Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#51

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #36

seiji wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has this strange power inversion dynamic where the users think they are entitled to run the site. It's a complete illusion they have for themselves to feel more special. Reddit is a billion dollar company and unless you are in corporate management, you have no say. You can have opinions and attempt to have influence, but you have no flat out rights unless you are a decision maker at the corporation. Reddit is…

The users can get a new site easier than reddit can get new users. As long as the majority of users are happy, admins have the most power. But scare off enough and it snow balls into another Digg.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#52

Post by larzang » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:06 PM UTC

flanbiscuit wrote: post #14

Grue3 wrote: post #12

A well-managed site wouldn't grow on the Internet. Look at Tumblr, Reddit, 4chan, they became some of the biggest communities on the internet precisely because they were "everything goes", whereas Something Awful or Metafilter fell into obscurity (and SA became big in the first place when it was less restrictive). The less you "manage", the more likely your site will end up in Alexa top 100.

What happened to Something Awful? My friend was really into that site and tried to get me to join but I ended up gravitating towards Reddit in the end(around 2010/11)

The core SA audience at its height are in their 30s now, and the internet has changed.

The people who used to deliver content solely on SA for the audience there now have global reach through other platforms. FYAD and FYAD-lite alumni are behind most of weird twitter, they run large communities on Facebook and Tumblr, and some of them even write for the Guardian and Jacobin among others. Youtube replaced SA-based LPs just as surely as it replaced YTMND.

Meanwhile, the administration policies have been as consistently outdated as the forum software, driving dedicated communities to offsite forums and casual information-seekers to the greater resources of Reddit.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#53

Post by Grue3 » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:11 PM UTC

morley wrote: post #46

Grue3 wrote: post #12

A well-managed site wouldn't grow on the Internet. Look at Tumblr, Reddit, 4chan, they became some of the biggest communities on the internet precisely because they were "everything goes", whereas Something Awful or Metafilter fell into obscurity (and SA became big in the first place when it was less restrictive). The less you "manage", the more likely your site will end up in Alexa top 100.

You named three sites. The top 10 is Google, Facebook, Amazon, Youtube, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Ebay, Craigslist, Twitter, and Reddit. I would call three of those (Craigslist, Wikipedia, and Reddit) "unmanaged," although that's a stretch. That's hardly "more likely" than the 7 "managed" sites.

Leaving aside the sites that are not communities, you have Youtube (got big because of lenient enforcement of media copyrights), Craigslist (got big because it allowed all kind of stuff, up to and including prostitution), Twitter (people complain about Twitter lack of management on HN weekly, and it never turned profits). The only exception from the rule is Facebook. Zuck's running a tight ship over there and it did beat "unmanaged" Myspace.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#54

Post by easytiger » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:12 PM UTC

morley wrote: post #46

Grue3 wrote: post #12

A well-managed site wouldn't grow on the Internet. Look at Tumblr, Reddit, 4chan, they became some of the biggest communities on the internet precisely because they were "everything goes", whereas Something Awful or Metafilter fell into obscurity (and SA became big in the first place when it was less restrictive). The less you "manage", the more likely your site will end up in Alexa top 100.

You named three sites. The top 10 is Google, Facebook, Amazon, Youtube, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Ebay, Craigslist, Twitter, and Reddit. I would call three of those (Craigslist, Wikipedia, and Reddit) "unmanaged," although that's a stretch. That's hardly "more likely" than the 7 "managed" sites.

No one will ever understand why yahoo is in the top 10,000 websites. Brute force SEO and bundling i'd imagine.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#55

Post by dobs » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:13 PM UTC

zeteo wrote: post #47

The article is terribly condescending towards Reddit's founders and moderators. They have created and grown it to be in the top 10 of US websites. The site is still growing very strongly. Yet they're presented as an immature bunch who have no idea what they're doing and need "adult" supervision, e.g. > Those cats can't run anything > in retrospect, one flaw with [Condé Nast]’s hands-off approach was an assumption tha…

> The article is terribly condescending towards Reddit's founders and moderators.

Quibbling point, but I found the article fairly flattering toward moderators. And as in the article, it's moderators who're often the quickest to call the admins out for the burden their inaction places on us. A lot of what reddit is now has been accomplished by moderators in spite of that burden.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#56

Post by arprocter » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:18 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #16

Fede_V wrote: post #2

Very interesting article. There was a data viz (gender vs visits) that was needlessly flashy, when a simple x-y scatter would have been more clear. One part struck me though: Erwin sees evidence of it already, pointing to the recent debut of Upvoted, a Reddit podcast delving into the site’s most compelling stories. “Reddit is very much trying to establish itself as a curator of its own content and take back some of t…

I find it really hard to believe that Reddit's users aren't like the rest of the internet. Only 1% of users on a site create content, followed by 9% "participating" on top of that newly created content, followed by 90% just lurking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) Even if it's not that exact breakdown, I'd be extremely surprised if the lurking users didn't dwarf the active users, and the ju…

I'd guess the lurk percentage (I assume you mean lurkers are people looking at the site who don't have accounts) may be lower than usual, because you can't subscribe to subreddits without an account

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#57

Post by ikeboy » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:19 PM UTC

nadams wrote: post #13

mahouse wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it me or this is stupid? I mean, this is the digital world, you can make as many copies as you want, so if you give them a licence to whatever they want with it, what are your options after submitting something?

You could stamp everyone of your posts with a CC-NC license. Since the content is yours - I don't think they can magically wave the CC-NC license on the basis that you uploaded it to their site.

>By submitting user content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.

How does slapping another license on it dissolve this one? They're using it under this other license that you agreed to, not the CC-NC one.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#58

Post by thekingofspain » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

belenos46 wrote: post #44

fulafel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upbrining without punishment definitely is definitely possible and practiced semi widely (google around). Punishment is a pretty bad way to address misbehaviour.

Yeah, says everyone except every reputable psychologist ever, and any parent who hasn't raised an out of control little monster of a child. Negative reinforcement works better than any other form of reinforcement, except when paired with positive reinforcement for desired behaviors, just like innumerable studies and common goddamned sense tell you.

A quick google informs me that punishment != negative reinforcement.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#59

Post by krapp » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:37 PM UTC

bittercynic wrote: post #38

The criticism of the aesthetic of the reddit homepage is misguided. By not following current trends in web design, reddit has stronger credibility as a free-for-all where you might find interesting material. If you want content curated by editors who are directed by big money, there are a million other sites for that.

I've never understood the implication that a simple layout necessarily correlates to better content. Is it because sites that don't look modern evoke a sense of nostalgia for the less corporate "old" web? Is it just hipsterism? Clever marketing on Reddit's part?

It comes up on HN too, whenever someone complains about the awkward layout, there are worries that somehow making the site look better or perform better will degrade the culture.

Re: Reddit: A Nine-Year Case Study in Absentee Management

#60

Post by moron4hire » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:47 PM UTC

arprocter wrote: post #56

moron4hire wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it really hard to believe that Reddit's users aren't like the rest of the internet. Only 1% of users on a site create content, followed by 9% "participating" on top of that newly created content, followed by 90% just lurking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) Even if it's not that exact breakdown, I'd be extremely surprised if the lurking users didn't dwarf the active users, and the ju…

I'd guess the lurk percentage (I assume you mean lurkers are people looking at the site who don't have accounts) may be lower than usual, because you can't subscribe to subreddits without an account

Lurker is usually defined by the fact that they don't participate. Whether or not they have an account isn't usually a factor, though obviously being non-participants they usually have little incentive to create an account. Up-vote buttons usually drag in a few percentage points more of lurkers into creating accounts. Generally speaking, the more of a continuum of ability to participate in a site that you have, and the easier it is to sign up for an account, the more you will capture non-registered users as registered users.

This is why sites like Twitter, Pintrest, and Tumblr have found relative ease in gaining growth, compared to their general value proposition as compared to older, more traditional blogging platforms like Blogger or WordPress. Because they have completely streamlined the re-sharing type of participation, they target their sites explicitly at that 9% of users who participate but don't create, rather than the much smaller 1% of users who create content.

Regardless, the emphasis of the 90-9-1 rule is on content creation and participation, not on the number of registered accounts. It even applies to largely account-less sites like 4chan.