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Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

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Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#71

Post by jrockway »

Lewisham wrote: post #65
heyitsnick wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

In real life people just don't talk to you. There are people I don't like, and when they say something like "want to go get beer", my answer is "no".

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#72

Post by state_machine »

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…

"upboat"

QED.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#73

Post by jrockway »

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…

creepy church youth groups or after school specials

Yes, yes! Exactly!

I used to read programming reddit, and made a lot of comments there. Then I started to notice a pattern -- people were so happy that they wrote a blog post that it was suddenly forbidden to comment on it. One post I remember reading was something like, "hey guys, I made a PHP app! it's open source so please comment". The app was doing something like submitting a form field like "?shell_command=someapp%20--args". I said it was maybe not good practice to allow the user to supply an arbitrary UNIX command. The reply was, "well, my app sets that, and nobod is going to change it". I told him anyone could change the URL and run whatever they want. This got downmodded and I was told I was being an "idiot jerk".

Then I didn't read reddit anymore. Obviously I was raining on some sort of special parade that I was not even invited to.

Anyway, there's something off about the Reddit community. I think your post sums it up quite well.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#74

Post by state_machine »

BornInTheUSSR wrote: post #46

Hmm, this spontaneity might just be channeled into a start up idea. Imagine a site predicated on a community of users pitching in a buck a month or more to fund some life-changing event for a random or deserving person.

But this kind of thing exists: charities and fundraisers are nothing new.

The fact that it is their reddit taking action, and not some church group or NGO, is probably what motivates at least some of the participants.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#75

Post by ComputerGuru »

skbohra123 wrote: post #26

Am I the only one here who doesn't know what's 4chan ?

Probably not, but (and not to be snarky or anything... well, maybe just a little), you do know what Google and Wikipedia are.... right?

I never understand the point of posts that ask knowledge that can be easily obtained (in both concise and verbose forms; with all the perspective and facts you could want) by just clicking on one of the top 5 results in Google.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#77

Post by yxhuvud »

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.

Exactly where in what you commented does he equal aspberger with being a nerd? He equates it with being myopic, not geeky.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#78

Post by nl »

_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…

I'm left-of-center (by US standards anyway)

I find making sensible, well reasoned and referenced arguments works pretty well. I've never been voted down because people disagreed with me.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#79

Post by nimms »

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…

For me, the main unpleasantness of reddit lies in the amount of pun threads that show up in the comments on any story. It may have been funny at first, but it just makes it harder and harder to find the actual interesting comments.

however, judging by the number of upvotes they all receive, there's probably hundreds of thousands of people out there who disagree with me, but seriously, a lot of comments on there are like i can haz cheezburger without the cutesy grammer.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#80

Post by incogneato »

limedaring wrote: post #53
revoltingx wrote: post #49

Reddit and its community blows balls. There are churches out there who contribute in much bigger ways and get less publicity. What a bunch of self serving douchebags. I'm sure they contribute online, but what will they do when someone in need approaches them in the street? This kind of behavior is disgusting.

Seriously? You hear of a group of people who do good things, and your response is, "Well, they don't do as well as this other group that does good things!" They did some really great things, and your response is "disgusting". Sad.

I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that Reddit constantly bashes that "other group" and never gives them credit when it's due.
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