151–160 of 618 posts
https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer
(Think Reddit influences so much of engineering thought from things like r/learnprogramming to all the cryptocurrency subs)
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Wait, how did it work before adding the subs? A single board like HN, but without any specific topics? It seems crazy. I can't imagine Reddit without subs.
Actually, it was very much like HN is today, or as /r/programming is today. As an ordinary user, I thought that the creation of subreddits was a clever solution to the Eternal September Problem. The initial pool of users were folks that were sniped away from Slashdot and Digg. There was quite a bit of frustration about the editorship of Slashdot, and having a system that was effectively user-edited was quite attracti…
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It seems like a right-wing contingent has taken over the moderation of a lot of smaller subreddits, specifically city/country subreddits, and both the content posted and the commentary reflects that. It's a dangerous trend for both society and reddit itself.
Not sure why this is downvoted, this is well documented.
Reddit wouldn't be so toxic if the vote counts were hidden, but echo chamber validation is the ultimate badge of honor there. There is so much in this document that applies to all things Reddit (please note that I wrote it inspired by my time on Reddit) : https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Tr...
Fundamentally the problem, I think is anonymity. On the Internet no one knows you're a dog. I have both pseudonymous handles on reddit and also I go by my own name. On Hacker News I only go by my own name. And I have found that it made me a much, MUCH better person when posting. So now I post on reddit about 95% of the time under my own name as well. When you have no skin in the game -- such as your reputation to uph…
You can have an identity and "skin in the game" without using your real name. You can also use your real name and not care/be aware of the consequences of things you say online.
As many on Hacker News know, I've been an avid fan of Reddit and believe that their data and community, and there's still a lot more that can be done that can be derived from that data that can't be found anywhere else. That said, from an administrative perspective, the intense hands-free policies are baffling. You'd expect a company based off the nature of community would engage with their community and their needs.…
But they did get engaged! They banned all subreddits related to the trading/purchasing of firearms and alcohol. /r/beertrade, a subreddit for trading beer, had a strict policy that users were not allowed to sell beer for money (something that's actually illegal) and only allowed people to post about trading beer. Even someone like me, who doesn't ship beer and only trades in-person, is no longer allowed to talk about…
I've significantly reduced my time on Reddit. Used to pull up the website out of curiosity every day but the atmosphere is incredibly toxic. My front page was riddled with Russiagate stuff too for some reason and every time you'd bring up an argument that isn't the norm you get a mob after you.
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I think this is an important distinction. I could never quite understand what all the hub-bub was until I realized that. I've used my account to comment since before they added subreddits. And I never stumble across one of the "toxic" ones except for the rare occasions when one of the other subreddits links to those ones.
Wait, how did it work before adding the subs? A single board like HN, but without any specific topics? It seems crazy. I can't imagine Reddit without subs.
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> It's a dangerous trend for both society and reddit itself. Wouldn't squashing the voices of the "right-wing contingent" just lead to an (already implied) echo chamber of leftist thought? Your one single comment sums up the problem I have with user-moderation systems like reddit (and HN).
What ever happened to neutrality? Moderators shouldn't be promoting an ideology left or right. I understand that Reddit admins themselves don't want to promote an ideology either -- they want to remain neutral -- but they are sacrificing their platform to people who don't hold he same ideals. The biggest change I've noticed is just how political the city/country subreddits have become. A few years ago, they used to b…
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Unsubscribe from /r/politics. Unsubscribe from /r/worldnews. Find the handful of subreddits that are bothering you and unsubcribe from them . The discussions I read on Reddit are overall nicer than those on HN, not because the userbase as a whole is better, but because it has sewers where the crap is concentrated -- and you can easily avoid them. That's one of their most important features.
I would go a step further and say the first thing a new Reddit account should do is unsubscribe from everything , then selectively subscribe to your interests. Every default subreddit is horrible.
That said, starting from zero is still a good idea.
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Ones about things you are interested in...
I'm interested in politics, however /r/politics has awful comment quality and isn't a great sub to visit. I'd also like to hear about people's favorite subreddits in terms of comment quality, as I'd happily read a passionate and informative stance on something I'm usually not interested in compared to what I read on /r/politics. Edit: I meant to use it as an example -- I'm actually interested in any type of subreddit…
Granted it's center-left most of the time (from a US perspective anyhow - as a European it is at best centrist) but that's more a function of a reaction to the current climate than anything else.
So I guess I'd ask: "what kind of comments are you looking for?" because outside of the science communities you're not going to find better discussion threads.