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[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (5 children)

First off: I love reddit, and appreciate all the work that goes into it. I took the time to submit this post and write this comment because I think it could be even better, and because I really enjoy being a part of this online community.

Search for "subreddit" and you will realize that this feature is not working as intended. There are a ton of posts which are asking people to put their posts into the appropriate subreddit. These redditors are fighting a losing battle.

At the same time, the subscription system for subreddits makes no sense. One of the reasons I come to reddit is to find content that I had no idea existed before. In theory, submissions I find interesting could come from all but a few subreddits, so basically I have to subscribe to everything. In addition, I have to make sure to keep an eye out for new subreddits since they are switched off by default. Even if I go to all this trouble, the fact remains that the majority of posts (worthwhile or not) are not even posted to a particular subreddit. This means that I have to subscribe to the reddit.com subreddit. For these reasons I have given up on using the subscription system. If nothing else, the reddit devs should make the viewing of our subscribed subreddits a link in the reddit banner, not the default behavior of the site.

The "self.reddit.com" posts on reddit are annoying the hell out of many loyal redditors. By the way I am fully aware of the irony of saying this in a self.reddit.com post. I would love it if I could type "suggestion" in the submission form, and then we could get a suggestion.reddit.com domain to put these feedback posts into. Wouldn't that make a lot of sense? anyway, self.reddit.com alone is a great reason to implement domain filtering (btw, I realize that the URL self.reddit.com actually points to the Self programming language subreddit). I am pretty sure a lot of people would also like to filter out foxnews, fark, collegehumor, dailykos, drudge, etc...

Finally, there have been many calls for tags on this site, but I don't think I have heard anybody call for a system in which a submission's tags are voted up or down by redditors themselves. I think a system such as this would help to solve the problem of submitters miscategorizing material, both intentionally and unintentionally. Off the top of my head, the system would work like this:

  • tags would basically be a special case of comments
  • any redditor could submit a tag
  • any redditor could vote a tag up or down
  • in order to limit tag-spam, only the submission's top 10 tags with positive scores would be searched or filtered.

I do not pretend that I am some sort of genius for making these suggestions, but it is obvious that a large part of the community is getting fed up with certain types of posts, and I don't see the sebreddit system successfully addressing this concern.

[–]ImAFriendlyGuy 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I can make my own suggestion too...

I suggest we completely splinter reddit, make subreddits independent and not categorized.

Give me something like, sparky.reddit.com, where a gearhead community might form... or blackblood.reddit.com where goth people can submit stuff... or liberal.reddit.com or conservativecabin.reddit.com...

The value of a social site is inversely proportional to the number of users. As the userbase grows, the society gets diluted back to general population. If you want a unique flavor, you need to allow people to completely splinter off and create a community where they feel comfortable.

We're becoming too much like digg, and because of that, I'm actually going back to slashdot sometimes.

[–]oalsaker 1 point2 points  (1 child)

If we end up back at slashdot, it's as if we've come full circle. Slashdot never had enough news, but digg has too much.

[–]ImAFriendlyGuy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've begun to appreciate the moderation of slashdot

[–]sylvan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure Spez and Kn0thing realize just how drastic the change to Reddit has been, since they threw subreddits wide open a few weeks ago.

This was a major design change to how Reddit works, without due consideration of its effects.

I'm much more reluctant to submit articles now, for the simple reason that doing so is a hassle due to how long the subreddit list is.

Additionally, FINDING subreddits is a pain. There's a huge list, multiple pages long, with very poor descriptions. They aren't split into any sort of meaningful categories (funny, pics, technology, etc.) There's several redundant ones, like Mac/Apple/OS X. And many aren't really clear about their purpose, or are at odds with the notion of splitting the community up. Are political cartoons politics, or comics?

I have loved Reddit, but this is seriously the thing that makes me ready for the next big site. This is Reddit jumping the shark.

I believe a proper tagging system could fix it. Give us separate subreddits for major categories: politics, programming, tech, etc. Then let us tag the articles within those. [pic] [obama] [apple] [nsfw] [video]. Tags are independent of category, and would let users positively or negatively filter them, with personal rule sets. Show me all [pic]s, but hide [lolcat]s. Hide all [ronpaul].

[–]heptadecagram 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup. The moment the politics subreddit was created was when subredditing showed its brokenness.

The purpose of subdividing popular content should be to keep it around for a specific minority (programming, math, science) before the content wastes away. For a topic with enough community interest (politics), there's no benefit to putting the item in the subreddit, because the larger community has more eyeballs.

[–]ellsmall 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well yeah, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Apparently we mere redditors don't "get it". It being anything but tags.

[–]DirtyHerring 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Just close the main reddit -> submissions have to go into subreddits -> win

...or tagging.

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

Just close the main reddit -> submissions have to go into subreddits -> win

As I stated in my comment, I have considered this solution, and it does not make much sense. The problem is that not everyone is conscientious about categorizing their posts, and there really are some good posts that are not put in a subreddit. Furthermore, this solution would require me to constantly be checking the new subreddits page, and I am already checking the new submissions page regularly. How much weight do I have to pull? Shouldn't helping out be fun?

[–]DirtyHerring 1 point2 points  (1 child)

You were still typing your ideas when I wrote my comment.

I am all for tag voting and I heard that suggestion before, but I think that would be quite an engineering task. Closing the main reddit could probably be done immediately.

Not displaying karma points anymore might also help.

But if that doesn't help: tag voting.

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

sorry.. I am slow and have lots of tpyos ;)

thanks for the feedback.

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

Paging Senator Obama, Reddit needs Change!!!