Reddit needs help • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit needs help

#191

Post by robryan » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 11:34 AM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #185

bballbackus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to give you the reason why I decided just the other day that I want to leave reddit pretty much for good. I have been a fairly active user for the past 2 years or so, both commenting on and submitting content to reddit. When I joined I was fleeing digg's transformation into a 4chan wannabe. Over the past 6-9 months, I've been noticing the same virus, if you will, infecting reddit. The users became more and m…

I have to agree with you about the general reddit.com, but some of the subreddits are still good or even great. However I doubt HN will follow, because unlike digg, slashdot and reddit, PG has shown no interest in gaining traffic at the expense of quality (indeed, he has called for the front page to be splashed with Erlang links, precisely so as to get those who wouldn't fit with the site to go elsewhere).

It depends, the tipping point is when currently undesirable behaviour gets rewarded, rather than downvoted as it currently does. In general I still feel hacker news as a community gets it right in which content and submissions are voted up and which down.

Re: Reddit needs help

#192

Post by koenbok » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 11:56 AM UTC

FYI, we tried to buy a self serve Reddit ad a month ago but it wouldn't accept any of our cards. Tried to contact you guys but never heard anything back. No hard feelings, we just went with other advertising.

But if this happens more then incidentally then you guys could easily be missing out on multiple 1k/month advertising deals by not offering a way to contact someone on the team.

Re: Reddit needs help

#193

Post by spokey » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 1:21 PM UTC

zyb09 wrote: post #58

davidw wrote: post #32

I don't know, I think paying money for nothing in return to a big corporation is a little bit insane, actually. $5, in the right hands, would go a long ways in Africa or various other places in the world where people have real, urgent needs. Or if that's not your thing, there are all kinds of real charities out there. Hell, if you want, you can send the money my way and I'll put it in my daughter's college education/…

ah yeah good ol' "but Africa" reasoning. You can apply that logic to almost everything. Sorry but why don't you return your freshly bought iPhone and donate the money to charity's? And do you really need a car, can't you ride your bike? Do we really need Reddit if we could buy food in Africa instead? Maybe that's a little harsh, but we spend money EVERY friggn day on things that could be invested in Africas problems.…

> (also pacifism is neither extreme nor wrong)

I think there was a little miscommunication there.

DavidW wrote

> [My daughter] doesn't have such extremist political views ("pacifiers for all!" is probably the most controversial).

I'm pretty sure he was talking about one of those false nipple things that you stick into a baby's mouth in order to soothe it, e.g.: http://www.google.com/images?q=pacifier

I think I've heard this called a "dummy" in UK-English, and I often hear them referred to by various brand names.

I don't think DavidW was trying to make a political comment, he was just making a little joke about his infant daughter, or at least I assume so.

Re: Reddit needs help

#194

Post by nphase » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 1:27 PM UTC

Here's a silly/naive suggestion from someone who only casually visits reddit (read: not often to know exactly what is causing the downtime): why not make the source code behind the more problematic functions available and let us make suggestions? If not source code, then detailed descriptions?

I'd be interested in helping optimize your pain points, as I'm sure many here and on reddit are. Yes, you'll get quite a ton of trash from people who have no clue by doing this, but maybe you'll get some smart pointers in a way that doesn't require you to get a new engineer spun up in six months (which, IMHO, seems far too long for a web product)

Re: Reddit needs help

#195

Post by superuser2 » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 1:29 PM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #26

I don't want to kick someone when they are down, but this just stood out to me: And reddit's revenue isn't great. The good news is, our traffic continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Talk about doing it wrong. When you have growth but no revenue, it's probably because you aren't asking your users to pay. That should be every website's first option - ask people to pay for the service they receive. Paying users are gre…

Reddit has long-running jokes mocking the idea of paying for websites. The backlash to being asked to pay for anything on the internet would be massive. Strange, because you'd think a community of programmers would appreciate what the engineers do.

Re: Reddit needs help

#196

Post by stanleydrew » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 1:33 PM UTC

nphase wrote: post #194

Here's a silly/naive suggestion from someone who only casually visits reddit (read: not often to know exactly what is causing the downtime): why not make the source code behind the more problematic functions available and let us make suggestions? If not source code, then detailed descriptions? I'd be interested in helping optimize your pain points, as I'm sure many here and on reddit are. Yes, you'll get quite a ton…

Well except for the anti-cheating parts the reddit source is open: code.reddit.com.

Re: Reddit needs help

#197

Post by lambda » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 1:42 PM UTC

nphase wrote: post #194

Here's a silly/naive suggestion from someone who only casually visits reddit (read: not often to know exactly what is causing the downtime): why not make the source code behind the more problematic functions available and let us make suggestions? If not source code, then detailed descriptions? I'd be interested in helping optimize your pain points, as I'm sure many here and on reddit are. Yes, you'll get quite a ton…

You do realize the Reddit source code is available, right? http://code.reddit.com/

Re: Reddit needs help

#198

Post by kwyjibo » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 1:49 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #177

tb wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask why you don't use another cheaper provider for fixed base load and reserve EC2 for peak load capacity? Is it that the overhead of running on two different providers not worth the money you'd save? Or is this something you've considered doing but haven't had the time to implement yet?

> Is it that the overhead of running on two different providers not worth the money you'd save? Or is this something you've considered doing but haven't had the time to implement yet? Pretty much yes to both of these. With so few of us, the overhead of running it and moving to it just doesn't make sense at this time.

You don't seem to really trying. You could be moving everything to one host and still be saving money.

Re: Reddit needs help

#199

Post by pclark » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 2:00 PM UTC

$2 / mo: reddit gold badge

$6 / mo: + reddit.com email redirector

$12 / mo: reddit username appears in different colour on pages.

asking for one off donations isn't a business, you want predictable revenues. I'd pay $12/mo for reddit.

I think Reddit should contact a PE firm and do a buy out. They can't monetize because they don't have the resources.

Re: Reddit needs help

#200

Post by radu_floricica » Sat, Jul 10, 2010, 2:15 PM UTC

runT1ME wrote: post #124

jedberg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the suggestions. Some we have tried, others we would like to, and some are totally new. The big problem is that we spend most of our time just keeping the site up and don't have time to focus on these ideas, and Conde is unwilling to invest. We're hoping the reddit gold money gives us the flexibility to bring in the talent we need to make some of those ideas happen.

I don't really understand the notion that people hate Ads. People hate irrelevant ads. I'm stoked when an Ad reminds me of a new CD that came out of a band I like, or the latest book that people have been talking about, etc. I really think targeted Ads are the way to go. Hell, I wouldn't even mind filling out information to help target ads.

This could actually be the kind of problem that's solvable by engineering. Make a simple and easy to use ad creation interface. Let me spend as much as I want for ads on certain subreddits/geoips. Make a system that sets the price by bidding, and that allows flagging/voting on an ad. Then advertise it.

It's incidentally what I think 4chan is missing too. Not necessarily for /b/, but the domain oriented boards coupled with some geoip would make for some pretty targeted ads. I think it's a pretty big loss not letting the little guy spend his $100 if he wants too.