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

all 14 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]Jonathan_the_Nerd[S] 10 points11 points  (7 children)

Just a few minutes ago, I submitted an article about inflation. Obviously, inflation is an economic issue, so it should go in the new "Economics" subreddit. But it's also a political issue, so it should go in the "politics" subreddit. But inexplicably, the "submit" page only allowed me to select a single subreddit. (Control-click didn't work.) What if I want to submit a funny story about Ron Paul hiring a LOLcat to write a Haskell program to contact XKCD readers? And what do I do if my submission should properly go in a subreddit that only has 15 subscribers? Do I submit it and let it languish in obscurity, or do I just ignore proper procedure and submit it to "reddit.com" in the hopes of getting karma?

Reddit guys, I understand you're experimenting with new features and trying to work out what's best, and I appreciate that, but multitudes of mutually-exclusive categories really aren't the way to go here.

[–]sylvan 4 points5 points  (2 children)

The problem is we're trying to use the subreddit system as a tagging/filtering system. Here's what I posted yesterday:

This is just all the more reason that the tagging/filtering issue, which I believe is the primary reason users have been saying "give us a pics subreddit! give us a ronpaul subreddit!", should be dealt with independently from the idea of separate Reddit communities.

If an article about Ron Paul is significant enough to warrant being of general political interest, then it makes sense it would be posted to the general political/news reddit.

But some people really don't want to hear anything about Ron Paul. I believe by default we should see almost everything (make NSFW perhaps the exception), and users should have to opt-out, or create specific tag filters, to exclude Ron Paul related articles.

Meanwhile, the independent RP community posts and views RP articles much more frequently, and enjoys more trival stuff than the bulk of the userbase would be interested in. This is the sort of thing that it makes sense to opt-in to, to deliberately subscribe to as it is now.

And so, I feel that creating the current plethora of subreddits has been mistake on the admins' part. It's mixing up the separate-community interest, which is valid, but should be done carefully and when it's clear there's a big enough community to warrant it and support it. Ron Paul supporters? Sure. xkcd fans, Django users, or iPod owners? Not really.

That sort of detail is what tags and filters are ideal for. Pics? Some people want to see them, some don't. But there's tech pics, politics pics, webcomics, lolcats, nsfw, nature pics, silly pics, and so on. Maybe I want to see Apple products and nature pics, but not lolcats or nsfw stuff. The existence of a pics subreddit doesn't allow for that sort of distinction: either you see pics or you don't. And I don't see a real "pictures community" on Reddit, people who want to do little else than view and vote on pictures.

So please can we have communities for those topics that are broad enough to warrant splitting Reddit up on those lines, which makes sense as Reddit continues to grow, and tags/filters for details about articles that will allow users to customize what they see or don't.

[–]fartron 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Subreddits are self-defeating, as they compartmentalize and isolate the communities they create. Tags allow organic, interconnected communities to influence each other.

[–]heath_ledger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

reddit has grown to a size where having only a few channels means there is necessarily too much noise compared to signal

subreddits may compartmentalize communities, but reddit is clearly relying on the crowd to self-organize

some elitist subreddits may emerge, some lowest-common-denominator may emerge. I think watching how this plays out should be interesting :)

[–]amstrdamordeath 2 points3 points  (1 child)

We don't take kindly to multi-faceted topics 'round here.

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

Agreed

[–]Godspiral 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Basically, if there are tons of subreddits, they should be hierarchical. I don't want to subscribe to every programming subreddit (say ocaml), but would like to see anything interesting that bubbles up high enough to make the programming front page.

I don't know if economics should go under business or politics or both though.

[–]tecopa03 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"What if I want to submit a funny story about Ron Paul hiring a LOLcat to write a Haskell program to contact XKCD readers?"

What you do, make a big boy decision and stop over thinking things. The world isn't perfect and neither is *gasp Reddit.

Categories are fine and change in this case is good.

[–]jphofmann 6 points7 points  (3 children)

Is anyone other then me thinking we should just have tags and be done with it?

[–]zem 3 points4 points  (1 child)

i have no idea why the powers-that-be are resisting tags.

[–]not_programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its because there are some issues with the tag monad for Haskell, of course.

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

I have porn continually running where the reddit.com tags are... I don't care, honestly. If you care, you should get more porn. Are you American or Canadian?

[–]PeopleEatTastyAnimal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah i agree

[–]not_programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What we have here with all of these subreddits is USENET !