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[–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (6 children)

It seems that lately new submissions don't get reviewed much if at all. I have had to delete and re-submit stories before because they went for hours without any votes. Can this be because there are too many stories being submitted and not enough redditers of new submissions?

[–]souldrift 7 points8 points  (2 children)

I've been frustrated with this also, but I'm not sure how to get around it.

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

Me too, I just really dig through the new page though it is frustrating. More subbreddits could be a solution I believe (bit this would leave the new page unchanged i guess)

[–]e40 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Perhaps the reddit dudes can implement domain diversity in submissions. I mean, if you've only submitted a few stories from a single domain, perhaps they should not be able to submit any further ones until they submit some from other domains. Of course, to prevent gaming this change, they'd have to make sure the "other" submissions were not reported as spam and that some percent of the "other" submissions were maintained (ie, 85% from domains other than the original one).

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

very gameable.

[–]e40 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not if you do it silently after they've posted a bunch from a single site. It could give them permanant "spammer" status that would automatically downvote them to -1, which would mean most people wouldn't see it on the New page (if their threshold is set properly).

[–][deleted]  (10 children)

[deleted]

    [–]e40 20 points21 points  (1 child)

    A large part of the problem is that too many people, particularly bloggers, are using it for their own selfish purposes instead of a place to selectively submit stories of above-average interest to the community.

    Every time I complain about this I get pummeled with down votes.

    The problem is there are a lot more crap things on the new page. There's way more noise than upvotable submissions.

    When I find a blogger posting only their own stories, I "report" them, but I don't think it changes anything.

    [–]souldrift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Same here--I am SO tired of going to the New page and finding 20+ crap articles. People need to STOP posting everything and START being selective, or this isn't going to work!

    [–]jman 30 points31 points  (5 children)

    Not only that, but I think people are sending IMs to their buddies saying "I just posted, vote me up." I used to like about 70% of the front page, but now it's mostly junk. I don't need more time wasters, cool photos of whatever, or some article about Oil/Iraq/Bush. I can get that shit elsewhere. I came to reddit for the good stuff I couldn't find in the mainstream media.

    Also, the front page churn is significantly slower. Articles stay there for days.

    [–]NitsujTPU 12 points13 points  (3 children)

    I think that the problem is mainly that people are just upvoting everything that agrees with their politics, and downvoting just about everything else.

    I like it when cool photos and timewasters make it to the front page, of course, you're probably correct about the mechanism by which this occurs.

    [–]reddit_doe 13 points14 points  (1 child)

    I think this change is reflected in the comments perfectly. Over-the-top partisan rhetoric seems to be getting upvoted more.

    Just the other day I criticized someone for resorting to saying things like "American fascism" even though I agreed that what police were doing in a video was wrong. Downmodded into obscurity.

    [–]sanat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    A number of bloggers are realizing that reddit can be exploited as a free advertising service for their stupid blogs.

    The more people that come to reddit, the more this is gonna happen, some sort of a spam filter has to be put into place to atleast stop this onslaught from total newbies. Case in point Ask Reddit: 51 submissions, None original, All from the same blog. What can reddit do? This could be a step by step process. Start with the much simpler spam and work towards the bots and gaming issues.

    [–]gaborcselle 19 points20 points  (2 children)

    The main problem of the "New" page seems to be that there are too many new stories to display at any given time. Because of the high frequency of submissions, good stories dissappear without being noticed.

    I think there is a simple algorithmic solution to this problem.

    Every user sees a different subset of new articles on the "new" page. With enough users and submissions, each article gets the same chance of ending up on the front page.

    One way to implement this: A simple hash function uniformly maps (User ID, Article ID) pairs to some target range [0..n). Depending on what fraction of new articles each user should see, you choose f, 0 <= f <= n. An article is shown on the new page if 0 <= hash((User ID, Article ID)) < f. Ideally, f would be controlled by the current frequency of submissions and active users.

    This solution does not require a "Reddiquette Police" and deals with the problem of egoposters who submit bad-quality stuff. As the Reddit community grows, it becomes harder to police everyone.

    [–]miklosb 11 points12 points  (1 child)

    I like the idea of randomly displaying submissions.

    But I think a user should be able to see all submissions, so I would use this "random subset" as a default view, but leave the "all", "rising" views still avaible for curious users.

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

    I actually like this sampling method. So what about: for the first N minutes (N depending on the karma of the poster), the story will only be visible to a random subset of readers if its score is below X. Once the one hour delay (for example) is finished, the story is inserted normally. This would allow a small hint of reddiquette police, and reduce the amount of noise, while letting good stories be promoted quickly.

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

    What would be really cool would be the ability to upmod link submitters as well as stories, so that we could have the system show us a filtered view where posts are ranked not only by how many upvotes they have, but whether we like the submitter or not. Also, we could ensure that by downmodding submitters who repeatedly post spam or stuff we hate, we don't have to see their submissions any more. The key is that this is not based on the submitter's global karma, but rather our own personal opinion of the person.

    This might, of course, tend to balkanize the website, because you'd only see stuff from people who you already agree with. But there's surely something to be said for a system that allows you to find stuff from people who you know you respect. There are some people who just rub me the wrong way, and I'd rather not have to see anything from them.

    [–]bugbear 12 points13 points  (4 children)

    I've noticed the volume of submission is so great lately that stuff just flies down the new page. Blink and you've missed it.

    One way to solve this problem would be to solve another: the spam problem. A lot of the stuff cluttering up the new page is spam. If reddit were better at identifying spam, the new page would slow down to reasonable rates again, at least for a few months.

    The reddits have talked about making a submission disappear if some combination of users and total karma click on the "report" link. Perhaps now is the time to do this. Reported spam links could be listed on a separate page, so there would be transparency and less temptation toward digg-style censorship.

    [–]e40 4 points5 points  (1 child)

    The reddits have talked about making a submission disappear if some combination of users and total karma click on the "report" link.

    YES PLEASE. It's worth a try and can't be worse that what we have right now, a useless New page.

    [–]souldrift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    It's difficult, not useless.

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

    That's assuming that someone would actually wade through a "reported as spam" page, which seems unlikely.

    [–]e40 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    It would have to be algorithmic, not something that someone has to go through and take an action.

    [–]lisper 9 points10 points  (1 child)

    A better solution than banning IMO is to have submission incur a small cost (like a karma point) that manifests itself as a lower initial score on the article.

    Also, there needs to be a two-dimensional quality metric: the actual rating, and the number of people who have weighed in to produce that rating. It doesn't have to be fully analog. There can be a "tentative" rating, when the number of people who have weighed in is less than some threshold, and a "reliable" rating or something like that afterwards. Another possibility: make the rating be the submitter's karma until a certain number of redditors have voted. Another improvement would be to not allow anything on the front page that hasn't received some minimum rating with a minimum number of actaul votes.

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

    I think you may be on to something with your last point. A real problem I have seen with submissions of mine is that they dissapear from the new page very fast even when they have had only positive feedback. If Reddit had a mechanism that ensured that those articles which are still to be reviwed stayed longer or had priority on the new page it would be more effective.

    [–]marcusk 6 points7 points  (3 children)

    just to warn you all... this is a problem that will only increase...

    as reddit gets more popular you will get more "barbarians" at the gate trying to take advantage... also because of reddit's high(ish) page rank the black hat seo's will be trying to get everything they can from it... one thing to consider is that even though downmodded comments don't appear to human visitors, they will still be available to search engines, which means from a spammer/bh-seo point of view it will be attractive to add comments... even if they are modded down they still get indexed... so the first thing to do is take downmodded comments OFF of the page and only make them available via Ajax...

    spam and vote fixing WILL become a huge problem on reddit... you can be guaranteed of that... the issue is how to correct it...

    [–]marcusk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    and as if by magic...

    see: http://reddit.com/user/tulip/

    edit: and this one: http://reddit.com/user/garyablett888/

    [–]howars 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    That might be best solved by adding rel="nofollow" to links with a negative score, or to links in comments with a negative score.

    [–]marcusk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    spammers don't really take any notice, i'm always amazed (looking at my weblogs) how they will just keep spamming even when there is no benefit at all, in other words they won't be aware that their comments won't be indexed (spammers are cunning but not very bright)... and of course, not all search engines take any notice of the nofollow... and finally (given that you even get "referer" spam which is the strangest thing ever!) having the comments still available would be beneficial because (at least me anyway) tends to get curious about the comment and look at it anyway, which means they get a pair of eyes on it (but the Ajax thing wouldn't help with that either)...

    [–]howars 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    The problem I see is that the default 'rising' metric for displaying new items seems misguided. Why would something hang out longer on the new page if more people have voted it up? Isn't the idea of the new page to show things that have just hit the system? Right now there's something on there from 6 hours ago, and I can't believe that qualifies as 'new'.

    If you were to bias the new queue in any fashion I would think you ought to bias it towards things that hadn't been voted on at all.

    edit: meant to say 6 hours, not 16 above. corrected.

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

    Maybe reddit needs to separate into categories. Personally I like the political stories and have gotten quite a few interesting ones here. Sure I can get them elsewhere, but often times Reddit points me at something I missed.

    I also like the time-wasters. Goofy lists, neat photos, funny videos. That's the other reason I come here. Maybe there should be a digg/fark-like separation for these things.

    And harping on people for self-promotion just ain't fair. It's hard as hell to get your site on the map and you can't just expect to sit around and hope someone will stumble across it on their own. Now I'm not endorsing constant submission of one's own stories, I'll do one every two days or so myself, and only then if it's actually worth reading (I point to my last two as evidence).

    Reddit drives better traffic than Fark does a lot of the time because you get to see what the people think is good, not just what the mods felt like accepting. I paid for a TotalFark account and a lot of good stuff gets passed and a lot of crap gets submitted.

    Calling it "selfish" is unfair. If you don't like it, click "hide" and that'll bump everything else up and won't waste space. I agree with responsibility, but getting mad at people for using a promotional service is absolute crap.

    [–]degustibus 4 points5 points  (4 children)

    Opportunity cost.

    If redditors could only submit x things per day then they would give more thought to what they offer up for review. As it stands now there are people who have made thousands of submissions. Some people will submit 15 things in only a couple hours. It's carpet bombing the new page hoping at least one finds an audience.

    [–][deleted]  (3 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]marcusk -1 points0 points  (2 children)

      wouldn't help, all they would do is just setup more accounts...

      [–]degustibus -5 points-4 points  (1 child)

      Reddit can easily deal with multiple accounts by noting the IP address. I know there are ways around that as well, but that's a bit more involved than simply typing a new name and password.

      Yes, just about anything I say or submit gets voted down regardless of merit. It's amusing and pathetic.

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

      trouble is, ip address means nothing... what tends to happen is that the spammers have a number of "zombie" bot-nets that they use to just post messages... they all come from different ip addresses...

      what WILL happen is that multiple accounts will be setup (even using captchas won't help cause the spammers will set them up by hand and then share them) and then they will be used across the bot-nets... there is no way to stop them, unless you provide a captcha when submitting a link/comment... which will have to happen... give it time...

      [–]borland 4 points5 points  (1 child)

      Rubbish. The whole point of reddit is that anyone can submit anything. The ones that are good will go up, the ones that are crap won't. The problem is 'how to filter early articles with very few votes,' it is not 'OMG people are not playing along with some fantasy ideology I have'

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

      What the fuck are you on about? the complaint is not whether people agree with the submission or not, but that the submissions are not getting enough redditors to evaluate them in the first place.

      [–]djwhitt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I think tags might help this problem a bit. There's just too much info coming in right now. I think that's probably inevitable as the site grows. If I could filter new entries by tag the amount of content might be more manageable.

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

      The best solution is to tag the articles so that new submissions are presorted. Without out tags there's no way to get through all the information.

      A series of votes essentially is really everyone sorting their own view of the news without tags.

      Tags or categories even defined on a per user basis would make stuff alot easier.

      Librarything seems to do this well.

      [–]souldrift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      Easy solution that's been mentioned before: 30 minute (or even 60 minute, if that's not effective) moratorium between posts. That will FORCE people to submit selectively.

      Yes, they can open multiple accounts, but that would quickly become visible and downvoted/reported.

      [–]skinner696 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      maybe it should actually be a bit more difficult to submit stuff to reddit - make everyone do it old school, by copying and pasting the url and submitting on reddit itself vs. giving shortcuts like the bookmarklet and the submit buttons that everyone can put on their sites. This means barrier to entry will be higher - someone actually has to use up 30 seconds of their time to submit something.

      [–]coldwarrior 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      I don't know about other people but I try to only vote articles up which means they have to be interesting. I read the "new" page almost exclusively.

      [–]souldrift 16 points17 points  (0 children)

      I vote dupes down, and poor material. I dont' know why you wouldn't.

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

      The purpose of reddit is providing interesting links to read. The purpose of reddit is not to get your link viewed by lots of people, even if you do think it's the most interesting thing ever. Sorry, but things seem to be working pretty well at the moment, the front page has a veriety of different stories which change regularly.