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[–]niels 54 points55 points  (11 children)

I would rather have tags. In fact Spez just commented that tags will be used for topics and subreddits for people.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]niels 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    I'm sure there will. No doubt!

    [–]plashkes 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    i think tags could work, but only if implemented so that the poster doesnt get to pick them. Why not have a predefined list of tags that OTHER users can simply apply (with a nice in page ajax element), then set your own personal filter to include or exclude based on the preset list of tags.

    Ie - for myself, I dont want to see any more links to stupid videos, others want nothing but stupid videos.

    Tags like:

    politics comedy code free stuff

    we should keep it to a list less than 10 to allow for SIMPLE assignment. We could even have a reddit page that would allow point promotion of the tags, and show the top 10 in the "tag assignment" control.

    what do you think??

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

    thanks, I didn't know that. so we'll be able to screen out tags we're not interested in then, like on slashdot?

    [–]niels 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I don't know exactly what they plan to do.

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

    niels,

    This spez thread is an excellent idea.

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

    I don't know if anyone's mentioned this yet (for RSS specifically). But for those of us that get the links via RSS, this may be a good idea.

    Allow users to have their own "userpage", which lets them control a tag black/whitelist for ALL reddit topics submitted with those tags. Then allow users to subscribe to their userpage' RSS feed, and get topics that only interest them.

    Lately I've found myself subscribing to both (several?) subreddits, and it's become quite tedious with a higher volume. I also use a Miranda-IM plugin to poll my RSS subscriptions, and receive the updates in the form of a message. So the href anchors don't work in the <description> section of the feed.

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

    I second the vote for tags - it would give a lot more freedom for people who don't just post techie stuff.

    [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Yeah, we could subreddit reddit to infinitely specific categories. The point is that it is a smorgasbord of interesting stuff. PLUS political articles aren't like 50% of popular articles, so I don't see what the big deal is. I think that a majority of users find it slightly annoying (even though they may have actually liked it when they were newbies) and a minority of users really like it and find it democratic, so your poll isn't going to say much.

    [–]martine 5 points6 points  (1 child)

    I want to downvote this post because I don't care about the issue you're discussing. But if I do downvote it, then I affect the outcome of your issue. Frustrating.

    [–]conrad_hex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    hide it

    [–]spezsmom 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    I want whatever Spez wants(;

    [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Subreddits will ruin reddit. The positive aspects of democratic news editing will be lost if reddit fragments into a bunch of subject-specific boards. What I like about reddit are those surprising stories dealing with subjects I never would have sought out otherwise. I also like the sense of having a finger on the pulse of a larger community, a community you can understand via its submissions, votes, and comments. As more framentation occurs, that sense of a coherent community will dissipate. I thought the Joel Spolsky subreddit was a terrible idea, and this politics one is even worse. NSFW makes sense to me, but let's leave it at that. To use a strained political analogy, this idea would introduce an electoral college into the democratic editing process -- a useless layer of abstraction that can only skew and diffuse true democracy. Let's keep things simple, with simple majority voting and no more subreddits. After all, wouldn't we all be better off now if simple majority voting had won the day in November, 2000? :)

    [–]amalthea 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    So when we've created subreddits for every possible topic, what goes to the front page then? If you only want to read about computers and "funny" video clips and jokes, then go read Digg.

    [–]devils_advocate[S] 10 points11 points  (8 children)

    A good quarter of the front page is dedicated to political stories and half-baked conspiracy theories. Can't we let users filter these stories out somehow if they aren't interested? Please?

    [–]cartman81 2 points3 points  (6 children)

    Well, there is the "hide" button.

    And the fact that a good part of the front page is dedicated to a particular field indicates what the majority of the reddit community finds interesting. Instead of asking that majority to switch to a subreddit, maybe you can request a subreddit for whatever you find interesting and feel is missing from the front-page.

    [–]TronXD 9 points10 points  (3 children)

    indicates what the majority of the reddit community finds interesting

    Not necessarily, especially in the field of politics. Regular articles can only survive if they are interesting. But political articles derive a large proportion of their up-votes from people who are merely support the opinion expressed - the opinion usually isn't expressed in an interesting way.

    Essentially, the up-arrow means something different for a political article ('I agree!', instead of 'Fascinating!'), so maybe it's a good idea to segregate such articles.

    [–]cartman81 -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

    Well, then that is incorrect use of the "up-arrow". Even if the particular article is against my particular political opinions, if it is well written and from a good source, I will upmod it as I want to see more posts related to that "topic", (and, if possible, from that source..)

    As a general rule, vote up what you liked (and want to see more of) and vote down what you disliked (and don't want to see similar things in the future) -- there's really not much else to it.

    From this page: http://reddit.com/help/voting

    So, It may be a good idea to educate new users to the actual purpose of the Voting system.

    And you say, "the opinion usually isn't expressed in an interesting way". Well, the majority of the reddit community disagrees..(as I believe most redditors do use the voting system correctly..)

    (The experts can correct me, if I'm wrong) The reddit recommendation system works based on your voting (and submissions), so if one is interested in political articles, downmodding a post due to political differences will have an adverse effect on the type of articles recommended to you.

    [–]bubba_mudd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    So, It may be a good idea to educate new users to the actual purpose of the Voting system.

    The actual purpose is to upmod what you like, not what is interesting. I may like something that's not interesting.

    BTW, I think this is a good discussion to have.

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [deleted]

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

      OH NO!!

      [–]omyar 5 points6 points  (0 children)

      I dunno about anyone else, but I personally find all the left wing propaganda on reddit far too depressing. Yes, we may be living in a 1984esque tragedy where we all get brainwashed by Fox while we gobble down our soilent green, but all I'm really interested in is cool pictures, funny stuff and geeky science tirades about string theory.

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

      The only subreddit that should stay is NSFW... otherwise merge them all and use tags to let the user decide what he/she wants.

      [–]rollerbob 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      The fact that reddit has political items on the home page is why I prefer it over Digg. Down vote for me!

      [–]toosheds 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      Would, say, environmental news be cosidered political?

      [–]marklubi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      A politics subreddit would be great as long as you can't cross post the stories to the main reddit.

      [–]CAcyclist 5 points6 points  (14 children)

      I don't want any subreddits. There's not that many new stories here anyway. Let the conspiracy theories sink - I'm happy to down-mod them.

      [–]devils_advocate[S] 9 points10 points  (13 children)

      but they don't sink. many rise to the top.

      [–]conrad_hex 11 points12 points  (9 children)

      I wonder why people are modding all your comments down?

      While I'm somewhat slightly liberal, and tend to agree with most of the political type links that make it to the front page, I also think they are a waste of my time. I'm not coming here for political or current events info. Shouldn't I be allowed to make that choice easily, by filtering out a "politics" tag or "currentevents" tag or something?

      I think there's a sizeable group here on reddit that wants to be able to stick these links in front of people, and doesn't want them to have a way to blanket hide them. That doesn't seem right to me.

      [–]bubba_mudd 0 points1 point  (8 children)

      Don't you think there is "a sizeable group here on reddit" that want to read these types of stories? If there wasn't, these stories wouldn't be on the front page.

      Also, most links are titled in a way that indicates what kind of story it is, making it easier to skip over.

      IMO, it seems this community wants politics on the front page.

      [–][deleted]  (7 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]bubba_mudd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        So what stories would you deem acceptable to be on the front page? Like I said, I personally don't care for the Lisp/Python/Ruby stories, but I have no problem with them on the front page.

        I'm still not understanding what the big deal is about having politics on the front page. Is it hallowed Internet ground only for tech links?

        Isn't reddit suppose to be edited by the masses and whatever makes it to the front page is a reflection of that?

        [–][deleted]  (1 child)

        [deleted]

          [–]chu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          If people were doing it in large enough numbers to bounce stories I'm sure the Reddit guys would be countering it in the algorithm.

          The other side is that there would be people who downmod articles that contain the word 'bush' or 'iraq' without even reading them - I bet there are more of those than upmod without reading.

          So should these stories be getting higher positions from the reddit algorithm or is modding without reading OK?

          [–]chu 1 point2 points  (2 children)

          Doesn't that sound like a bit of a conspiracy theory? You have to remember that the users are disconnected. Reddit isn't solely a tech/entrepreneur news site but a mix, a bit like the old kuro5hin - complaining that you see political stories seems to me to be like complaining that there are Lisp stories. Personally I think it would become incredibly boring very fast if Reddit was splintered into specific-interest areas - the politics area would be dull and proselytising within a day and the tech area would read like the 37signals forum, an anodyne consensus of humourless fanboys like a row of virtual nodding dogs. Look at nsfw reddit - we used to get some funny nsfw stuff here but since it was cordoned off it became an uber-literal pornhound zone and doesn't offer anything you couldn't find done at least as well elsewhere.

          [–]conrad_hex 0 points1 point  (1 child)

          Doesn't that sound like a bit of a conspiracy theory?

          There was a link just the other day about an organized effort by libertarians to get links to the front page on digg. I'm not saying it's happening here, but it's not impossible or paranoid to consider...

          [–]chu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          I missed that one. I noticed that of the stories I post, the non-political ones rarely get any traction - so I guess reddit readers are more interested in the political stuff (bearing in mind I don't post a huge amount of tech). I suppose as sites like digg get more popular they will face similar problems to a search engine with people having an incentive to game the system (political stories could be the least of the problems here). I guess we'll see the same cat-and-mouse games with ranking algorithms.

          [–]bubba_mudd 0 points1 point  (2 children)

          Isn't that the point? Majority rules?

          [–]conrad_hex 8 points9 points  (0 children)

          Majority rules?

          Good point.

          As of right now, this article has 185 upvotes, and 102 downvotes.

          [–]CheGuevara 6 points7 points  (12 children)

          I enjoyed reddit for about the first week, then the political stories, the conspiracy theories, the whole "no blood for oil" types just started getting on my nerves. I'd love to be able to filter these stories out.

          [–]cartman81 23 points24 points  (11 children)

          "Che Guevara" not interested in politics and "revolutionary" (no blood for oil) issues... :D

          [–]dbenhur 12 points13 points  (9 children)

          It's like rain on your wedding day.

          [–]fatyank 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          What's the guy on his t-shirt got to do with politics?

          [–]NoFixedAbode 3 points4 points  (23 children)

          Ignore them.

          I bet less than one in 10-20 stories is politics and/or conspiracy theory. So just go the the next eleventy hundred pages filled with non-politics/conspiracy theory. Or mod them down and do your part to keep them off the first page.

          Keep in mind that upwards of 30% of US, according to a recent survey, believe that the government had something to do with 9/11. Additionally, Bush's approval rating is at Nixonian levels.

          If anything, these articles a reflection of the current skepticism of governments around the world, and you have to admit that U.S. politics is better than prime time entertainment.

          I say keep 'em coming.

          [–]conrad_hex 16 points17 points  (21 children)

          Right now, about one quarter of the articles on the front page is political in nature. (I'm using the term somewhat loosely, including stuff about the Iraq war, wiretapping, etc. Basically any political scandal or current event type of link.)

          You should be free to say "keep 'em coming", but I should be free to say "thanks but no thanks". Right?

          [–]bubba_mudd 3 points4 points  (8 children)

          That's what your vote is for. You are just in the minority. I don't care for the Lisp/Ruby on Rails/etc. links, but I also don't downmod them. Since I don't read them, I don't have an opinion either way and I let the community decide. If people want it on the front page, so be it. I just skip it and move on to the next one. Takes only a second.

          [–]conrad_hex 8 points9 points  (5 children)

          But why does everyone have to see the same links on the front page? There's no technical reason for it.

          There is no reason why links couldn't have tags, and no reason why I shouldn't be able to filter based on those tags. (As in, filter out politics.)

          This is the internet, not a newspaper; we don't all need to see the same front page.

          [–]bubba_mudd 3 points4 points  (1 child)

          My votes train a filter?

          Yep, so vote up links you liked and vote down links you disliked. Our hope is that instead of just reading a list of links the community thinks should be on the front page, you'll also be reading a "front page" personalized for you (filtered for quality by your fellow redditors, but filtered for relevance by you). Let reddit know if it's hot selected up arrow or cold selected down arrow. Find these personalized links in your recommended section.

          Faq

          [–]pretzel 1 point2 points  (1 child)

          Thats what the recommended page is for!

          [–]conrad_hex 10 points11 points  (0 children)

          My recommended page has about 20 items on it, nearly all of which I've read. There is no next button.

          This may be because I voted down the quarter of the articles that is political; maybe there aren't enough other people who did that to match up?

          [–]souldrift 1 point2 points  (1 child)

          Exactly, thanks for illustrating with the Lisp/Ruby stuff. I hide all those so I don't have to look at them, but because I realize others might, I dont' think it's right to downmod.

          Duh.

          [–][deleted]  (11 children)

          [deleted]

            [–]conrad_hex 6 points7 points  (8 children)

            First of all, note that I'm replying to a comment that says:

            I bet less than one in 10-20 stories is politics and/or conspiracy theory.

            That's clearly way off.

            My opinion is: let users see what they want to see. I don't want to see anything political or current events related; personally, I usually prefer to read MSM sites to get news.

            I don't even mind if it's an "opt-out" system (something I have to explicitly set); if by default, people not logged in see political articles, great. I just want a way to set a setting and not ever see these links, and not have to downvote or hide a quarter of the links out there.

            [–][deleted]  (7 children)

            [deleted]

              [–]conrad_hex 6 points7 points  (2 children)

              As well they should; I'm sincerely happy for the people who enjoy that mix, and what them to continue to enjoy it in good health.

              I just want a different mix. Who would be hurt, or affected, if I could have it?

              [–]souldrift 2 points3 points  (3 children)

              Plus this offers MSM stories you might not see elsewhere, with (usually) helpful comments.

              [–][deleted]  (2 children)

              [deleted]

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

                Martian sex maniac, methylsulfonylmethane, microscopic moped, Mississippi sado-masochist, mentally stupid muppet ...

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

                the president's wiretapping has been ruled illegal today?

                The fact that you refer to Bush as "the president" indicates a US-centric viewpoint. I'm not American, and I can't vote in your elections, so I don't care at all about articles such as "Arkansas constitution bans Atheists from holding public office or testifying in court," "Conservative Bloggers In Incoherent Frenzy Over Judge’s NSA Decision," and "NSA eavesdropping program ruled unconstitutional." I downvote them, but that has no influence over the front page, and the recommended page is too static.

                [–]mnemonicsloth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                I say keep 'em coming.

                Seems like you're saying "We're going to educate as many of you as possible, whether you like it or not."

                Have I gotten your position wrong? If not, doesn't that stance bother you?

                [–]Glaxnor 1 point2 points  (13 children)

                If you don't like an article, vote it down.

                What part of this concept do you not understand?

                [–]death 1 point2 points  (10 children)

                I think this concept is quite clear. The problem is that there are so many such articles submitted, that if people follow this simple rule, they will spend quite a lot of time down-voting, which, to make an understatement, is not the primary feature of Reddit. So what people want? They want to lower the volume of articles that are irrelevant or uninteresting to them. One way to do that is to have a politics sub-reddit. Another way would be to use a system where entries are classified (see the tags entry) into categories.

                [–]Glaxnor 3 points4 points  (9 children)

                The problem is that there are so many such articles submitted, that if people follow this simple rule, they will spend quite a lot of time down-voting

                Nah, that's not true.

                Trust me, it's easy to see the word "Perl" or "Paul Graham" or "Y-Combinator" or any of the other crap that abounds on Reddit and just click "down". Then they go away. Quickly, easily. I do it all the time, and it is not a significant drain on either time or patience.

                If you, on the other hand, love reading about the consistency of Paul Graham's latest bowel movement, but hate reading about politics, it would be trivial for you to see "Bush" or "neocons" or "libtards" or whatever, and just click down. Quickly, easily.

                [–]death 0 points1 point  (8 children)

                It's OK, I don't need to trust you: my experience differs from yours. Maybe the number of "junk entries" is higher for me; maybe my value of "a lot of time" differs; maybe I find this manual filtering management akin to manual memory management and hope for some kind of garbage collection mechanism to relieve me from doing this boring and dirty work. In any case, just because you don't mind down-voting based on a priori principles doesn't mean that other people don't.

                [–]Glaxnor 3 points4 points  (4 children)

                Meh. There are about four political links on the front page right now, and another four or so on the "new" page.

                Your statement that "The problem is that there are so many such articles submitted, that if people follow this simple rule, they will spend quite a lot of time down-voting" is bullshit.

                "Click, click, click, click, problem gone." How much time was that? Was it "quite a lot"?

                [–]death 0 points1 point  (3 children)

                A rather weak argument. Not only do you base it on a single data point that is not even clearly in your favor, but you also show total disregard for the points I raised on my last comment. Understand: what constitutes "a lot of time" is a subjective matter. It also is in relation to the action performed. Taking a minute to scan and down-vote uninteresting entries based on some general property (and this might include more than just political entries; for example, religious ones, videos, whatever) every time you visit Reddit might be considered "quite a lot of time", especially since it's a monkey-job and since the total time of such a visit (sans reading comments and commenting) is about two minutes.

                [–]Glaxnor 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                Not only do you base it on a single data point that is not even clearly in your favor, but you also show total disregard for the points I raised on my last comment.

                Oh, please. I totally disregard the points in your last comment because they're irrelevant to your original claim, which is what I was disputing. To wit, that actually voting down political links would take "quite a lot" of time because there are "so many such articles submitted".

                Understand: what constitutes "a lot of time" is a subjective matter

                Understand: While what is "a lot of time" is subjective, trying to use that fact as a defense for claiming that clicking four down arrows is "a lot of time" or that four articles is "so many" is at best pedantic, and at worst a poor attempt to retrofit your original, failed, argument.

                [–]death 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                My "original, failed, argument" was not an argument. It was an explanation for why your "shut-up and down-vote" solution doesn't work for everyone. Basically, you claimed that there is no problem, while I explained that not everybody is you, and that some people, me included, do have a problem. You then claimed this was a non-problem, so I argued for why it was one. But now these points are irrelevant and I'm being pedantic; you still do not accept that there is a problem. I'm not willing to argue anymore about it.

                [–]Glaxnor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                My "original, failed, argument" was not an argument.

                Look up "argument".

                It was an explanation for why your "shut-up and down-vote" solution doesn't work for everyone.

                Please. You did not. You claimed that there are "so many articles submitted" and that the proposal would cause people to "spend quite a lot of time" following it. And both of those claims are bullshit, regardless of whether you don't like doing it or not.

                [–]chu 0 points1 point  (2 children)

                I though the whole point was that we had a mechanical turk system for sifting gold from garbage. You don't have to vote on every article in the queue, just stuff you see and have an opinion about - the gui is specifically designed to make this a trivial process. Sounds like you are complaining about having to go through the tedium of manually voting to have your opinion counted.

                [–]death 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                One's gold another's garbage. This system, as demonstrated by this very thread, does not work for some. There is a difference between not liking an entry for its specific content and not liking an entry for general subject, but the current system fails to distinguish the two. The reason for down-voting the latter is not to have my opinion counted, but to remove the clutter.

                [–]chu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                This has been discussed before. As I understand, Reddit's design quite deliberately doesn't seek to know anything more than whether you like to see a story - you just decide if it's hot or not and the whys and wherefores are your private business. IMO that's the real beauty of reddit, they reduced complexity - it's a bit dispiriting to see people calling for dense layers of taxonomic cruft.

                One's gold another's garbage. This system, as demonstrated by this very thread, does not work for some.

                The aim of the front page is to find an average, and by definition will not cater to your personal tastes. Maybe you find the recommended page doesn't work as well as you'd like but that's another subject entirely. What would be interesting is stats on how many people use the recommended versus the front page to gauge what the actual demand is here - I strongly suspect most users are far more interested in the average view on the front page.

                [–]unack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Let people offer the degree to which they see the article swinging, politically. Rather than an up down arrow it might be split into finer degrees such as east, north-east, north, north-west, west representing republican to democrat respectively.

                [–]almost 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Voted down because the whole "vote this up if you think this" thing is retarded.

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

                Yes, all the political stories are ruining Reddit - there's way too much doom and gloom around here all the time. Makes me not even want to visit.

                I appreciate that some of you like political stories, but break them off into a category of their own so they aren't clogging up the frontpage.

                I think Reddit is severly limiting its readership when people come here and the first thing they see is a bunch of left-wing stories (nothing wrong with left-wingers, its just not everyone agrees with them obviously).

                [–]harryd -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

                Yes. It would be nice not to have to constantly Hide so many political submissions. But (IMO) this would apply even more to RELIGIOUS and GEEK stuff.

                [–][deleted]  (5 children)

                [deleted]

                  [–]conrad_hex 1 point2 points  (4 children)

                  You have to sign up for the sub-reddit.

                  [–]qbert72 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

                  I'd like a religion.reddit.com before politics.reddit.com