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An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

alexisohanian.com

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Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#61

Post by puredemo »

kn0thing wrote: post #54
budu3 wrote: post #53

I'm a Reddit fan but come on Alexis. Let Kevin be. Digg v4 hasn't even been released to the public yet. You left Reddit a long time ago. If you were still at Reddit then I'd chalk this down as a little trash talk from a competitor. You're no longer in the game. Give him time to prove himself.

My intention was quite the opposite from trash talking. As a commenter articulated, this feels more like something forced on him by acquisition hungry VCs than of his own design. Digg was in a way one of the best external things that could've happened to reddit: it did all the work of educating people to the concept of "social news" and provided a Goliath to our community's David.

The VC is a huge assumption for one thing, and it sort of comes off as concern trolling.

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#62

Post by Silhouette »

aquateen wrote: post #34
varaon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit comments are excellent, and I think that while having a buzzing community creates a lot more noise, there is also a lot more great content. Initiatives like $180,000 for Haiti, or the secret santa wouldn't have been the same 5 years ago.

Not sure what tilts me more, reading reddit comments or reading that reddit comments are supposed to be excellent. That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined.

> That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined.

That's a bit like saying Usenet is a waste of space or IRC is full of trolls. Reddit, like Usenet and IRC, is more of an enabling technology than a single community.

In each case, there are some really great communities where you can find a good signal to noise ratio. There are also some fairly pointless ones that are just rants or FUD or whatever. Fortunately, no-one makes you read every sub-reddit, any more than you are forced to read every Usenet group or follow every IRC channel. Just sign up to the ones that have discussions you find interesting and ignore the rest.

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#63

Post by swhitt »

blhack wrote: post #46
kn0thing wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another life, we'd have made usercreated reddits a better solution for the curse of popularity. People weren't making "friends" on digg for much else than spreading their content, so I suspect most of the networks in place aren't adding much value to me as a reader. V4 makes the process all the more transparent - publishers plugging in RSS feeds that autodigg each post is a far cry from a reader powered frontpage.…

> And to be fair, of those first 10 redditors you miss, over half of them were me ;) Ahahahaha I laugh because I know exactly what you're talking about ;-). Your guys' comment system really is, in my opinion, the most addictive feature on the site. Those damn orange envelopes man... :) Thanks for the kind words, really.

s/orange/orangered

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#64

Post by antirez »

Hi think Alexis is biased by the fact that in some way Reddit was lucky in not having the social dynamics leading to a monopolization of the whole site.

This is instead what happened to Digg, and to many other social news sites, and the only fix is probably to switch to a hierarchical model. This also happened to OKNOtizie, that is the "Italian Digg", that I happen to run currently.

So I'm looking forward to the Digg changes, and in general to the idea of binding users to real identities of other social network sites, like twitter or facebook. We implemented a great deal of filters, but this does not work when a great percentage of your users are not playing the game correctly.

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#65

Post by livejake »

phatboyslim wrote: post #12

Digg still crushes reddit in traffic. I'm not saying traffic is an indicator of profitablity, but it's apparent they are either marketing it better, or more people prefer it. Either way, it's tough to argue "with the people" based on the author's indication of importance. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com+digg.com/

I wonder how much of their lead in traffic has to do with better SEO on Digg submissions. I see Digg submissions come up all the time in Google searches. I hardly ever see Reddit submissions.

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#66

Post by tibbon »

antirez wrote: post #64

Hi think Alexis is biased by the fact that in some way Reddit was lucky in not having the social dynamics leading to a monopolization of the whole site. This is instead what happened to Digg, and to many other social news sites, and the only fix is probably to switch to a hierarchical model. This also happened to OKNOtizie, that is the "Italian Digg", that I happen to run currently. So I'm looking forward to the Digg…

Subreddits (by design) somewhat prevent this monopolization of the front.

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#67

Post by tibbon »

rubinelli wrote: post #33
nostromo wrote: post #25

Reddit's quality has gone down in flames; it's 6 months away from being Digg with a shitty (if lovable) interface. I still visit Reddit, but less than ever. So to talk down to Digg, which Reddit shamelessly copied, and while Digg is at least trying to innovate is odd. What has reddit done lately? Subreddits? Narwhals? I still have love for Reddit, but this post seems obnoxious.

Two minutes tweaking your subreddits will give you a much better experience. I found that just removing main Reddit made my first page an order of magnitude better.

I concur 100% with this. The 'main' reddit isn't all that great and more of a distraction than anything. The strong use of subreddits has increased my interest in Reddit strongly over the past few months. Otherwise yes, what is on the front page is just a precursor to what will be on Digg the next day.

That being said, these things just funnel around in a hierarchy. HN, Slashdot, Reddit, Digg, etc all suffer a bit from this.

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#68

Post by aquateen »

Silhouette wrote: post #62
aquateen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what tilts me more, reading reddit comments or reading that reddit comments are supposed to be excellent. That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined.

> That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined. That's a bit like saying Usenet is a waste of space or IRC is full of trolls. Reddit, like Usenet and IRC, is more of an enabling technology than a single community. In each case, there are some really great communities where you can find a good signal to noise ratio. There are also some fairly pointless ones that are just rants or FUD or whatever…

I'm guessing you weren't there the first few years.

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#69

Post by varaon »

aquateen wrote: post #34
varaon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit comments are excellent, and I think that while having a buzzing community creates a lot more noise, there is also a lot more great content. Initiatives like $180,000 for Haiti, or the secret santa wouldn't have been the same 5 years ago.

Not sure what tilts me more, reading reddit comments or reading that reddit comments are supposed to be excellent. That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined.

I'll clarify a bit - yes, there is a lot of crap too, but reading the comments is just as big a deal for me as the submissions themselves.

Re: An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian

#70

Post by Silhouette »

aquateen wrote: post #68
Silhouette wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined. That's a bit like saying Usenet is a waste of space or IRC is full of trolls. Reddit, like Usenet and IRC, is more of an enabling technology than a single community. In each case, there are some really great communities where you can find a good signal to noise ratio. There are also some fairly pointless ones that are just rants or FUD or whatever…

I'm guessing you weren't there the first few years.

Where? I've been on Usenet for well over a decade, and I was lurking on Reddit within months of its birth. The main reddit has always been overrun with a whole bunch of stuff of varying quality, and the best material and most interesting discussions have been in the specialist subreddits for several years.
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