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Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

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Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#31

Post by heyitsnick »

Lewisham wrote: post #10
tav wrote: post #4

Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant? It really is heart-warming to hear of all the good that those on Reddit have done. But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place — discussions got extremely polarised very quickly and there seemed to be very little room for reasoned dialogue. The article makes it sound like a good thi…

Reddit is not a place to have dialogue. Community-moderated areas just aren't very good at it. Even HN has been accused from suffering groupthink. If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place to have it.

> If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place to have it.

Why?

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#32

Post by satori99 »

reddit is basically an IRC server for the web, with voting.

The cleverst thing they have done is also entirely simple. By making all thread replies to your posts appear in your inbox as personal messages, and highlighting the orange icon, it successfully encourages users to make reasonably deep replies to those that bite.

This seems to generate interesting thread content very quickly.

My only gripe is the lack of resolution in the voting system (ala /.). Meme overload is a real problem when browsing reddit.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#33

Post by jewbacca »

vaksel wrote: post #6
sage_joch wrote: post #2

The quote that comes to mind when I think of the reddit community: "Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us."

i attribute that description to 4chan...reddit is kinda meh by comparison

4chan is Chaotic Neutral.

Reddit is Neutral Good.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#34

Post by cynicalkane »

phlux wrote: post #28
katovatzschyn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you been there recently? Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are…

>Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? Exactly; HN is very myopic - to the point of exhibiting aspergers. HN actually is too 'geek centric' -- whereby the community here is too focused on looking like the in crowd of the YC/FB alumn... (downvotes welcome)

For the N-hundredth time, "aspergers" is not the same as being a nerd. It's an autism-spectrum condition that carries with it a substantial sensory integration disorder (among other things), which you'll notice most nerds don't posses.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#35

Post by pinchyfingers »

tav wrote: post #4

Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant? It really is heart-warming to hear of all the good that those on Reddit have done. But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place — discussions got extremely polarised very quickly and there seemed to be very little room for reasoned dialogue. The article makes it sound like a good thi…

The key to Reddit is to unsubscribe from every major subreddit, and just stick with the one's that fulfill your niche interests. If you do that, there is reasonable dialog to be had.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#36

Post by jewbacca »

ronnoch wrote: post #24
katovatzschyn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you been there recently? Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are…

Sure, Reddit's problems are caused by its size, the same way that Digg's are caused by its size. But this does not make the groupthink, mob mentality etc. any less irritating.

We're having two discussions in parallel: on the objective value of Reddit given its circumstances, and on our own personal taste for using it. You're probably much better off in many ways for not visiting.

I would like to know how informed abstainers see Reddit. I feel like given some contrived option to identify themselves with the heritage of their birth culture or nationality, or by their careers, or by where they would fit into traditional subcultures, very many Redditors would identify as Redditors, by interests and attitudes in common with a sufficient critical mass, even with dissent. The Colbert/Stewart rally, more than the individual acts of kindness, has fed a zeitgeist within Reddit that they are a community awakening to their own political power. Momentum is currently building to a campaign in protest against the TSA (which will probably fizzle, with much disillusionment for all). But I think 4chan has showed online subcultures with some chaotic convergence of will can increasingly effect the world outside their own community. And I can't conceive of any way a community, online or off, could come to be sufficiently large to find political feet, and turn out any better than Reddit has.

Regarding HN:

HN still has a higher signal-noise ratio, but as HN gets more popular (with many coming from Reddit, I presume -- and going the other way, as I did), I find that the difference between HN and applicable sub-reddits is dissolving. In particular, I feel like there was some suppression of humour on HN that has weakened since I arrived, which as lame as it seems was a not insignificant differentiating factor.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#37

Post by phlux »

cynicalkane wrote: post #34
phlux wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? Exactly; HN is very myopic - to the point of exhibiting aspergers. HN actually is too 'geek centric' -- whereby the community here is too focused on looking like the in crowd of the YC/FB alumn... (downvotes welcome)

For the N-hundredth time, "aspergers" is not the same as being a nerd. It's an autism-spectrum condition that carries with it a substantial sensory integration disorder (among other things), which you'll notice most nerds don't posses.

point reinforced seeing as your reply was to my HN comment

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#38

Post by ggchappell »

tav wrote: post #4

Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant? It really is heart-warming to hear of all the good that those on Reddit have done. But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place — discussions got extremely polarised very quickly and there seemed to be very little room for reasoned dialogue. The article makes it sound like a good thi…

> Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant?

Not at all. I think Reddit is a classic example of the "evaporative cooling effect" in groups. It's now dominated by a very restricted set of opinions. It looks very open and welcoming (initially, at least), if you share those opinions, but it's obviously ridiculously narrow-minded, if you don't.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#39

Post by _delirium »

katovatzschyn wrote: post #20
ronnoch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I would characterize Reddit (as characterized by what's voted up into default visibility) as fairly open-minded, even compulsively contrarian. Have you been there recently? They're "contrarian" in the sense that they disagree with the non-Reddit mainstream, but they hardly respect contrarianism to their own views. I definitely would not call them "open-minded." (At least, not in the main subreddits. There are s…

> Have you been there recently? Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are…

Even HN isn't that much different imo, especially outside its core competence of technical discussion (which is quite good). Discussions about economics, government, education, etc., on reddit and HN are about equally annoying to me (though I occasionally seem to fail to abstain from them at both places), with a lot of mob-mentality, up/down-voting based on agreement/disagreement, and not very well thought out knee-jerk responses. Reddit definitely has more non-serious discussion (e.g. long pun threads), but on the threads that are more serious, I don't see it as that much worse.

The main difference seems to be a different political skew: Reddit has a lot of democratic-socialist types, while HN has a lot of libertarian types. On Reddit it's unlikely you'll be upvoted if you're right-of-center, but on HN it's unlikely you'll be upvoted if you're left-of-center. Conversely, you can get upvoted on Reddit for a generic "corporations suck" comment, and you can get upvoted on HN for a generic "unions suck" comment.

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