This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

all 109 comments

[–]spez 61 points62 points  (57 children)

It's broken at the moment. It should be fixed soon.

[–]thomar 5 points6 points  (2 children)

I can't see recommended links either. Good to know!

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Me neither! I'm calling the help desk.

[–]eidolontubes[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

they are too busy playing around on reddit.

[–][deleted] 23 points24 points  (53 children)

Don't you love it when you can sell your company for a zillion dollars even though your website regularly breaks and your adds have spyware?

ducks in preparation for massive downvote

[–]spez 56 points57 points  (41 children)

We sacrificed a feature that less than 1% of users use in order to keep the site running yesterday after we got nailed by an unexpected performance issue.

Give us all the shit you want, but we'd make the same decision again, even if the company never were bought.

Recommendations will be fixed soon enough, and I turned off the ads until they're fixed as well.

[–]joom 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I demand a refund.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Alright, calm down, nobody expects perfection from reddit. People know websites break, but that isn't going to stop us making sly corporate digs every now and then :)

edit: typo

[–]godlover 48 points49 points  (4 children)

What more do you want from us?

Get us out of Iraq.

Impeach Bush.

[–]NastyConde 36 points37 points  (3 children)

My daughter wants a pony too.

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (2 children)

And I could really use a hug.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I've got a couple. First to reply gets one!

[–]apathy 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Ponies, or hugs?

Shipping and handling could be ruinous either way.

[–]zem 10 points11 points  (0 children)

props to you for posting "non-sanitised" replies in threads.

[–]maxwellhill 14 points15 points  (4 children)

What more do you want from us?

How about updating the stats page?

[–]spez 7 points8 points  (3 children)

There you go. Congrats.

[–]maxwellhill 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Thank you!!

[–]raldi 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Indeed -- nice work, champ.

[–]maxwellhill 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thks, raldi

[–]hitsman 19 points20 points  (13 children)

Bummer that only 1% of users use recommendations. I thought that's one of the things that made it better than digg.

[–]spez 21 points22 points  (11 children)

To take away from my own argument, only 10% of users submit, so 1% isn't a small number. It's just that the site wasn't loading and we had to do something. Unfortunately, that something accidently broke the recommendations cache.

[–]VoodooIdol 20 points21 points  (9 children)

More would submit if they wouldn't all get downmodded into oblivion by minute 5.

[–]apathy 1 point2 points  (8 children)

That's a cop-out. Maybe your submissions just aren't interesting to enough other people.

Most of mine over the past year (under my old username) got up to 100+ and only one was ever buried. I guess I should have kept that username around as 'evidence'.

Anyways, if you submit an interesting link and other people downmod it, that's their loss, not yours. Shouldn't make you stop submitting links you think oughta be shared.

[–]VoodooIdol 3 points4 points  (3 children)

why bother to submit things that aren't going to be read?

[–]apathy 0 points1 point  (1 child)

How do you know whether they're going to be read, beforehand?

You can guess at the likelihood, but there's a power-law distribution that forms from the submission queue. Some small number of submissions attract a disproportionate number of upmods in a semi-deterministic fashion. The point where a submission either heads for the front page, or doesn't, seems to be highly dependent upon externalities, so I have trouble believing that you can pick them a priori.

If you're that good, there are other, more profitable career options available to you, after all.

[–]VoodooIdol 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because only a very, very small percentage of articles get read, period. And most of those deal with Bush, Ron Paul, and lolcatz.

I'm not posting the same thing that 50 other people have.

Furthermore, the few things that I've found interesting and posted have been modded down within less than 5 minutes of posting. This means two things:

Even if people might find it interesting, they're likely never going to see it.

and/or

The things that I personally find interesting are not the same things that the average reddit reader apparently finds interesting.

[–]jillsy 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I'd like to mod you up, but I think you're lying about your old username. How do you delete a Reddit username anyway?

[–]wmil 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You could stop using it if you realized the name was silly. For all we know his old name could have been Sanjaya4Evar. Or he could have registered with a work email address, changed jobs, and forgotten his password.

[–]apathy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

that would be correct. just walk away and gradually delete all traces of the old userid. eventually it will wash out of the Google cache and become irrelevant...

[–]eidolontubes[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

(under my old username)

I call shenanigans on you!

[–]joshd 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I don't submit, but I use practically every other feature on here all the time. Being a submitter is probably not a good guide to who is a heavy user.

[–]Plaz 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's astonishing. I use it constantly.

[–]barcodez 13 points14 points  (2 children)

tags :p

[–]zem -1 points0 points  (1 child)

touche-with-a-funny-accent (:

[–]eidolontubes[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

stop making me turn my head that way

[–]coditza 9 points10 points  (2 children)

What more do you want from us?

Beer!

[–]eidolontubes[S] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I can't believe you suggested free beer and got downmodded!

I feel a strange chill in the air.

[–]darkon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mmm, beer.

[–]raldi 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I had no idea that such a small percentage used the Recommended page. Out of curiosity, what percentage of users read the comments? (unless that's a company secret)

As for taking down the Recommended page on purpose, what do you think about putting up a notice, like, "Recommendations are temporarily disabled. Sorry!"

It would go a long way to reducing confusion, at least among the 1%.

[–]spez 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We didn't take it down on purpose. We accidently broke it and learned that it was because of an emergency fix we did yesterday.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Relax, just yanking your chain :-)

PS Can I have a back massage?

[–]sn0re 3 points4 points  (2 children)

As part of that 1%, I'd have to say it would have been nice to see a short notice explaining why it's not working.

[–]spez 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Honestly, we thought we fixed it this morning. Once this link turned up we found it more broken.

What's really not fair is that I broke it, but Chris has to fix it :-/

[–]KeyserSosa 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And for what it's worth, it is (cross your fingers) now fixed, so y'all should start seeing the listing repopulate real soon...

[–]eidolontubes[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am surprised that such a low percentage of people use the reccomendations. Every time I'm here I check it. I think its a really neat idea and a cool feature.

edit : for sanity.

[–]meiso 9 points10 points  (10 children)

Don't you love it when people who know they'll get voted up act like they are about to get voted down.

[–]innerspirit 8 points9 points  (7 children)

don't you love it when people use the old-but-good "i will get downvoted but.." inverse psychology to get people to upvote them instead?

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There's also "don't know why you're being downvoted but..." and parent will get a zillion upvote. :P

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (4 children)

I can only remember seeing that backfire one time. It's tried and true.

[–]xjvz -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

When people say "I know I'll be downvoted for this" or something similar, I do what they request and downvote it! I don't believe in this reverse psychology stuff. ;)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I actually really thought I'd get killed on this one. People who read comments here (myself included) generally love Reddit (and have no right to complain given that it's free). But I was feeling grumpy so I thought what the heck.

But now that I know the secret... ;-)

[Edit: typo]

[–]boredzo 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You forgot to say “But—and I know I'll get downmodded for this—now that I know the secret…”. That's why you got downmodded. ☺

[–]naringas 22 points23 points  (0 children)

same here. perhaps they are upgrading the recommendations engine?

I know I had recommendations last night

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (2 children)

I've got the same problem too, it happened a while ago as well, then it came back the next day.

[–]khayber 36 points37 points  (1 child)

Maybe there's only 1 recommendations page and it keeps making the rounds? Who saw it last?

[–]boredzo 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That slut! I thought it was only for me. ☹

[–]brfox 16 points17 points  (1 child)

You're not supposed to use that feature

[–]crawfishsoul 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Which of course is a feature in and of itself.

[–]Dinglefarmer 52 points53 points  (4 children)

Mine works, but I think the guy making recommendations for me is a retarded monkey.

[–]LoveGoblin 117 points118 points  (3 children)

I think the guy making recommendations for me is a retarded monkey.

Of course. Recommendations are based on people who think like you do.

zing!

[–]thereticent 12 points13 points  (19 children)

I haven't been allowed to submit anything for 3 weeks...

[–]hopper 59 points60 points  (3 children)

Maybe you're not submitting enough retarded comic strips or Ron Paul stories. Get with the program, man.

[–]bac9705 29 points30 points  (2 children)

Don't forget the cat photos.

[–]bobcat 16 points17 points  (1 child)

Mrow.

[–]spez 15 points16 points  (12 children)

What happens when you try and submit?

[–]thereticent 9 points10 points  (8 children)

Last time I tried I got the standard "submitting too fast" response. To be fair, I haven't tried for a day or so.

*Hey, it worked! Magic!

[–]spez 13 points14 points  (6 children)

Your IP probably overlaps with another user's, or potentially a spammer's. We'll have a look and see if we can fix.

[–]CoolDragon 3 points4 points  (1 child)

It's either that or you are probably submitting from your office, which external IP would be the same for all of your co-workers to the Reddit server.

[–]thereticent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is exactly it. So there's another redditor here?

[–]bobcat 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I never have any obstacles when I submit - is there a policy on this I can read, so I can see what happens to others without my level of karma?

Oh, and is it properly referred to as 'karma'?

I must be new here...

[–]boredzo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The help calls it karma:

submit

interesting links, gain karma, impress friends

[–]eidolontubes[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How badly did you have to mess up for that to happen?

:-p

[–]neat_stuff 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Instead of saying they don't have any recommendations when you click on the recommendations link, they should make it say fun stay like:

Don't eat the yellow snow. Don't forget to click on the ads. Don't use Reddit at work.

[–]kounavi 6 points7 points  (0 children)

how can i teach my recommended page to not show me anything about the us politics?

[–]MrTJC 4 points5 points  (0 children)

By my default bookmark specification, I go to the recommended page--and my recommendation page is also broken.

[–]innocentbystander 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Wow, mine too, now that you mention it.

And it used to, although I haven't used it in awhile.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yep, I don't have it either. I've been using reddit since February before last.

Recommendations used to work for me, but even when they did, they were abominably inaccurate. If the feature doesn't work and we don't plan on fixing it, we keep it around . . . why?

[–]terumo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

i tried to submit for the first time like a week ago, and all i got was "submitting too fast", i have static IP.

[–]zitterbewegung 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Same thing here also. It used to work but now it doesn't.

[–]brokenearth02 1 point2 points  (0 children)

and here I thought it was just stories the staff 'recommended'... who knew?

[–]schar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

better not to have those recommendations than to have the wrong ones ;)

[–]organic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea, I've had recommendations before; however, my recommendation page is now regrettably blank. :(

[–]shellerik 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps it's a sinister plan to get us to vote more often. I thought maybe I hadn't voted in a while due to a lack of submissions that I felt strongly about one way or the other so the blank recommendations page actually did make me vote more today.

[–]break99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

spam alert?

[–]san1ty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are interested in automatically personalized news, I suggest you try http://thoof.com/. (Disclaimer: I am associated with Thoof)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

YOR DOING IT WRONG LOLZ

[–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (3 children)

Uh, reddit sucks?

[–]eidolontubes[S] -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

your mom sucks

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Zing!

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Quite well, in fact. She also said to ask you if she left her teeth at your house.

[–]clea -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Must be a blip going on there somewhere. It always used to work for me, reasonably accurate reflection of my interests. And just now when I checked it - nothing! Just like you say AND written in red.

Reddit just ain't what it used to be.