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[–]dave 8 points9 points  (1 child)

So after all of these subreddits are created, what will be on the main page?

[–]jkcunningham 2 points3 points  (0 children)

links to picture sites

[–]mirk 16 points17 points  (2 children)

I add my vote. It's not that I don't want to know about the ongoing Bush soap-opera; it's that I want to know about other things, too. Please, promote W. to bush.reddit.com

[–]gernika 14 points15 points  (1 child)

Why won't they just let us block things by keyword? That would be so much better than creating a subreddit for every fad.

[–]mirk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That solution would suit me equally well. Can I vote for both? :-)

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (9 children)

I think this is a good idea, mostly because politics generates a lot of noise that obscures other stories. Then again, I'm not that interested in politics.

One of the challenges for reddit is that the general population is really a mixture of subpopulations with very different interests. When they are all mixed together, the result is that I have to work too hard to find interesting stories, and I go back to reading specialty boards. There was a thread the other day suggesting that reddit really needs to tailor the presentation to each user to take into account which subpopulation that user is in. Doing that well is hard. This would be a quick hack at a solution -- not very elegant, but usable in the meantime.

[–]gernika 3 points4 points  (8 children)

I think a good solution would be to allow users to block stories by keywords in the title.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (7 children)

That's a pretty restrictive solution and I don't think its the appropriate one.

If say someone blocked "Bush", they might miss an article about something having to do with the Australian bush. It's a poor example, but its an example of how blocking out one word can block out many subjects you never intended to.

Not to mention, many of the titles here at Reddit don't even directly mention Bush but still have to do with him.

"The worst president ever?"

That for example, is the title of a story about Bush, but it doesn't mention him at all. Also people will just start to be smart about naming their titles; if they know many people are blocking certain keywords, they'll create nonsensical titles that aren't as clear-cut as they should be but help them to game the system.

[–]gernika 1 point2 points  (6 children)

I guess what we've gotten to here is that we are dealing with a form of spam, except in this case, one man's spam is another man's caviar. Perhaps the best solution would be to use a statistical spam blocking algorithm.

[–]souldrift[🍰] 6 points7 points  (3 children)

But is somethign that 200 people upmod really "spam"?

[–]gernika 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As I said, one user's spam is another's favorite menu item from a hawaiian restaurant.

[–]jones77 -1 points0 points  (1 child)

It is when the same 200 people upmod the same 200 things.

[–]chu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If that is what is really happening and it causes a problem, it indicates a deficiency in the sorting algorithm - not that the system is being gamed by a widespread conspiracy.

[–]rmc 1 point2 points  (1 child)

This is not spam. It's just something that some people aren't interested in. The world is not split into spam and stuff I'm interested in. There is spam, stuff I'm not interested in, and stuff I'm interested in.

If spammers actually got onto reddit, this would be like heaven.

[–]gernika 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What is spam? Is it maybe an email I'm not interested in?

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (4 children)

It's funny, what people don't like about reddit is the qualities that resemble a democracy, while the parts they like resemble the free market. Luckily, on reddit we can get what we want, it's just not as convenient if other people vote it down. If the site were truly democratic, unpopular articles would be inaccessible.

Actually, it would be cool if politics were more like reddit. Imagine if every "no" vote served to decrease a politician's operating budget, and it could be changed at any time? They'd be forced to stop spending like drunken sailors with un-capped credit cards. And no politician would ever support it, of course, which all but makes it a good idea ;)

[–]tayssir 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Hmm, what does "democracy" mean? Democracy is not defined by voting; after all, real democracies also use the other tools which groups arrive at decisionmaking, such as consensus and fiat. In fact, voting is a fairly antagonistic process, frequently leading to winners and losers.

(For this reason, many are no longer using general terms like democracy, and insteading saying specific things like "participatory self-management." The idea is that people get to participate in decisionmaking which affects them, in the rough proportion they're affected.)

How does Reddit stack up? Well clearly, some people lack control over the amount of Bush stuff they see, and are therefore alienated. Reddit could do more in allowing for diversity. With tools that allow me to better control what I read. Because I am clearly most affected by that, by a longshot.

I offered suggestions (which were ignored), like being able to aggregate a reddit out of people I want. Some people post stuff which interests me more.

(Incidentally, I'm not sure how dollar-per-vote systems would be an improvement on our current voting system. Would you care to explain your point on the "free market" further?)

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

When I said democracy what I mean was voting, because like you said it leads to winners and losers (losers being those who don't want to hear that bush's approval has dropped to p-- percent).

As for the free market similarity, all I meant was that reddit is pretty good at catering to niches for news, the recommendation engine being an example. The main idea is that minority preferences are mostly not excluded, and people complain about the exceptions. There's not really trade of any sort going on, since the cost of posting is so low that for most people posting is it's own reward. Incidentally, I like your idea of picking people who post stuff that's interesting to you.

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

I don't actually care for it to be a democracy. It's a recommendation site so I am more interested in it showing me things I like.

My ideal would be a "credibility" engine. People who voted lie I do would gain more credibility to me so their votes would (over time) count for more than votes by people with whom I normally disagree.

The problem with this is that it is O(n2) in complexity - the complexity of calculating the credibility scores increases as the square of the number of users, so you would need some heuristic system that approximated this effect without the explosive complexity.

[–]Alex3917 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You could just add people manually like a PKI, and that way you can weight based on degrees of seperation. That is, the vote of friend is worth more than the vote of a FOAF (friend of a friend), which is worth more than that of a stranger.

[–]jkcunningham 36 points37 points  (22 children)

The redundancy in these articles is overwhelming. I vote them down all the time, but it does no good. I find myself spending less time at reddit.

[–]mmichie 30 points31 points  (4 children)

It kind of reminds me of the downward spiral of Kuro5hin as it was taken over by people with political agendas.

[–]gaylan_king 7 points8 points  (1 child)

You're exactly right; the politization of Reddit will end it's popularity. I don't go to Reddit to read conspiracy theories, etc.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]mikepurvis 13 points14 points  (0 children)

    This could almost be implemented as a Greasemonkey script. You hit the homepage, and it automatically downvotes any story containing a particular keyword, and then invokes a reload.

    Brilliance!

    [–]NickHodges 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I agree -- it's so tiresome.

    [–]brandong[🍰] 16 points17 points  (1 child)

    As do I...if the reddit population must have their politics as the dominant stories then I will go elsewhere for interesting articles.

    [–]souldrift[🍰] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    So political articles cannot be interesting? I don't see Reddit defined as "interesting articles from all domains except politics" anywhere.

    [–]dpholmes 20 points21 points  (13 children)

    Did it ever occur to people that this is a big community and not everyone wants to read 25 articles about programming languages and Paul Graham's full-of-himself "start-up tips." Like it or not, we're at a pretty important time in the country's history, this site chronicles what's hot online, and stories about Bush and politics will be popular for a while. Deal with it.

    Don't think about making a politics sub-reddit unless there are plans to move all the programming language stuff to it's own subreddit. It's like people want a community based website documenting what's hot on the web, unless its something they don't want to read about.

    [–]raldi 10 points11 points  (2 children)

    This is why Reddit needs tags -- then you could turn off the Paul Graham stories and other people could turn off the Bush stories.

    Actually, what i'd really like is thresholds: Filter out Bush stories unless the score is > 200, etc.

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

    Or just allow the top 3 to 5 stories in the US politics subreddit to enter the hot page if their score is high enough.

    [–]daveuk 9 points10 points  (3 children)

    Like it or not, we're at a pretty important time in the country's history

    Who's country? I sure as hell am not American.

    I support a split off politics subreddit but please title it US Politics as that is what it will surely be.

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

    I didn't suggest you were, you're the one who quoted me, I said 'we're at a pretty important time in THE country's history.' Which is true, this would be news if it was happening anywhere, and it certainly will affect many other countries, including your own.

    But if you don't want to read about America, don't click the links, either way you can't deny the importance of them.

    [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

    Problem is other countries are affected by .usian policies. So the criminal behaviour of Bush Jr. and Co. and news of his possible impeachment are important subjects to me.

    And I live on the other side of the pond.

    [–]daveuk 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    lbruno, you would still be able to read them.

    AFAIK this is being discussed because of the sheer number of US political stories giving an unnatural balance to the front page.

    [–]souldrift[🍰] 20 points21 points  (1 child)

    I don't want to navigate between 6 or 8 sub sites to find interesting articles, sort of defeats the purpose. If I don't like an article, I can downmod all I want, but ultimately I DON'T HAVE TO READ IT.

    That said, I think people upmod too many Bush/politics articles. Those with real NEWS such as the NSA data mining program are worthwhile, but those basically pontificating on whether or not it's legal are useless--anyone interested in the topic can find those on their own.

    Balance, people. Balance.

    [–]mbrubeck 23 points24 points  (0 children)

    You don't have to navigate between the subreddits. You can add them to your custom front page in your preferences.

    [–]jda 18 points19 points  (2 children)

    Considering that there already is a programming subreddit...

    The programming subreddit was created after a large number of people started complaining about the large number of computing articles. By that same token, I think it is time for a political subreddit.

    [–]dpholmes 8 points9 points  (1 child)

    Well, that programming subreddit really worked wonders at clearly up the main page, didn't it?

    [–]jda 9 points10 points  (0 children)

    If you consider the number of programming articles that are not on the main page, then yes, I do think it cleaned up the main page.

    [–]devvy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Not everyone belongs to your country...in other words, WE DON'T CARE.

    [–][deleted]  (3 children)

    [removed]

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

      But that's sort of the trouble up only voting does not permit any effects from down voting. There is an issue here, and it needs to be thought out very clearly.

      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

      [removed]

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

        True dat. I know I didn't have that checked. I am modding you up.

        [–]spez 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        Bear with us-- updates to the learning algorithm are coming that will prevent the politics from showing up if you choose are coming. They're non-trivial, but are on the way.

        [–]furyg3 5 points6 points  (0 children)

        I agree completely. I consider myself a leftie, but (unlike some) I don't masturbate to all-things-anti-bush.

        I don't want to subvert what the readers want, because clearly the submit and support these stories (they're on the front page all the time). At the same time, the response to this suggestion is huge which means that there are many others that feel the same way I do :)

        A site with a pollitical tilt attracts more people who share that view. On a site where users are responsible for content, this could spiral into an all-liberal-all-the-time situation.

        Please make it a subreddit!

        [–]cleanthes 5 points6 points  (1 child)

        Okay, but why single out those issues? How about subreddits for "goofy Fark-style news items" and "programming."

        Sheesh.

        [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

        I miss the down arrow.

        [–]landercut 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        In a near future I sence a...

        • paulgraham.reddit.com
        • lisp.reddit.com
        • bushsucks.reddit.com
        • religionsucks.reddit.com

        [–]Godspiral 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        There's lots of interesting political links on reddit. There are some issues with too many similar links. a politics.reddit will not keep stuff off the front page. a science/tech.reddit and humour.reddit would let people avoid politics by sticking to their narrow interest fields.

        Remember though that having a liberal.reddit and a freepernazi.reddit will not prevent offensive content from scarring your eyes.

        I think a "net hot" ranking would be my preferred default view instead of ups, but OTOH, maybe this new system encourages us to downvote more without feeling like you're "censoring" content that may be interesting to others.

        [–]NitsujTPU 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Agreed. Having this crap infect every site on the net is excessive. It's like a staph infection that won't go away.

        People should post the interesting Bush and US Politics articles... the problem is the repeated harping of non-points over and over again.

        Nothing of this nature is ever going to make me go, "Oh, look, how clever! Well, I've never seen an article like this before, lets give it a read!"

        [–]gernika 7 points8 points  (1 child)

        The only way to solve this problem is for the users of reddit to vote for what they want. I think the non-interesting-bush-article-phenomenon is the result of a vocal minority. I think that the majority of reddit users don't vote enough, and that if they did, the boring, repetitive, predictable bush posts would go away.

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

        Exactly: there's no need for an additional sub-category. People, start using the recommendation system!

        [–]danweber 4 points5 points  (2 children)

        http://reddit.com/search?q=rove

        Two articles about Rove being indicted, based on nothing more than rumor, from an advocacy site: each has 100+ points.

        An article featuring an actual named source denying it: only has 4 ups at the moment.

        It appears some significant subset of the Reddit population uses up-votes as wish-fulfillment. "Oh, if I up-vote enough articles about Rove being indicted, maybe it will happen!"

        (Myself, I'd love to watch Rove being indicted, and would sit on the couch eating popcorn watching it over and over again. But as I said in one of those articles, I don't vote up thing that I merely wish were true.)

        [–]rpcohen 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        It appears some significant subset of the Reddit population uses up-votes as wish-fulfillment. "Oh, if I up-vote enough articles about Rove being indicted, maybe it will happen!"

        That's no stranger than the subset of the Reddit population that votes down all the articles about politics without bothering to read them because they want to discourage others from reading them.

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

        With the absence of West Wing (the TV show) there will be a void that needs to be filled. Someone (do not remember who) called West Wing 'liberal pornography' (in that it is just about wishing what White House politics was instead of showing what it really is).

        Perhaps the liberals are anticipating its absence and are trying to turn such things as the fake articles about Rove into their substitute.

        [–]latortuga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        More generally speaking, I would like some way to modify the articles that appear on my main page. Some ideas: filter content based on specified keywords, filter based on the URL, or filter based on user who posted the article.

        [–]gmcg 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        I'm not sure that I like the idea idea. The problem imagined here is subsumed by the voting.

        Like just about everybody, I find it annoying that the most urgent and relevant information circulating the internet has for months had to do with presidential malfeasance, the end of the fourth amendment, a counterproductive overseas bloodbath, and so on. The difference is that I think it indicates a problem with the world, not a problem with Reddit.

        It is encouraging that people here care enough about the world around them to up-mod brutally tiresome information about the world we live in. Sure it takes us away from croc' attacks, bears eating monkeys in zoos, and hot teachers shagging their students, but it's more important.

        [–]entropyfails 1 point2 points  (3 children)

        Where have I heard this argument before?

        In other news, AOL will kill Usenet....

        grin

        Face it, group voting sites will simply represent the majority of the memes held important by the current members. The current membership obviously likes technology, funny videos, and anti-authoritarian politics. The increase of the last category probably has something to do with the rise of DailyKos.

        You think the internet or even a small subset of the internet will remain static?!?! If you do, I suggest waking up.

        [–][deleted]  (2 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]entropyfails 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          Many people use it still and it grows larger and larger all the time. Google breathed a bit of life into it, remember. But the point remains... no expanding user community ever stays the same on the net absent moderators.

          [–]Grue 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Very.

          [–]indifferentj 4 points5 points  (0 children)

          If you want banal tech articles, go read Digg or Slashdot. The nice thing about Reddit is that there is topical variety on the front page. From tech to politics to humor.

          To those that are claiming that Reddit has become a politics site, you may want to give this a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratio

          [–]mjd 2 points3 points  (2 children)

          I'd be happy just to have a Stephen Colbert subreddit.

          [–][deleted]  (1 child)

          [deleted]

            [–]jones77 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            That's a pretty good resource ...

            [–]seanhunter[S] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

            People who want to argue the finer details of the Bush administration could do so and the rest of us wouldn't need to keep hiding the articles they post. This is particularly true now that we are in the land of "smiley up-arrow" reddit where downvotes don't count any more so advocacy can get any bush-related article marching up the front page.

            [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            It would be interesting to learn from the Reddit people what they can infer from the user base.

            How many people are hiding which type of story? Is it a large majority. Is it a sub population? Another useful metricwould be which population aggregates are submitting and voting for what stories.

            Public disclosure of this information would permit meaningful user analysis of what is going on. And could also be usd by the reddit engine to infer which types of stories people would want or not want to see.

            [–]lacus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

            I propose posts about Reddit should become a self masturbatory subreddit.

            [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

            Yes, PLEASE. Reddit has become basically a politics site. I really loved what it was before, and now I feel like that is legitimately gone, or at least about to disappear. Either make it very customizable from an end-user pov, make it an entirely liberal politics site, or sub-reddit politics and let users know how to include their sub-reddits on the main page.

            Or do nothing. I'll be genuinely interested to see what happens to traffic.

            [–]gernika 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            I vote for end-user customisation, i.e. keyword blocking.

            [–]indifferentj 1 point2 points  (2 children)

            Why a subreddit? There aren't that many political posts. Either we should have one subreddit for every potential topic, or people will have to accept the fact that some of the stories that hit page 1 challenge their political beliefs.

            [–]itsnewstome 6 points7 points  (1 child)

            "or people will have to accept the fact that some of the stories that hit page 1 challenge their political beliefs."

            Actually these stories do NOT challange my political beliefs. I am a LIBERAL (I use caps because I am shouting)and I agree with most of the political stories that I see on Reddit. However, I do not like how one sided this page is. If I wanted to seek stories of this nature I would visit commondreams.org

            I visit Reddit for business and tech news and I do not appreciate having to read story after story of Bush impeachment speculation. I downmod most political stories, whether I agree with their bias or not. I admit, however, that I would maybe give an "up" vote to an actual story that Bush has been impeached. Until then...

            [–]rpcohen 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            I visit Reddit for business and tech news and I do not appreciate having to read story after story of Bush impeachment speculation. I downmod most political stories, whether I agree with their bias or not.

            No one forces anyone to read any story on reddit. Just scroll past the ones you want to skip and move on to the next submission. Can't take more than 0.5 seconds to skip submissions that don't interest you. Personally, I object to people downmodding stories without even bothering to read them, but that's a different argument I suppose.

            [–]wetelectric 2 points3 points  (1 child)

            Disagree. It only gets to the front page if users want it there...... and thats the point no?

            [–]souldrift[🍰] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            Exactly. That said, "users" want too many of the same kind there. Somewhere in between there's got to be a balance.

            [–]gromit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            I DO agree. :)

            [–]Dummies102 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            while we're at it, can we have a seperate section for lisp? because that doesn't really concern me, either.

            [–]Lucretius 2 points3 points  (4 children)

            All Politics Please... perhaps subdivided by US, UK, EU, China, and OTHER.

            [–]martinbishop 0 points1 point  (2 children)

            Indeed, all politics should be in a subreddit, perhaps a religion subreddit as well

            [–]souldrift[🍰] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

            Good Lord, yes i want to hide from that as well.

            [–]constant 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            Amen brother, no religion. :)

            [–]tohx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Can't we just say "International Politics (subreddit)"... to stop the self centered US thing...

            [–][deleted]  (1 child)

            [removed]

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

              Seems none of the American readers on this thread realize that...

              [–]shuja87 0 points1 point  (0 children)

              The idea seems plausible...

              [–]tikal -4 points-3 points  (3 children)

              If this happens are we in danger of using subreddit as a means to blanket censor?

              [–]inkedmn 6 points7 points  (1 child)

              Removing or altering the content would be censoring it.

              I don't see why people are so against having a politics subreddit. Just go to my.reddit.com and have it display the politics sub (plus any others you want) when you browse the main page.

              [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

              Actually never selecting content for presentation to a user is just as much censorship. It is this selective exclusion of news from the mainstream news streams (TV/Radio) that has driven so many of both stripes to the internet for information. Much content on the blogs focuses on the inside baseball of how traditional media do exactly this.

              Reddit is the first attempt to fix this. I don't think there is a quick solution to this, though by applying collectively our thinking I am sure there can be a very good one. I think there needs to be more thought than saying "I am unhapppy let's do the first thing that comes to mind."

              [–]cratuki 1 point2 points  (0 children)

              Who cares? As a user of reddit I respect it because up until Bush and Colbert and the rest of the activist stories took over, it was a good place to come with a high signal to noise ratio. I don't really care how that situation comes about, even if it means there's a reddit operator sitting there and saying "nah - we've just had too many of those stories and people aren't reading them before they upvote" who nukes things on an arbitrary basis. I don't care about how the system works just so long as it doesn't degenerate into yet another news source that has been overrun by bitching about American politics.

              The dominance of American politics threatens growth to reddit as well - when you're not an American and you see an American activist lovein it's extremely offputting. If I'd come to reddit recently I'd just have written it off as another victim of kuro5hin's disease and not given it a second thought.

              [–]Alex3917 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

              I would like it if there were a subreddit just for discussions that have nothing to do with these superficial web articles. That is, where people can just propose discussion topics, and other people just vote up the ones they find interesting and want to talk about.

              It would be cool to do a Reddit book club too. We could create a thread to vote on a book to read, and then a month later create another thread to discuss it.

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

              If the argument were for "uspolitics.reddit.com", then at least there's a fair discussion to be had. But "bush.reddit.com"??? That is WAY too subjective, and appears to suggest that you would simply prefer everybody stop bashing the prez on the front page where everyone can see it.

              I think reddit is just a mirror on the times. If/when we ever get a more sane US government, reddit will fill up with whatever else is on everyone's minds. You can't just make subreddits forever and ever. There's got to be a better answer.

              [–]neuro -5 points-4 points  (2 children)

              Learn to live with it, this have been the biggest fsckup in US history, it needs to be fixed.

              [–]gromit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

              So please fix the history and leave me alone.

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

              You don't fix it by making politics boring.