Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#91

Post by studentrob » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:21 AM UTC

rdwallis wrote: post #57

Built http://www.thealetree.com a few years ago so not related to the current issue. But I'll turn the database on for a few days if people want to try it out. The source code is at https://github.com/rdwallis/TheAleTree The idea behind it was that the passionate minority on sites like reddit, hn etc tend to drive the discussion on issues because the less passionate majority isn't as inclined to upvote / downvote. So…

Regardless of how you divide people up, the majority vote is the majority vote.

What problem are you trying to solve? I don't see any problem with people voting as long as it is one person, one vote.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#92

Post by rdwallis » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 6:08 AM UTC

studentrob wrote: post #91

rdwallis wrote: post #57

Built http://www.thealetree.com a few years ago so not related to the current issue. But I'll turn the database on for a few days if people want to try it out. The source code is at https://github.com/rdwallis/TheAleTree The idea behind it was that the passionate minority on sites like reddit, hn etc tend to drive the discussion on issues because the less passionate majority isn't as inclined to upvote / downvote. So…

Regardless of how you divide people up, the majority vote is the majority vote. What problem are you trying to solve? I don't see any problem with people voting as long as it is one person, one vote.

Imagine a site with users who are all absolute experts in their chosen field. Mathematicians / Writers / Lawyers etc.

The popularity of a post will depend more on how it appeals to the majority than how it appeals to the experts. So the most popular mathematical posts may be posts that the actual mathematicians find mundane but that the writers / lawyers are able to understand. And this is true for all topics in which the non experts out number the experts.

So even though all the people on your site are experts the actual content on your site will be at non expert level, which will attract non-experts to your site who will then tend to vote on content that is at an even lower level.

Eventually the experts find all the content on the site mundane and are driven out.

Abandoned the Ale Tree because I don't think it is a solution to the problem. But there are definite problems with a pure majority vote system. The underlying concept that led me down this path was the difference between a republic and democracy. The Ale Tree was meant to act more like a republic where you elect representatives who vote on issues for you instead of voting on them directly.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#93

Post by drig » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 2:07 PM UTC

There have been some posts on this thread saying that reddit is losing users for bad reasons. The users want to make hiring decisions, or approve of hate boards. That might be true, but there's one damn good reason to leave.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/3byaei/reddit_alt...

The CEO went on reddit to explain her decision. It comes down to "the software is bad, and we'll release better software". She did not acknowledge her mistakes. Nor did she explain why she reacted before the fix was ready. Instead, she blamed it on the developers.

This is cowardly and self-serving. If reddit is in the hands of a person with no loyalty to her customers, they're going out of business. If Pao is still CEO by Monday night, reddit is done.

I'm moving on.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#94

Post by renata » Tue, Jul 07, 2015, 2:10 AM UTC

robotjosh wrote: post #17

akhilcacharya wrote: post #10

I've been toying with making one since I realized Reddit has been devolving into a reactionary, hate filled site. I was thinking about having a gimmick of graph based commenting to prevent the "top post guides discussion" effect. Not sure at how feasible or user friendly that could be.

Someone should make a version of reddit where your upvote/downvote record is what shapes the ordering for you. There should be a global rank and an individual rank that is calculated for each user something like the netflix 5 star system. That way the hateful stuff won't appear unless you upvoted hateful stuff. Liberals and conservatives could both get the content they want going to the same politics forum. It should…

Amusingly, once upon a time, this was reddit's goal. Everyone had a "Recommended" tab, and it never ever worked. They killed it years ago.