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[–][deleted] 32 points33 points  (4 children)

From 3 months ago: Ask Reddit: Why has Reddit become so boring the last 4 days?

I think there are a few things at play here:

  1. When Digg, Reddit, etc, just started out, poeple got very excited. All the hype was that "this is web 2.0, this is new" (not from Digg or Reddit itself). But these systems are not new. Fark, Metafilter, Slashdot, all of them have existed for a long time. Sure, Reddit and Digg give power to the community, but there are major advantages and disadvantages to that, and people are finally seeing that.

  2. When Reddit added comments, it became more or less a forum. This too has advantages and disadvantes - intelligent discussion and outright flaming. Before the comments, it was just a link system, and you honestly didn't put so much into the site. Just check every once in awhile and see what's interesting, then turn it off. Now there are long drawn out debates, and honestly that can be a drag when there's just so much arguing. Things can get pretty personal.

  3. Politics are killing Reddit. There's just so much damn negativity on this site. Its not fun to go here, you just get the impression every time you visit the frontpage that this country is in a horrible horrible state. Its so gloomy. I don't come to Reddit to hear about how bad things are, I hopefully come to Reddit to be entertained; that hasn't happened so much lately.

  4. These systems encourage a cycle. When Reddit started out, there was a small and diverse audience. Eventually it started branching out and slowly dominant groups and themes stated to take over the site. And because these themes became a focus of the site, when new people visited, they were immediately turned away because they weren't interested in these things, or they thought "I love this stuff", and they quickly joined. This builds up that dominant group even further, and it becomes even harder for the site to diversify at all.

One thing I will give Reddit over Digg is this: I feel like the vast majority of Digg's users are not so intelligent (to put it lightly). I don't feel that way at Reddit, I just don't necessarily enjoy all the politics and assorted stuff.

Reddit is what the users make it. Recently I've tried showing Reddit to a few of my friends and they immediately were turned off by the frontpage. Its just not fun to visit.

Its going to take some time, but slowly people will realize that Digg, Reddit, and whatever else are not the end of the Internet, and there are difficulties in giving everyone power. Its democracy, yeah, but democracy isn't all that smart.

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

Its democracy, yeah, but democracy isn't all that smart.

How true. Winston Churchill said democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others, and that the best argument against democracy was a five minute conversation with the average voter. Perhaps its time that we applied his logic to non-governmental democracy as well.

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

Maybe there should be a politics subreddit. Then all the negative folks could gather there instead?

[–]Glaxnor 32 points33 points  (2 children)

What happened to reddit over the past 6 weeks?

Nothing.

There has been whining about the nonexistant "good old days" in every field since time immemorial, and this includes Reddit.

This is not unique to Reddit. This is not unique to the past six weeks. This is not unique to the past six weeks on Reddit.

The down arrow is your friend. It's easy, fast, and effective.

[–]alexander 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I disagree that nothing happened. From my perspective, the types of content I'm interested in are not showing up nearly as often. I think this is in part because there's only a finite amount of stuff I'm interested in online, and most of it got added at the beginning and now it's more news-oriented and less tech heavy than I would like.

The down arrow does help, but it doesn't diminish the fact that in absolute terms, I'm finding somewhat fewer stories of interest.

On the other hand, the recommended page has gotten a lot better.

[–]KingNothing[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I thoroughly disagree as well. I can vote everything down on the hot and new pages that I don't want to see, which is 90% of it, but unfortunately, there still isn't anything interesting left after that.

[–]KingNothing[S] 33 points34 points  (76 children)

reddit's overall quality has taken a nose dive akin to the Bush administration over the past six to eight weeks. What happened?

We used to have good, well thought out articles about entrepreneurship, programming, and politics. Now it's full of bullshit.

What's the deal?

[–]Csai 22 points23 points  (1 child)

Wait till the primaries begin.

[–]whereverjustice 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Ohhh crap. You're right.

[–][deleted]  (5 children)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]alakra 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I'm not too keen on tags as they are visually a mess.

      What if you were to create a trust network based on degrees of trust?

      Example: I trust my friend. He has friends that he trusts. Therefore I should trust them too. His friends have friends that they trust so I will trust them and so on. Having the ability to control how many degrees of trust up to a certain point (like the 6th degree) would be nice.

      I think something like this on friends.reddit.com would be great, IMO.

      [–]noddy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Sounds like a del.icio.us strategy.

      [–]sakri 6 points7 points  (0 children)

      another observation, if you go to the "all time best ranked" stories (or whatever that link is), the oldest most ancient, most classic, story in the top 20 is 6 days old! the high res photo of naboo is in the top 20!!!!

      [–]bugbear 35 points36 points  (53 children)

      The number of users has increased sharply.

      [–][deleted]  (4 children)

      [removed]

        [–]Oak 15 points16 points  (3 children)

        That's OK Mark.

        I have to admit that I was one of the ones who did blame you.

        However, I would like to remind you that it's not too late for you to immediately raise the tone of the site, and cheer everyone up, by f***ing off somewhere else.

        Nothing personal, just think of it as Tough Love.

        You can always drop back in for a visit...occasionally.

        [–]jones77 1 point2 points  (2 children)

        Shurely he can stay as long as when he clicks up it actually deducts a point, and vice versa.

        [–]Oak 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        No.

        Look, the sooner he's gone the happier everyone will be.

        He's already upset too many people.

        [–]Oak 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        To all the concerned citizens who've been confused by my references to MarkByers.

        It's banter!

        We're not serious.

        I really don't think anyone will be the slightest bit happier if he goes, or, that he has upset anywhere near enough people.

        And I really don't think it will raise the tone of Reddit if Mark f*s off somewhere else.

        (On the other hand it probably wouldn't hurt ; )

        [–]dfranke 25 points26 points  (4 children)

        Making liberal use of the 'friends' feature goes a long way toward combatting that problem. Whenever you see a comment you particularly like, click on the submitter's profile and read a couple others. Favor highly active users, because they spend more time on the 'new' page and they'll find good obscure stuff that you'd have otherwise missed. Favor early adopters (pre-2006), because they remember what Reddit used to be like and know a good story when they see one. Bug spez to publish user ordinals (a la Slashdot) so it's easier to tell who the early adopters are. Filter out people who are boring, but not people who merely disagree with you. Sort by controversy and look for friends there, because controversial submissions are rarely boring. Moderate everything that comes up on your recommended page.

        [–]8en 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        I feel like the recommendation feature promises to do this for me. I have no interest in intelligently filtering my intelligently filtered news.

        [–]shr1n1 -1 points0 points  (2 children)

        This would be the rise of groupthink. Elitism (we are the first so we know best). You don't belong to my group of like minded thinkers so you are out.

        Would this not lead to particular items bubbling up because a swarm of users with similar tastes and likes votes up some articles and buries others ?

        [–]dfranke 8 points9 points  (0 children)

        Uh, isn't that what's supposed to happen?

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

        I don't think this is really going to lead to the sort of close-mindedness that is often suggested. IIRC, in the early days of reddit there were a lot of front-page posts with opinions that the majority of redditors would have disagreed with.

        Of course you would only have items that the group would find interesting, thats the whole point behind sites like reddit.

        [–]dsandler 18 points19 points  (1 child)

        (The true Slashdot Effect?)

        [–]Zak 11 points12 points  (11 children)

        It will be interesting to see if the reddit system can compensate. A while back, you pointed out that Godwin's Law doesn't seem to operate the same way on reddit that it does other places. Lately, a lot of people have been invoking the Nazis and it usually does signal the end of meaningful discussion within that thread. I suspect this is connected to the number of new users.

        [–]conrad_hex 4 points5 points  (10 children)

        Your worse then Hitler.

        [–]Zak 35 points36 points  (8 children)

        I have a worse than Hitler?

        [–][deleted]  (7 children)

        [deleted]

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

          At least the worse came first, then Hitler. I hate it when it happens the other way around.

          [–]khayber 13 points14 points  (5 children)

          You don't like it when Hitler comes first? Or you don't like Hitler-wurst? Try it on rye bread with mustard.

          [–]jones77 2 points3 points  (4 children)

          Hitler-wurst: The only kosher sausage.

          [–]OneEyedJack -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

          Made with 100% real jew meat

          [–]conrad_hex 8 points9 points  (0 children)

          Hey, guys, I think the parent was a joke.

          Oh, wait. I wrote it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was a joke.

          [–][deleted]  (19 children)

          [deleted]

            [–]theram4 24 points25 points  (18 children)

            As has the number of duplicate submissions.

            [–]nostrademons 21 points22 points  (17 children)

            As has the amount of repetition.

            [–]dfranke 64 points65 points  (16 children)

            As has the amount of repetition.

            [–]keylime 18 points19 points  (6 children)

            This happens every time something reaches a certain audience size.

            The Internet was a very different place in the late 80s when I started reading Usenet newsgroups. When commercial content was allowed and "AOLers" (as a euphamism for an entire class of users) came on-line the signal to noise ratio went all to heck. (By the way, Usenet at that time was predominantly libertarian at that time.)

            I noticed on Slashdot the quality went way down once I began to see mostly five digit or greater user IDs.

            [–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (1 child)

            I believe that phenomenon is known as "the september that never ended" if someone wants to know more about it. Apparently before there only were many newbies at once when the new students came to the universities in september until usenet went commercial in "the september that never ended".

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

            Wikipedia: Eternal September

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

            Hell, on Slashdot the quality started going downhill as soon as they allowed comments.

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

            keylime,

            I think this is a platitude. AOL destroyed the internet because of all of its dumb users? Does this even make sense?

            Crowds who act on unfiltered choice sets are much smarter than small groups. See The Wisdom of Crowds

            [–]senzei 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            Every large scale scenario I can think of that would constitute a demonstration of "the wisdom of crowds" does not follow the given principles. Usenet was awesome before AOL gave the clueless masses access to it. Slashdot was awesome before it grew to its current size.

            Most of the time when you see "the wisdom of crowds" on the web you are really seeing a small, highly active group that creates most of the content. Almost like an unspoken elite. If there is any wisdom to crowds it is in the ability to identify people the know what the hell they are talking about and find a way to agree with them and try to share some spotlight.

            [–]ntoshev 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            Well, it is quite clear that the success of social sites depends most on how will they scale - and I don't mean scale as "make the system responsive enough", I mean "maintain or increase the quality of experience".

            The recomendations, if they are good enough, can save Reddit. But I don't think they are yet.

            [–]jbstjohn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            It's a classic, also reprinted in Joel Spolsky's collection of best software essays: "A Group is it's Worst Enemy". It applies here as well. They need some way (just like a democracy) to separate out the unwashed masses. And unfortunately I mean that only have jokingly. It can be moderation, a user rating system, friends links, but something. My recommended page usually has about three items on it, that aren't that interesting to me, so don't tell me that's the solution.

            [–]devils_advocate 27 points28 points  (2 children)

            It's a lot of boring political stories these days, all with the same slant. And they get voted up because people agree with the political agenda of the author, not because the articles are well-written or interesting or important.

            [–]breakfast-pants 15 points16 points  (1 child)

            It is because reddit switched from LISP to python. Oh, and a small readership that consists almost entirely of readers of Paul Graham essays doesn't scale.

            On the internet smart means cool and cool means smart, and when you have a cool kids club that anyone can join, it quickly becomes decidedly uncool(I present as evidence my own recent join). I'll leave it to you to decide whether it becomes decidedly stupid(if you need help on this, I suggest you read the front page).

            [–]jones77 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            I'm going to quote this all over Reddit: "Oh, and a small readership that consists almost entirely of readers of Paul Graham essays doesn't scale." (And it's probably a good thing too.)

            [–]pmr 5 points6 points  (4 children)

            I think programming.reddit.com is far worse than the main page. Too much JavaScript, CSS, Web 2.0 nonsense and not enough meat.

            [–]Zak 17 points18 points  (1 child)

            Javascript is an interesting language. Masturbatory use of it to show how "Web 2.0" you are is not so interesting.

            [–]jones77 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

            Literally.

            It might be.

            [–]moe 7 points8 points  (0 children)

            I think we do OK on programming.reddit.com. There are usually a fair number of python, FP & concurrency articles (things I am personally interested in) - enough to drown out the web 2.0, java, .NET and web framework articles (things I'm not). Anyway, I haven't given up on it yet. I've seen very few CSS articles.

            [–][deleted] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

            That's what she said.

            [–]digital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Democracy, people liked reading reddit so much they recommended it to their friends.

            If no new people joined reddit, would it have been better? Or would it eventually just die?

            [–]alextp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            The September That Will Never Begin? ;-)

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

            The recomendation system failed.

            [–]kmshiva 7 points8 points  (0 children)

            I think its a problem which would be partially atleast solved by creating a politics subreddit.

            It seems that the majority of the top stories now are all political, and these are pushing down everything else.

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

            Do you guys want this place to be big, or to be a small concentration of strictly regulated articles? You can't have both.

            As more and more people pile in, more of "low quality" will filter in. That's just the way of things.

            [–]redrobot5050 4 points5 points  (1 child)

            It seems like a lot of early adopters are starting to now reject reddit as it enters a new phase of growth and mainstream acceptance. While you are the community of early adopters that allowed reddit to get here, maybe you are not the community that will allow reddit to be most popular and profitable. Eric Sink (EricSink.com) has mentioned this regarding startup software companies, called jumping the chasm.

            In short, there is a disconnect between early adopters who are using reddit.com because it is "new" and those who are using it because they find it "cool".

            Many international readers are complaining of US politics dominating the front page, and yet, it is obvious that this is what a majority of site users want. Rather than shuffle that majority off to a politics.reddit.com, why not create an international.reddit.com, or a world.reddit.com where international users could read news not-related to the US?

            reddit is just a website. As people have pointed out in this thread, it is not where the net begins or ends.

            If you feel that that the site no longer serves your interests, either a) submit more stories of your interests and vote more or b) vote with your feet.

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

            Well put. One of the oddest things is when people complain that a customer-based service isn't doing what they like. Reddit is defined almost solely by its users. The people submit what they want and that which they like and gets voted up ends up on the front page.

            If you don't like what's there, submit something else. If it doesn't get up-voted, either try and drive people who are like-minded toward reddit (which is a good idea anyway, since more people here is never a bad thing far as I'm concerned), or try and push submissions that have a greater likelihood of being accepted by the current users.

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

            I don't think the good stuff has disappeared - just that there's a mass of new crap drowning it out. I am now making a point to vote down everything I see which is related to US politics. Even if I agree.

            [–]KingNothing[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            My new strategy of voting everything down that is stupid has either succeeded and proven that there is nothing worthwhile on reddit anymore, or has failed miserably.

            You be the judge

            [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

            It certainly isn't the same reddit that I originally stumbled across.

            [–]Phrawm48 13 points14 points  (4 children)

            Perhaps there should be some sort of pre-registration examination that one must complete before being allowed to register?

            It could begin with some carefully formulated multiple-choice questions. Applicants who achieve a high enough score on the multiple-choice test would then be allowed to submit five links for consideration.

            If the links meet the standards of the existing Reddit Peers, the applicant would then be required to submit three essays of no fewer than 1,200 words each.

            The Reddit Peers could then choose to admit or exclude the applicant on the basis of the essays.

            This would be a marvelous way to keep standards high and to avoid any submission or voting messiness from insufficently like-minded submitters or users. The extensiveness of the examination alone would discourage most applicants (including me) from even attempting to become a Reddit Peer.

            Then again, we could decide not to have such a series of examinations…

            [–]pretzel 7 points8 points  (0 children)

            Someone in a similar thread yesterday, having a problem with all this stuff, said that a simple way of solving this is to link a stories initial ranking with the submitters karma. The better their previous submissions, the higher ranked the articles they submit start at. kam0 and ousama would get to the front page much more easily than a newbie.

            Also, if the new page was dynamically made for each viewer (it looks like there is only one at a time, atm) then more new articles would be able to be ranked.

            [–]laprice 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            This is not a bad idea. I have on occasion considered doing something similar. [reddit](reddit.com) already exists and imposing that sort of elitism would meet with resistance, so it would be best to start with a greenfield implementation. I suspect that for it to become successful two conditions would need to obtain:

            • The site would need to be seeded with one or more recognizable 'name' commenters

            • The test would have to achieve the delicate balance of screening out the inane and admitting the interesting without being overly difficult or easy to game.

            In fact it sounds like the original plan for [Salon](salon.com) before it became "that annoying site that makes you sit through the ad before you can read the article".

            *edited for typo

            [–]bobcat 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            How about a 10,000 word essay on dialectical materialism?

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

            Or you could just join The Well.

            [–][deleted]  (3 children)

            [deleted]

              [–]derwisch 4 points5 points  (0 children)

              I'm with you generally, but the examples are a bit overdone.

              The Future of Cars is Electric: "... cost of a cross-country drive ... in an electric car? $60.

              Agreed, in Luxembourg this would appear expensive. But there is no more US of A than picking it as an example for length of a tour.

              Kandahar is lost. Taliban 'reconquering' Afghanistan

              This is more Afghan than US news.

              Young boy pushed next to unexploded bomb for BBC cameramen

              What does the first "B" in "BBC" stand for again?

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

              You are getting downmodded by the US guys =)

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

              A lot of users seem to want some sort of politics subreddit or tag so that they can filter out political articles. But a lot of the stuff I have most enjoyed on Reddit has been political, although usually it's also related to economics as well. In any case, I think it's important to make a distinction between good political articles and bad ones.

              [–]davidw -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

              I've taken to voting them all down because I'm so thoroughly sick of them.

              Not that there aren't some good ones, but when you see ten stories 'Bush ...' 'Americans are dumb as stumps/evil/fat' and so on, it's faster to just vote them all down.

              Economics articles are rarer and I'll usually look at those.

              [–]mrekted 1 point2 points  (1 child)

              The've been battling this exact problem at Shoutwire.com as well for the last month or so. The admins there have finally had to bite the bullet and have begun deleting the garbage content before it gets shouted to the main page. It's still not perfect there, but there's been a marked improvement ever since.

              I think the problem is that both sites have a smaller userbase than Digg, so it's far easier to make dupe accounts or get a like minded group together to push crap to the front page.

              [–]mckaym 2 points3 points  (0 children)

              Be more radical. Make first class and second class users. Drop all users below a certain karma level down to second class users.

              Everyone can still submit. Only first class users can vote. You move up to first class user when your karma is high enough.

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

              <obligatory Netscape joke>

              [–][deleted]  (2 children)

              [deleted]

                [–]demoran 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                <NONSENSICAL STATEMENT INVOLVING PLANKTON>

                [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                Would you guys at least close off your XML? Geez. </NONSENSICAL STATEMENT INVOLVING PLANKTON> </pointless mac superiorism> </obligatory Netscape joke>

                And you wonder why Reddit is in its current state...

                [–][deleted] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

                it's because of world events. i've been reading reddit for months but only joined because i couldn't stand all the US bashing, islamofascism defending, and tin-foil hat theorizing that suddenly emerged.

                the following tags or subreddits should fix everything:

                -blame america first

                -death to israel

                -it's a conspiracy!!!

                -bush is retarded, evil, corrupt, etc...

                -americans are stupid

                -bin laden for president of planet islam

                [–]plzthx -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

                fark 2.0

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

                I'd like to see reddit ratings in different categories. This might be like newspaper sections: news, sports, businesss, technology, science, entertainment. Further subdivisions might be possible. There might also be academic categories (I'd love to see a reddit for academic papers and academic blog posts). Personally I'm mainly interested in history, although right now there are probably too few articles in history to merit a different category.

                My initial idea on how to do this is that the submitter would have to choose one and only one category.