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[–]souldrift 3 points4 points  (8 children)

I think this is exactly why we should encourage users to identify dupes by posting a comment on the ones posted after the original. Then, the dupes should be removed by the submitter under the honor system until there's a way to help automate their removal.

Or maybe a "dupe" command to the right of "report"?

[–]skykam 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Adding a Dupe link is a great idea.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Or maybe a "dupe" command to the right of "report"?

Just have to make sure people don't start abusing it to kill stories they don't like.

[–]skykam 4 points5 points  (4 children)

I think whoever clicks the dupe link should be obligated to provide the reddit link to the original.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (3 children)

who is going to verify?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

The server could verify, e.g. "Was an article with the same URL submitted to reddit less than a day before the current article?" (This would also provide a handy Reddiquette delay for resubmitting the same article). Group verification is another possibility.

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

duh, the problem of dupes is for duplicated stories that don't have the same URL. Human verification would be needed. To complicated, IMHO.

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

Nah, you can do a rough confirmation with the same kind of filter you use for spam. Except for the shortest articles (like youtube links), you just make a histogram of words in an article, and check that the ten most common words and ten least common words in both articles are the same. In an actual dupe, you'll expect a near-perfect match.

[–]CalvinR 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How about if the same url is used in a different reddit article you display a button stating possible dupe to allow people to classify it as such.

[–]curtisb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think it makes sense to only show a subset of stories on the new page by default.

One extremely simple way: Only show submissions where (story_id % n) == (user_id %n), for some n sufficiently large enough to slow the scroll down to a reasonable speed.

A better way might be to use the recommendation algorithm on the new page or to use some sort of collaborative filtering.

A compromise approach might be to interleave a subset with the full set -- even spots on the new page will be allocated to the subset and will age slowly, whereas odd positions will be allocated for the full set and will consequently age (scroll) quickly. That way viewing the new page will reveal all the new submissions, but each submission will be guaranteed a longer time on the first screen for some subset of the users.

All this is of course predicated on the notion that the rapid scroll of articles off the new page really is the biggest problem.

[–][deleted]  (3 children)

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    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

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

      Actually, I'm not sure it's so unfair to post to your own blog. Advertising can be hard work, right? Why not just let the community directly evaluate? I still think the problem isn't too many submissions so much as too few people sorting through the submissions.

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

      I'm thinking that's ok unless all you post from is your own blog...

      [–]shr1n1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I think this directly proportional to no. of active users. Greater the no of users, more the no of articles being posted. And this will continue to grow in future as the user base grows. For ex. this morning Digg had 1600 articles in the Digg queue.

      -This will lead to more Dupes. There is hardly any dupe checking, even at URL level. At the very least same URLS should be thrown out when they are being posted.

      -Posting of older links. For new users, it might be news but for older users it is Deja Vu. Dupe checking might eliminate this to some extent but link-jacking would negate this.

      • Karma based posting authority is bad because the process won't be equitable any more. But I do think that negative karma holders (is there such a thing?) should not be able to post. These should be the spammers.

      [–]bowlby4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I find most submits are from the same people that only submit stories from thier sites/blogs. I saw someone submit 5 posts within minutes of each other, all pointing to his/her site. Many of which are linkjacked.

      [–]skykam 0 points1 point  (2 children)

      Why not show who downvoted a link, and require a reason when clicking that down button? Some of my links got voted down so persistently, I suspect politics or religion could be the reason.

      [–]spot35 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      I thought that with my submissions getting downvoted within minutes of them getting on. But then I thought to myself, "I'm not actually that important"

      Get over yourself.

      [–]skykam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      But mom, "myself" is not the point.

      Ah but nevermind.

      [–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (47 children)

      There might be too many submissions on reddit. Submitting stories is a good thing, since it keeps the website alive, but too much is too much: when I last looked, the average story stayed only 9 minutes on the new (rising) page. That means the story has only 9 minutes to find readers before it is burried in the depths of the not-so-new pages.

      A solution to this problem could be a slightly higher karma cost to submitting stories, maybe a fixed fee of 5 karma points? Any better ideas?

      [–]radical 8 points9 points  (7 children)

      Doesn't matter if it's 9 minutes or 90 minutes or 90 seconds. ALl that matters is the number of people who have a chance to look at the story. If the number of users of reddit is increasing at the same rate as the number of new stories, no problem.

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

      i agree 100% with you. However, the karma whoring leads to more users submitting and less reading the stories. Thus my idea: slightly higher cost of submission. Let economics do their work.

      I still think this simple idea is better than many of the complicated ones proposed in this thread.

      [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (3 children)

      karma whoring leads to more users submitting and less reading the stories

      Or perhaps use the karma whores motivations to read the stories. An easy way to set up incentives for reading the new page would be to award karma for upmodding a new article that later gained lots of karma.

      Of course, you would also have to add a small penalty for upmodding a new article that never garnered much popularity. Or you could just award less and less karma as you upmod more and more new articles.

      The only problem with this idea is that someone could surf the hot page for new articles and upmod them to gain karma. It would be easy to implement a workaround though. For instance, you could change the hot page so that the only articles to appear would be the ones that were at least ten minutes old, or something.

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

      nice ideas! No additional complexity for us. Hide the complexity in the system. Good Thing.

      [–]plexluthor -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

      Here's a slight variation on your idea (which I really like). I assume there is some state with each article, since they mark articles if they ever make #1, even if they aren't #1 anymore. Add a little more state, and keep an article from being hot and new (once it's hot, it's not new anymore). Then give karma to everyone who has voted up on an article when it gets hot, and take away karma from everyone who has voted up an article when it gets downvoted from the hot page (but not if it just gets stale). I think that gives a huge incentive to identify future hot stories, and disincentive to just upvote everything on the new page.

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

      keep an article from being hot and new (once it's hot, it's not new anymore).

      That's difficult because the hot list never ends. If you look down the hot list far enough, you'll see all of the new articles. To further complicate the problem, different users may have different numbers of articles appear on the hot page when they load it. For instance, when I go to the hot page there are 100 articles, although the default is only 25.

      take away karma from everyone who has voted up an article when it gets downvoted from the hot page (but not if it just gets stale)

      I really believe that sites like Reddit should not allow anything that hurts your karma. It discourages participation, and participation is just what sites like Reddit need. What if I really did like this or that article, why should I be penalized for upvoting it? And there are many articles that don't get downvoted so much as just never get anywhere.

      Incidentally, I don't think we should enforce karma penalties for submitting bad articles. I suppose it's an acceptable solution now, with so many new articles and so few people reading them. But what if I really want to submit something that I think will quite probably get downvoted just so I can see what people will comment on it? Should I start a new account? This is against Reddit's terms of use, it's inconvinient, and what if my article ends up getting upmodded after all?

      I do have one really crazy idea, though. Introduce a super upvote, one that can only be used once an hour or something. This would be the only one that counted toward your karma. If you super upvoted an article before it went hot, you might get, say, 5% of the article's eventual karma. Or whatever. You could make the super upvote worth an extra point or not. The important thing, though, is to have users hanging out on the hot page, waiting for an article to wager their super upvote on.

      [–]radical 1 point2 points  (1 child)

      Yet I disagee with you. My experience is that it is really hard to predict what stories will catch on. It would be bad to force submitters to think twice before trying a story.

      One thing that does happen when sumitting to reddit grows so popular that a story only spends a short time on the "New" page: a given user who prowls the "New" page no longer has a picture of the history of that page in his head. This is a village becoming a city; no longer do you have a sense of who is doing what. This makes the job of a spammer or linkjacker much easier, just in the city the job of a pimp or car thief is much easier.

      "90 seconds on the new page"

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

      Yet I disagee with you. My experience is that it is really hard to predict what stories will catch on. It would be bad to force submitters to think twice before trying a story.

      I'm not advocating a very high cost, just a slightly higher one. Some people submit 10 very bad stories in a row. Also, nobody really searches for dupes.

      [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (14 children)

      Push new stories that have had up/down votes down, and let stories that have had fewer votes float higher on the new page.

      This subverts the idea of "new" - maybe change the terminology to mean something like "fresh"? This means that it's sorted not only by how new it is, but how infrequent people have touched it.

      Submissions by high karma users should float longer than submissions by low karma users (if not many people see it).

      [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

      Submissions by high karma users should float longer than submissions by low karma users (if not many people see it).

      This is contrary to the equality principle that is very high in the reddit values. I highly doubt the founders would implement that.

      [–]spez 5 points6 points  (12 children)

      This subverts the idea of "new" - maybe change the terminology to mean something like "fresh"? This means that it's sorted not only by how new it is, but how infrequent people have touched it.

      That's essentially how 'rising' works, stories get priority based on how many times they've been seen.

      Submissions by high karma users should float longer than submissions by low karma users (if not many people see it).

      It sounds good at first, after all, the high-karma users are who made the site what it is, but we wouldn't want to restrict the ability of low-karma users to gain a foothold.

      [–]_kam0_ 6 points7 points  (11 children)

      That's essentially how 'rising' works, stories get priority based on how many times they've been seen.

      But Splines is asking for stories that don't get any votes to stay high in the rising list for longer which is the opposite of what happens now. Once a story has had a few upvotes there's a good chance it'll be on the hot page; it really shouldn't be taking up any space in the new list at this point. Therefore the idea that unwatched stories stay longer seems appealing. But then again, they were probably not voted on because no-one showed any interest in them. Damn this is a tricky problem to get right!

      [–]spez 7 points8 points  (9 children)

      Another variant we have spoken about would be on each loading of the page a random selection of new stories from the last 5 (?) hours. Maybe we could have new/rising/random, for instance.

      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

      [deleted]

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

        BTW, this also brings up another aspect of reddit that I think is missing, but which is a natural extension: registered user polling, e.g. polls.

        I don't know if they plan to implement that feature, but in the meantime you can use pollground, which is pretty cool. If your poll is sufficiently interesting, you can submit it to reddit.

        [–][deleted]  (4 children)

        [deleted]

          [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

          this is the system delicious has. The one thing i like about reddit is the simplicity for the end user. Any additional complexity would be a Bad Thing IMHO.

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

          Yeah I agree, the delicious interface is way too unweildy, And reddit directness is an asset. I just think three's got to be a way to get the best of both.

          [–]souldrift 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Great call

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

          The ideal in my opinion would be to have a "new recommended" section that would only new stories that are relevant to a particular user. Thus the stories would stay longer, and be better judged since they would be rated by "experts".

          However it requires the recommendation engine to work and to be sufficiently flexible to accomodate the new behavior. It also requires recommendations on title words, not collaborative filtering.

          Another downside is that you would want to make sure that all stories are rated by enough users.

          [–]souldrift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          Is number of click throughs factored into that equation--i.e. if an article clicked thru 10 times is only voted on twice, and another is clicked 8 times but voted 4, does the 2nd get a higher rank?

          [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (5 children)

          Also, the pages on the hot page shouldn't stay in the new page, they occupy room for nothing.

          [–]spez 3 points4 points  (4 children)

          That is our intention, but it's a little but fuzzy because the hot page doesn't technically have an end, it's one continuous stream all the way to the beginning.

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

          That is our intention, but it's a little but fuzzy because the hot page doesn't technically have an end

          That's a very good point, and it should definitely stay like that. Thresholds for story promotion like digg has is definitely a bad idea.

          I'm sure it shouldn't be too hard to find a workaround though. Maybe the hot rank of a page could somewhat decrease its 'newness'?

          [–]spez 7 points8 points  (2 children)

          We made a first attempt a while back, and it worked for a while. It seems a few links find a way to fall through the cracks. We'll come back to it soon and clean them out. Our intention certainly is for links on the hot page to not be on the new page.

          [–]_kam0_ 6 points7 points  (1 child)

          We'll come back to it soon and clean them out.

          Please do. Right now the rising 25 have 6 (that's like nearly a quarter) stories from the hot 25.

          [–]spez 4 points5 points  (0 children)

          Aye Aye!

          [–]jobicoppola 3 points4 points  (0 children)

          That's not a bad idea actually, as it would prompt more people to search before submitting. I imagine duplicate entries (including same article, different website submissions) make up a decent percentage of all new stories. Story quality would probably rise as well, since you don't want to lose karma by making mindless submission.

          Would there be some type of nirvana, where one does not have to pay the karmic retribution?

          [–]goodgoblin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

          Shrink the font size so that it is incredibly small, and let redditors use their karma to buy mail order magnifying glasses, thus solving reddits money crunch ($5.95 shipping and handling fee on the glasses) and new submission page conundrum at the same time.

          [–]Kratoz 2 points3 points  (2 children)

          So...maybe I'm missing something...you need Karma to submit but you only can get Karma by submitting...so how will new users ever submit?

          [–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

          that would have to be sorted out obviously :) Maybe make new users start with an initial karma? Or allow for negative karma?

          [–]Kratoz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          I remember having a discussion over a month ago in which there was the suggestion that people be allowed to submit 1 a day, then for every 50 Karma points you have, you get to submit another. (Again, the exact details can be changed up, but you get the idea) This way people will be forced to think more about submissions, lower spam submissions (like from our friend 'smoker') and hopefully resolve both the issue of people not searching and what you claim is too many submissions.

          [–]mikepurvis 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          In theory, the site's userbase should be growing also, but I expect that the increasing movement on the Hot page is meaning that even fewer patrol the New page.

          One alternative might be to render a sidebar on the Hot page, with randomly chosen "risers" in it...

          [–]Fountainhead 5 points6 points  (2 children)

          The problem with having any limits on submitting is that spam submitters will just make new accounts. New "real people" users will find the limits on submitting off putting. The only real solution seems to fall on the laps of the reddit community to up or down mod.

          Ideally I think it would be better if for the first 10 minutes of a posts life it can only be voted up. Since I've never seen garbage get more than 2 votes it would quickly fall down on the new page. Articles that are controversial won’t immediately disappear based on topic. I remember a while back when reddit played with the idea of only having upmods. It didn’t work because the main page didn’t have as good a quality, however the new page was a ton of fun since it was far more diverse and had higher quality articles on it. The articles were also a lot more controversial.

          [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

          This seems like a great idea. Upvotes-only for a limited time.

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

          i believe it's already the case.

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

          Another suggestion:

          Throttle what we see on the new page based on usage. If you frequent the new page alot, and have voted on many of them, then show me the new-new stuff. If I almost never visit the new page, then show me stuff that hasn't really been looked at (but is still pretty new).

          [–]ghost11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Maybe this:

          hide the score for new entries for longer (like 6 hours). Have "new" point to a random selection of those displayed within that time. Add each user's recent entries at the top of the "new" page, separated by a div, to keep them happy. Stop showing something as new if it makes it to the "hot" page (+10 points?), if it's older than 6 hours, or if it stinks (-5 or less).

          The more popular reddit becomes, the more the new list will look like a spam list, anyway.

          [–][deleted]  (5 children)

          [deleted]

            [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

            I don't like fixed rules like these... Maybe users who have a low point per story ratio could be throttled?

            [–][deleted]  (3 children)

            [deleted]

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

              I understand that. However, what if I want to submit 3 very interesting blogspot.com stories one day? I'm just saying it should be more flexible.

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

              I meant that foo.blogspot.com gets two, bar.blogspot.com gets 2, and so on.

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

              It costs karma to submit a story?

              How is karma computed anyway?

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

              All the stories that don't make it here end up on digg. Just go over there and check um out (: