand, its pretty rare for the level of discourse to get to the level of HN. But level of discourse isn't the only quality of Reddit.
I think the main reason for me switching to mostly reading Reddit was because I found it very comforting to read r/atheism (my family is very Christian, mostly fundamentalist and I was a closeted Atheist). I suspect that emotional support is what a lot of people go to reddit for.
I think it depends on the specific discussion. The front-page articles for the bigger subreddits are just too crowded to have any sort of nuance a lot of the time. But if you're interested in specific topics and are subscribed to smaller subreddits, you can have really good back-and-forth with no pitchfork-waving.
> But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place.
To put in the cliché Freudian speak -- Reddit is the Id and HN is Superego.
Reddit is the place to call people stupid, post silly pictures of cats, but also a place to get together and donate for a cause, talk someone out of a suicide, or just spread around stupid memes for fun. A well placed witty one-liners will get you hundreds of upvotes. Anything too intellectual will likely get a TL;DR type reaction.
HN is the site that discusses issues in depth, rational, evidence backed arguments are expected, civility and maturity is expected as well. A stupid one liner will most likely be frowned upon.
But I think we need both. I am a member of both sites and both provide for a what I consider a healthy outlet for my online presence.
"Anything too intellectual will likely get a TL;DR type reaction."
I mostly agree with your post except for this. I actually find that Redditor's are extremely good about offering a counterpoint to a sensational title. Oftentimes, someone in the field related to the article will post something intellectual debunking the story (especially in the case of something to do with science or medicine) which will offer far more additional material than the source itself.
I think you are all being very unfair. I find the same proportions of insightful comments on reddit and HN but I find HN has a form of snobism that I profoundly dislike. Not in all users, but it's obviously there and sucks.
If you avoid the stupidest subreddits (/pics, /funny, etc) it's actually amazing what high level of discussion you can meet. (while having a good laugh too, btw).
The mob rule is extremely distasteful to watch IMHO, and it's certainly a very specific community now - liberal, pro-drugs, anti-consumerism etc etc. There's a lot of knee-jerk reactions and short-termism - outraged one day, forgotten the next.
They can get their users to 'do good' in the world, but can they make any money yet?
> Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant?
Not at all. I think Reddit is a classic example of the "evaporative cooling effect" in groups. It's now dominated by a very restricted set of opinions. It looks very open and welcoming (initially, at least), if you share those opinions, but it's obviously ridiculously narrow-minded, if you don't.
What I find really annoying about reddit is that inane and snarky comments are almost always at the top. You sometimes have to scroll very far to see a serious comment. I see this as a symptom of the fact the average reddit user is quite young.
However, I'll tell you a secret: the subreddit called TrueReddit does not suffer from this. It's really pleasant.
I feel the same way about some of the bigger subreddits, but if you spend some time to find the good ones, the site improves dramatically.
However, one unfortunate thing is that the programming subreddit isn't (in my opinion) part of the signal. It's just as full of intolerable sniping and general assume-the-worst behavior as anywhere else on the web.
For me, the main unpleasantness of reddit lies in the amount of pun threads that show up in the comments on any story. It may have been funny at first, but it just makes it harder and harder to find the actual interesting comments.
however, judging by the number of upvotes they all receive, there's probably hundreds of thousands of people out there who disagree with me, but seriously, a lot of comments on there are like i can haz cheezburger without the cutesy grammer.
One anecdote that didn't make the article: my wife had a patient with multiple sclerosis and she thought he could get some real theraputic value from a Wii. We pitched it on Reddit and Facebook, and between the two, came up with over $200.
The key to Reddit is to unsubscribe from every major subreddit, and just stick with the one's that fulfill your niche interests. If you do that, there is reasonable dialog to be had.
An oft cited reason for founding a company is to make the world better in some way. These 25 stories demonstrate that Reddit has undeniably accomplished that.
I actually find reddit to be somewhat nauseating. Call me cynical, but I can't help but think the Reddit community performs every kind act with an air of smug, self-centerdness you often find in creepy church youth groups or after school specials. I started visiting reddit because digg's links started sucking, and now I visit HN primarily because reddit is no longer about good links either. It's a maassive geek circle jerk where people share semi amusing images, write self-affirming posts, and run every meme known to man into the ground. Reddit's new slogan about sums it up: "The Voice of the Internet." That's a lofty claim. Anyways, the same thing is bound to happen to HN at some point. The problem with social news sites is that they all get worse as the user base grows.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for helping people. But reddit was a link aggregator at one point, and it has been disappointing to see that side of it melt away over the years.
creepy church youth groups or after school specials
Yes, yes! Exactly!
I used to read programming reddit, and made a lot of comments there. Then I started to notice a pattern -- people were so happy that they wrote a blog post that it was suddenly forbidden to comment on it. One post I remember reading was something like, "hey guys, I made a PHP app! it's open source so please comment". The app was doing something like submitting a form field like "?shell_command=someapp%20--args". I said it was maybe not good practice to allow the user to supply an arbitrary UNIX command. The reply was, "well, my app sets that, and nobod is going to change it". I told him anyone could change the URL and run whatever they want. This got downmodded and I was told I was being an "idiot jerk".
Then I didn't read reddit anymore. Obviously I was raining on some sort of special parade that I was not even invited to.
Anyway, there's something off about the Reddit community. I think your post sums it up quite well.
Sadly, the quality of programming.reddit went way way down, but there are lots of reddit communities that didn't. For example, people founded the coding reddit because programming became so bad.
What I don't understand is how exactly it is as you claim it is. My Reddits consist of programming, robotics, science, math, etc.t, and get nothing but positive, helpful feedback and meaningful discourse that DOESN'T (key word here) infuriate me. Not sure how it's a "circle jerk" at that point when I can ask questions and have them gasp answered in a timely manner.
Just because it has a "politics" Reddit doesn't mean the entire site sucks.
I come to HN for the simple reason that it's more about startups and programming than most anything else, and overall I am just as happy with its content. It's considerably more granular, and sometimes that's precisely what I want.
I read both sites and have for quite some time now (although mostly lurking). I get immensely good return on my time invested in both.
Well it is true I'm criticizing reddit as it is without any customization, but I don't think that makes my criticisms any less valid. r/politics, r/atheism, r/pics, r/askreddit, etc. are, like it or not, major parts of the site and generate the majority of the traffic (oh, r/barelylegal too). The subreddits I've subscribed to in the past, like r/ruby and r/web_design have been so sparsely active they're next to worthless. If you say to me, "sure, the site sucks if you focus on that 90% of it, but it can be great if you meticulously dig for the 10% that's worth something" I think you've proven my point for me.
It still is a link aggregator and, aside from problems with the spam filter, it's a very good one.
People get confused about what reddit is; it isn't like digg or HN in that it is one link aggregator, it's a web service that allows you you to group similar webpages together.
It just so happens that the most popular groupings happen to be the least interesting to outliers, which should be obvious...this is why they're outliers.
I will call you cynical. How can you sit there and say that? You have no examples of them doing this for self-serving purposes and quite frankly, the volume and repetition of their generosity is so great that it is bewildering to think that they are doing it for self serving purposes. And who gives a shit if I get off on helping people? Isn't it a good thing that I feel good about helping people? Isn't that in line with a sense of humanity?
edit: Additionally, remove /r/pics, /r/funny, /r/atheism and add the more obscure tech subreddits. There is plenty of tech content that comes through in /r/programming and /r/javascript that shows up before it shows up here. It is a link aggregator. Please take the 5 minutes, make an account and setup your subreddits correctly. I think you could be very pleasantly surprised.
I said I have no problem with people helping others - I'm not a sociopath. It's the whole "look, everyone, at how awesome we are" circle jerk that I find nauseating. Besides, I think reddit has performed an equal number of acts of vengeance as they have acts of altruism and have nailed the wrong person in more than one instance - perhaps that's worthy of a blog post. At least 4chan admits what it is.
Again, my issue isn't that reddit is an active community, it's that it has turned from a link sharing site to a larger, more work friendly version of 4chan with an incredibly inflated sense of self-righteousness.
And to be sure, I'm no reddit noob, I've had an account for 3 years and spent a lot of time cultivating my subreddits. It is a matter of opinion, I realize, but overall it has become a pretty poor source of good web content these days, for me anyhow.
Go find me a significant number of highly voted posts, or ANY, that gloat about how much they've raised. I remember those posts where they were driving. The closest thing imaginable to what you're describing was "we're almost to $xxx,xxx dollars everyone" posts. I've seen OTHER websites talk about it. I've seen Colbert talk about it, but NEVER have I seen a submission, let alone a post, that even remotely read "We're so awesome, go us!". If you think that is the style of comments on reddit, then honestly, I question your actual participation there. You're blindlyand prooflessly questioning their intentions and I find that offensive on their behalf.
Their acts of vengence are terrible and misplaced. Even just now I read a post about the Gizmodo jerk responding and making fun of reddit in a tweet. Someone commented to torment his flickr photos and someone immediately replied back that it would be a dick move.
You forget that reddit is made up of people. When it reaches the size it is, you're guaranteed to have the idiots that do vigilante stuff. But when one of the ADMINS who rarely condemn the community SHREDS into everyone about stopping the vigilantism... I think you're missing the forest for the few rotten trees (and I think it's because you want to).
I still think you are COMPLETELY wrong about the relevancy of posts in the good subreddits. You're doing a poor job of cultivating your subreddits frankly if you can't find a good combo resulting in quality links. Again, you bring up this sense of "self-righteousness" that is COMPLETELY unsubstantiated and not for you to say.
I think you've made your mind up without giving them a chance, and even when pressed for details, you make the same vague claims about their motives and intentions without any more substantiation than the first time you said it.
reddit is basically an IRC server for the web, with voting.
The cleverst thing they have done is also entirely simple.
By making all thread replies to your posts appear in your inbox as personal messages, and highlighting the orange icon, it successfully encourages users to make reasonably deep replies to those that bite.
This seems to generate interesting thread content very quickly.
My only gripe is the lack of resolution in the voting system (ala /.). Meme overload is a real problem when browsing reddit.
Meme overload is a significant problem on any large internet community that's web-centric in its outlook. From SA to 4chan to reddit, any community that thinks of itself as "the Internet" will employ memes as a means of self-confirmation.
Never underestimate the capabilities of people who don't feel like working at work. I think the whole not doing anything for weeks at a time make people want to compensate somehow, and this is the result. Sending birthday cards to 90-year-olds and buying people new LCDs. Very nice.
The quote that comes to mind when I think of the reddit community: "Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us."
By comparison of what? Reddit is not composed of typical people mentioned above? Or do all regular folk gather round to share Impact captioned cartoons of homosexual sheep riding bicycles through fields of scrotums?
It's altruism, but it isn't astonishing in it's volume. I'm sure that of any suitably large group of people, the total dollar amount of donations to worthy causes will be well into the tens of thousands, which is basically what reddit's done here. You might call them kind of naive for doing things only about those causes that manage to get popular on reddit -- while reddit has some well-publicized random acts of kindness the overall impact of what they've done is pretty tiny.
Would some of those thousands of dollars have been better spent fighting malaria? I really can't say. Is it impressive to donate only to those causes that are presented in such a fashion as to jerk at the proverbial heart-strings? I should think not.
Is reddit above the rest of the Internet in its altruism? I would say perhaps not, but they're a good and valuable net community. There are many instances of Internet activism accomplishing something good, both inside and outside of reddit, and I would say that reddit's accomplishments are nothing short of pretty good.
Yeah, but you could say the same thing about the Nazi party and the civil rights movement in the United States. That statement is vacuous since I seriously doubt anyone reading this thought Reddit might be made of non-people. What's your point?
EDIT: While I agree with your sentiment and my comment could be interpreted has harsh depending on the tone of voice, I've said this kind of thing before (x is made of people) and always wished I had clarified it more. So please think of it as more of an invitation rather than a challenge.
Just an observation for those here who haven't spent a lot of time on reddit: the main page is _much_ more superficial then what you can get if you make an effort. When you're logged in you can subscribe and unsubscribe from subreddits. Once you get rid of pictures, wtf, politics and a couple more things already look a lot more mature... and then you can start looking for more obscure but rewarding ones.
A good example of what a smallish sub-forum can do, take a look at http://www.reddit.com/r/motorcycles/. This is a topic I'm interested in, but there are literally thousands of subreddits, smaller or bigger.
Hmm, this spontaneity might just be channeled into a start up idea. Imagine a site predicated on a community of users pitching in a buck a month or more to fund some life-changing event for a random or deserving person.
Probably not, but (and not to be snarky or anything... well, maybe just a little), you do know what Google and Wikipedia are.... right?
I never understand the point of posts that ask knowledge that can be easily obtained (in both concise and verbose forms; with all the perspective and facts you could want) by just clicking on one of the top 5 results in Google.
Probably the intent of such posts is to find out if I am outdated or what? If more people haven't heard about something discussed here I would be convinced that this isn't something to worry about.
As a redditor of going on nearly 5 years, this story brought me to tears (followed each of these events and participated in some) - and is personally my favorite YC spawn.
Jesus christ, these stories make me cry. I don't know if this is something I need to explore deeper, or if I'm simply torturing myself by reading them.
Seriously? You hear of a group of people who do good things, and your response is, "Well, they don't do as well as this other group that does good things!"
They did some really great things, and your response is "disgusting". Sad.
I can't believe that a place of religious worship is created with the prime motivation to spread goodwill. It's purely to extend and expand or fortify their religion.
Edit: To clarify my point further: If the aim was to spread goodwill, it would be more efficient to open a center directly focused on such.
I hope you understand that there is no debate going on between us. This is merely an outsider's understanding of how a church functions.
In the context of this thread it is irrelevant how effective / ineffective, good / bad a church is. The church is used to define an entity that represents a contrast to reddit's intended functionality.
It really is heart-warming to hear of all the good that those on Reddit have done. But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place — discussions got extremely polarised very quickly and there seemed to be very little room for reasoned dialogue.
The article makes it sound like a good thing that "comments are generally downvoted by dozens or even hundreds of people with remarkable speed, pushing their noxious posts down into obscurity within minutes". But, since everyone can downvote — hell, I have even see non-controversial statements get downvoted heavily — the quality of dialogue often ends up being at the level of the lowest common denominator.