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New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

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Re: New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that a succinct full text index (like an FM-index) of this data would require more than a modest server to keep in memory. Why aren't these used in this context?

But we're talking petabytes of text comments and an index of that would be a lot larger. How do you access that data fast enough to enable search?

Succinct full text indexes can be substantially smaller than the source text. It depends on the zero order entropy of the text. If things are highly repetitive, a very small index might be feasible. Usually lookup times are linearly proportional to query size, with logarithmic factors in database size.

Re: New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

#63
post #39

[flagged]

That was possible before with Google and even Reddit's own search. And nutters will manually scroll through your history anyway to find something to shit on, it's not like it's private.

Scrolling only goes back like ten pages.

Re: New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

#64
post #38
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important thing is also that reddit still doesn't require a mail address. Just click continue on the signup form without filling in the mail and bypass the dark pattern.

You can't comment or even view some subreddits without verifying your email, though. But creating an email address takes 5 minutes at most.

What are some examples of subreddits you can't view without verifying email? I haven't run across any.

Re: New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

#65
post #9
post #4

Interesting, I wonder what they used for the search database, since that enormous amount of text can't fit in RAM, it would have to be partitioned & sharded in something like Scylla DB

IIRC they have a pretty standard PostGres setup. I'd bet they just setup another PostGres shard replicated just for search, using an extension for the index. Doesn't require the index or working set to be in RAM.

Why do some people write Postgres as PostGres?

Re: New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

#66
post #52

Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a frequent visitor of the homepage and /all at the time, you will know exactly what I am referring to. The product has gone downhill ever since. Comment search is nice because it enables users to find interesting content directly in the good niche subreddits.

I can only recommend aggressively blocking popular subs, ones that are managed by the big mods, and any that have even one political thread that gets a suspicious amount of votes. All actually becomes a source of new interesting content that way.

Re: New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

#67
post #52

Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a frequent visitor of the homepage and /all at the time, you will know exactly what I am referring to. The product has gone downhill ever since. Comment search is nice because it enables users to find interesting content directly in the good niche subreddits.

I use Reddit long term and /r/all was always bad and you should find your subreddits to care for.

And hope it does not get quarantined then disappeared? No thanks.

Re: New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

#68
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we reserve the right to keep data in our private archive so long as we never allow any data that you requested be removed get exposed through any public API endpoints. This is why I'm really happy to have GDPR. If this were a European company someone would eventually tear them a new one. "Reserve the right" is a cheeky choice of words for keeping data that isn't theirs against people's consent.

> "Reserve the right" is a cheeky choice of words for keeping data that isn't theirs against people's consent. How is it "your data" if you use their property (reddit.com) to post content on their website? IP and other PII I can understand, as reddit gets that no matter what interaction you do with the website, it makes sense to protect that. But as soon as I make this comment on HN, I don't really expect to "own" th…

If I post to Reddit, I'm giving Reddit permission to display that comment. I haven't read the T's and C's, but my expectation would be that I retain copyright over my own comments.

I could well be wrong (probably, even :), but my point is that giving permission to use my comments on one site shouldn't automatically give carte blanche to anyone and everyone to use them.

Re: New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design

#70
post #66
post #52

Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a frequent visitor of the homepage and /all at the time, you will know exactly what I am referring to. The product has gone downhill ever since. Comment search is nice because it enables users to find interesting content directly in the good niche subreddits.

I can only recommend aggressively blocking popular subs, ones that are managed by the big mods, and any that have even one political thread that gets a suspicious amount of votes. All actually becomes a source of new interesting content that way.

I tried this but quickly hit a limit on the number of subs you can block. It is fairly low, maybe a couple hundred. There are a lot more big, low quality subs than that.
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