311–320 of 341 posts
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Readers think of Reddit title as discussion prompts. The combination of subreddit theme and post title can easily start a discussion on “close enough” topic. One of the suggestion for increasing engagement is to disable link posts and only allow text posts.
I recall that as standard practice on Slashdot in 2000.
Recently there was a brouhaha on the Twitters about 2+2=5 that went viral and, unfortunately, political. The argument is that post-modernists are trying to tear down mathematics as a "white supremacist social construct" and trying to say that "2+2=5" is as valid an answer as "2+2=4". Which sounds pretty bad, so I looked into it. The original Tweet thread was a math nerd who jokingly, and not incorrectly, illustrated…
So, 2+2=5 is true in the ring Z/Z (arithmetic modulo 1) which is just the trivial ring consisting of a single element. It's not true in any of the other modular arithmetic rings. So, it's not particularly interesting. If you move away from modular arithmetic and the numbers 2 and 5 being in any way related to their standard meanings, you can of course redefine them to mean whatever you want (e.g. rotations of a cube…
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So you're saying we need a platform with both characters/post and post/day limits?! I mean... that's beautiful, because I created a second twitter account just so I can follow a select few people for the pretty much the same reason you gave without having to worry they're getting lost to the noise.
In lieu of browsing Twitter directly, I've been using this service lately: https://fraidyc.at/ It's great because I can just see what people I care about post, and you can arrange it so that the people who post infrequently but that you really care about will be in your face when they do post. I find it soothing, and I can't wait for a proper mobile release.
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I feel like a closer approximation of what’s going on is that there are perennial discussion topics that people want to participate in when they see an opportunity (e.g. “battery technology continues to improve, but it’s rare that we see the results trickling down to consumer electronics.”) But just having a forum with “evergreen threads” where people talk continuously about perennial topics, doesn’t seem to work out…
Further thought: Many people seem to mistake the social purpose of these “post a link and comment on it” sites as actually being purely for discussing the content of the link. It’s possible to use such sites this way, but it’s not incentivized by the UX compared to the alternative discussed above. You usually need stringent community moderation if you want people to focus on the news itself. A free UX design idea: if…
You might think that I'm making a strawman argument, because I'm certain you wouldn't like the interrupting GPT-12 butler either. However, the UX you proposed would sometimes feel just as constraining.
Participating in arguments, even if they aren't novel, is a cognitively enriching experience. Reading but not participating in those very same arguments, while enriching in its own way, is not a complete replacement. Furthermore, I feel that in order to argue at higher levels of abstraction (which new fields are biased towards), you should first participate in discourse at every preceding level of abstraction. Reddit and HN allow for that. They're not perfect, but I don't think that enforced meta-threads would be an improvement.
All that being said, I think that your "bonus" idea of hyperlinking discussion to relevant excerpts in the article, inline, can be singularly transformative.
Recently there was a brouhaha on the Twitters about 2+2=5 that went viral and, unfortunately, political. The argument is that post-modernists are trying to tear down mathematics as a "white supremacist social construct" and trying to say that "2+2=5" is as valid an answer as "2+2=4". Which sounds pretty bad, so I looked into it. The original Tweet thread was a math nerd who jokingly, and not incorrectly, illustrated…
The problem is people want their internet points. If you take the time to read, and then comment, your comment won't get enough visibility on all social media platforms, especially if dozens or hundreds of other comments quickly begin appearing. You have to 'show up early' to get visibility. Optimizing for that dopamine hit, users choose to maximize points over thoughtful discussion.
This a 100%. Applies the same for code.
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My boss is very good at skimming through scientific papers. She's so well trained she will get the gust of a paper in a couple of seconds(maybe exaggerated). I guess there is the expertise in the field at play as well...
Read the abstract, intro, and conclusion. Scan the references.
Some years ago, Ars Technica ran a story on guns. https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot... About halfway through a one-page article was this quote. "If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first." Sure enough, there were about 3 pages of comments before someone mentioned bananas. Read the…
I have done several experiments in Reddit. I post a link with a plausible title and credible looking 404 to credible domain with made up url. In a big subreddit you easily get 30 top level comments before first comment says that link does not work or is fake. Discussion goes on and on without pause. People treat the title as a writing prompt. One of the best writing prompts is pseudo-philosophical techno-bro life or…
Well, there's a small chance you'll update the submission to point to a working link in the future, and that some of the comments refer to that...
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Alas, this time you haven’t read far enough! The author, on page four of the comments: https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/guns-in-the-home-lot... > yak8998 wrote: >> Haha, bravo Mr. Timmer. If IE search is working right, then apparently I am the first. I think its well over 90%... >> "bananas" > That was added after publication, so the first few dozen commenters wouldn't have seen it. Idea credit goes to our edi…
I actually skimmed the comments but missed the one from the author among the massive number of others. Therefore, seeing the surge of bananas a few pages in, I thought once discovered, people kept looking for what those "bananas" were about and then discovered the sentence above themselves. The real explanation is also interesting.
I suspect that's what really happened. Would have been better if they included that note since publication time. The first comment with "Banana" then would have been the real indicator. Most others would have simply noted the keyword from the comments before reading the article, like you said.