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Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

arstechnica.com

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Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#11

Post by baby »

rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

> It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we need to defend this!"

that's awesome! The whole thing became a territory war :)

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#12

Post by cjslep »

This experiment reminds me of an old website where visitors only had so much paint (and it would slowly regenerate over time), and would paint portions of a common canvas. I can't remember the name of the site, but I think it was active in the mid 2000's.

Of course, at times 4chan would invade, but I think it was mostly eastern europeans present (as once again flags were the big thing to paint everywhere).

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#13

Post by baby »

beefhash wrote: post #5

It's worth nothing that the admins did actively ban users trying to make swastikas. /b/ tried and found that out the hard way. Reddit's content policy[1] was still applicable and was very much enforced. [1] https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/

When are we going to see this beautiful sign back in our culture as a positive symbol :( that and the Hitler mustache. I'm guessing we need a few hundred years before we can use these things without it being associated to Nazism.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#14

Post by scrollaway »

Reddit's AF this year was excellent, probably my favourite AF experiment of all time.

I usually really dislike AF on the internet - some (most) sites become completely unusable for a day and, last thing the internet needs, it gets even harder to tell real news from the fake bits. (Did you know Takei is running for 2018 congress? That was true! Actually it wasn't. But it was! Well, no, it wasn't.)

But I'm really fond of how Reddit always handled it: A day for creativity and experimentation. The Place is a really, really beautiful experiment and the result of it surpassed expectations.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#15

Post by brink »

rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

> It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we need to defend this!".

To be fair, it is arguable that it deserved attention, as the final picture is now a part of internet history.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#16

Post by Raphmedia »

I love those kind of "get together and improvise" experiments. The last time I had felt such a sense of wonder and community was the first few days of Pokemon Go when everyone was in the street trying to figure it out.

There's an untapped concept behind all of those. Content that is ephemeral but brings a lot of people together...

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#18

Post by Buttons840 »

baby wrote: post #13
beefhash wrote: post #5

It's worth nothing that the admins did actively ban users trying to make swastikas. /b/ tried and found that out the hard way. Reddit's content policy[1] was still applicable and was very much enforced. [1] https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/

When are we going to see this beautiful sign back in our culture as a positive symbol :( that and the Hitler mustache. I'm guessing we need a few hundred years before we can use these things without it being associated to Nazism.

You need to explain yourself better. You seem to be opposed to Nazism, but in favor of their symbol. Why?

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#19

Post by dugditches »

beefhash wrote: post #5

It's worth nothing that the admins did actively ban users trying to make swastikas. /b/ tried and found that out the hard way. Reddit's content policy[1] was still applicable and was very much enforced. [1] https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/

Maybe it was even useful as bait, eliminating lots of accounts of those users from their userbase.
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