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Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

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Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#61

Post by redthrowaway »

satori99 wrote: post #32

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 res…

Meme overload is a significant problem on any large internet community that's web-centric in its outlook. From SA to 4chan to reddit, any community that thinks of itself as "the Internet" will employ memes as a means of self-confirmation.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#62

Post by Marticus »

marknutter wrote: post #45

I actually find reddit to be somewhat nauseating. Call me cynical, but I can't help but think the Reddit community performs every kind act with an air of smug, self-centerdness you often find in creepy church youth groups or after school specials. I started visiting reddit because digg's links started sucking, and now I visit HN primarily because reddit is no longer about good links either. It's a maassive geek circl…

What I don't understand is how exactly it is as you claim it is. My Reddits consist of programming, robotics, science, math, etc.t, and get nothing but positive, helpful feedback and meaningful discourse that DOESN'T (key word here) infuriate me. Not sure how it's a "circle jerk" at that point when I can ask questions and have them gasp answered in a timely manner.

Just because it has a "politics" Reddit doesn't mean the entire site sucks.

I come to HN for the simple reason that it's more about startups and programming than most anything else, and overall I am just as happy with its content. It's considerably more granular, and sometimes that's precisely what I want.

I read both sites and have for quite some time now (although mostly lurking). I get immensely good return on my time invested in both.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#63

Post by lukeschlather »

_delirium wrote: post #39
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…

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-j…

The difference between Reddit and HN though is that a well-reasoned "corporations suck" comment will not get downvoted, while on Reddit a well-reasoned "unions suck" comment will get downvoted.

Reddit has bouts of reasonableness, but I've never found a subreddit that is free of the mob.

Except /r/dwarffortress.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#64

Post by scythe »

It's altruism, but it isn't astonishing in it's volume. I'm sure that of any suitably large group of people, the total dollar amount of donations to worthy causes will be well into the tens of thousands, which is basically what reddit's done here. You might call them kind of naive for doing things only about those causes that manage to get popular on reddit -- while reddit has some well-publicized random acts of kindness the overall impact of what they've done is pretty tiny.

Would some of those thousands of dollars have been better spent fighting malaria? I really can't say. Is it impressive to donate only to those causes that are presented in such a fashion as to jerk at the proverbial heart-strings? I should think not.

Is reddit above the rest of the Internet in its altruism? I would say perhaps not, but they're a good and valuable net community. There are many instances of Internet activism accomplishing something good, both inside and outside of reddit, and I would say that reddit's accomplishments are nothing short of pretty good.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#65

Post by Lewisham »

heyitsnick wrote: post #31
Lewisham wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system. Perhaps only Slashdot is the only community I've seen where points are awarded to comments not based on agreement, but on general merit. Admit it: you've downvoted people you don't agree with. When enough people do it, you get groupthink.

Forums/mailing lists don't have that problem. Every post is given equal merit in the number of eyeballs that read it. Those comments that are not interesting can get ignored, those that are interesting will either merit a "yeah, I agree" response, or a "you're wrong for [x,y,z]". That is a dialogue. Community moderated upvoted/downvoted discussions are not a dialogue. They are a "here's what we all think" metric.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#68

Post by davidw »

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)

> HN actually is too 'geek centric'

Uh, the internet's a big place. If you don't want "geek", then by all means, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

That doesn't mean we are all geeks all the time, it means that we don't spam this site with every other thing in our lives.

I'm a geek/nerd/whatever, and proud of it, and I have nothing to do with the "in crowd" at YC - I live on the other side of the world.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#69

Post by davidw »

I'm quite sick of reddit, to be honest. Many people there take delight in taking snarky, content-free swipes at others' hard work.

Maybe that is fun when you're 16, but it gets old after you've aged some.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#70

Post by jrockway »

Never underestimate the capabilities of people who don't feel like working at work. I think the whole not doing anything for weeks at a time make people want to compensate somehow, and this is the result. Sending birthday cards to 90-year-olds and buying people new LCDs. Very nice.
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