Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#111

Post by astrodust » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 3:35 AM UTC

Adaptive wrote: post #47

astrodust wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't actively unscrew it up, it will screw itself up. Reddit is already in steep decline even though page-views are up. It's attracting a different crowd now. They're just one Digg-bar moment away from disaster.

Yeah, I wasn't referring to the quality problem (I'm in full agreement with you on that). I think they are in a better position that Digg at the Digg-bar point (even with low qual participation, engagement still seems deeper than Digg at that time), but the quality is decidedly Eternal September (lower, really). This is a movie plot. Seriously. Condé Nast is the government. They are largely incompetent and mostly con…

If you don't weed out your counter-productive citizens you end up with Digg. If you do, if you keep it tight, you might be lucky enough to have a metafilter.com which after a decade is still an amazing place.

Strangely, Something Awful is actually a great model for a community. A great case-study in how to keep a community from imploding.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#112

Post by derefr » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 3:43 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #107

derefr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, fundamentally, we've been designing online communities in the same (flawed) manner for decades. This is basically the recipe for reversion to the mean: 1. Allow any user to add themselves into the community; and then, 2. allow the course of discussion to be set by majority rule. The site (or subreddit, or newsgroup, or whatever)'s focus and usefulness will gradually disintegrate as people in secondary demograph…

This sounds pretty easy to avoid by moderating to keep focus and prevent drifting. "This subreddit is for media discussion only . Irrelevant links will be banned."

I think the question is whether there's any way to do this without moderation, because moderation doesn't scale. (Community-based moderation might work, if you could trust the average user to moderate right. Now you have two problems.)

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#113

Post by dextorious » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 3:45 AM UTC

ugh wrote: post #85

giberson wrote: post #64

I'll admit to being one of the latecomers to reddit in the last year. I use to avoid reddit like the plague, because I thought reddit was just www.reddit.com (the main page) which the few times I visited was filled with random assortment of stuff I didn't care about. Later, I discovered the true essence of reddit, sub-reddits. Things like r/loseit, r/fitness, r/gamedev, r/ . Now I'm hooked--I visit the sub reddits mu…

One huge problem, though, is that shit (specifically racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fat shaming, ableism – oh, I guess that list really isn’t all that specific) tends to crop up everywhere. It’s a very reddity kind of shit. Encountering blatant (and highly visible because upvoted) sexism (for example) in such harmless sounding subreddits as /r/soccer or /r/minecraft really kills all my fun. There are a few…

Well, I could care less about "racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fat shaming, ableism" etc showing up on some comments.

It's funny that the societies that really seem hangup about those, are the very societies that perpetuated them in actual life. You know, Uncle Tom's cabin, Turing's treatment, etc.

It's like how you can't publish Main Kampf or sell nazi paraphernalia in Germany. (Wow, nice of you, hypocrites, but how about NOT invading other countries and killing millions of people, several of those in camps IN THE FIRST PLACE --and then we don't care what you publish or sell).

It's also a little idiotic how and where those terms are applied. "Transhophobia", really? Because it's a mans/womans right to change sex AND not be mocked about it, right?

Now, as a progressive, young, geek person, you are probably inclined to say "hell, yeah".

But, wait, rights are not given by "god" or "nature".

Rights are given to individuals by their society, and if the society finds a "trans" person funny or weird, so be it (or try to change it socially).

Why should a society follow a philosophy of "let anyone do whatever he likes as long as it doesn't hurt someone else" and not a philosophy of "we want people in our society to be so and so and hold such and such values"?

Just because some people thing the first is better?

Well, even if it was, it's not about a society living with the better rules, it's about living with rules that society WANTS.

Is there a deeper philosophical / scientific basis for the first?

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#114

Post by zacharycohn » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 4:11 AM UTC

buckler wrote: post #109

ugh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One huge problem, though, is that shit (specifically racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fat shaming, ableism – oh, I guess that list really isn’t all that specific) tends to crop up everywhere. It’s a very reddity kind of shit. Encountering blatant (and highly visible because upvoted) sexism (for example) in such harmless sounding subreddits as /r/soccer or /r/minecraft really kills all my fun. There are a few…

Do you feel the moderation over there is enough though, even on the "nicely moderated places" that you mention? Compared to other communities where admins/mods delete users' comments to a much higher frequency relative to Reddit and freely edit or move unfitting submissions & comments, I've always felt the lack of moderation on Reddit for the most part has been the reason for attracting trolls and users making hatefu…

It's all about establishing ground rules. /r/askscience is the posterchild of this - they have 250k+ subscribers, and the discussion is still interesting, thought provoking, and on topic. Other subreddits, like /r/gaming, have devolved into nothing more than image macros and meme posts. The difference is 100% the ground rules that are set, and then the moderators sticking to those ground rules.

If I were in control of Reddit for a day, I'd create a "How to Build Community" packet for to give to new moderators. Often they're just promoted for being good members of the community - but that doesn't mean they know how to run or grow a good one.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#115

Post by chimeracoder » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 4:25 AM UTC

buckler wrote: post #109

ugh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One huge problem, though, is that shit (specifically racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fat shaming, ableism – oh, I guess that list really isn’t all that specific) tends to crop up everywhere. It’s a very reddity kind of shit. Encountering blatant (and highly visible because upvoted) sexism (for example) in such harmless sounding subreddits as /r/soccer or /r/minecraft really kills all my fun. There are a few…

Do you feel the moderation over there is enough though, even on the "nicely moderated places" that you mention? Compared to other communities where admins/mods delete users' comments to a much higher frequency relative to Reddit and freely edit or move unfitting submissions & comments, I've always felt the lack of moderation on Reddit for the most part has been the reason for attracting trolls and users making hatefu…

> Do you feel the moderation over there is enough though, even on the "nicely moderated places" that you mention?

There's a huge range in how hands-on moderators are, and it varies dramatically by subreddit. Some subreddits are notoriously draconian; others permit pretty much anything. I don't think it's possible to make a statement about moderation on reddit overall, across subreddits.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#116

Post by hackernews » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 4:53 AM UTC

giberson wrote: post #64

I'll admit to being one of the latecomers to reddit in the last year. I use to avoid reddit like the plague, because I thought reddit was just www.reddit.com (the main page) which the few times I visited was filled with random assortment of stuff I didn't care about. Later, I discovered the true essence of reddit, sub-reddits. Things like r/loseit, r/fitness, r/gamedev, r/ . Now I'm hooked--I visit the sub reddits mu…

I think you are wrong on the home page change. Word clouds would be crap as the main focus of any page.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#117

Post by kn0thing » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 5:13 AM UTC

Adaptive wrote: post #35

Condé Nast had no idea what they were buying. The best decision they made, one I'm sure that was the result of the Reddit team making the case for it, was relatively hands off mgmt. I suspect CN still doesn't really know what to do with it other than sit back and not screw it up.

There's a lot of truth to this. I'm doing everything I can to use my influence on the board of reddit, inc. to help, but the team we've got in place now has been carrying the torch brilliantly since we left.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#118

Post by andypants » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #97

jonknee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1CPM for the whole page (all the spots) would be very tough for a social news site, doubly so for one with porn and triply so for one with porn and reddit's demographic. To put that in perspective, if Facebook were to get $1CPM they would be bringing in over $1B a month from just advertising. Facebook's revenue is about a third of that and doesn't all come from advertising (Facebook Credits and what not). It's even…

>Facebook has the ability to target advertising much better than reddit. I'm not sure I buy that. Reddit knows your interests due to your subreddit subscriptions, and if they wanted to scrape your comments they could easily find out a whole lot more. The fact that they don't is likely due more to their limited engineering team and a general distaste for that kind of invasiveness than due to its inherent difficulty.

...While on facebook, users willingly and explicitly define their interests, dislikes, personal information, etc.

Facebook doesn't need to 'extract' that information based on browsing information (although it probably could, given the number of sites that share information or use the fb api, and the links that users share with each other) and user posts (statuses, wall posts, notes).

Facebook has far more information available than reddit, so yes, it should be able to target ads much better.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#119

Post by intellection » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 5:35 AM UTC

ketralnis wrote: post #78

intellection wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://my.reddit.com shows just your subreddit subscriptions.

No, the front page shows just your subscriptions. my.reddit.com hasn't been different from the front page for years.

My ignorance. Thank you.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#120

Post by flomo » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 6:31 AM UTC

buckler wrote: post #109

ugh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One huge problem, though, is that shit (specifically racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fat shaming, ableism – oh, I guess that list really isn’t all that specific) tends to crop up everywhere. It’s a very reddity kind of shit. Encountering blatant (and highly visible because upvoted) sexism (for example) in such harmless sounding subreddits as /r/soccer or /r/minecraft really kills all my fun. There are a few…

Do you feel the moderation over there is enough though, even on the "nicely moderated places" that you mention? Compared to other communities where admins/mods delete users' comments to a much higher frequency relative to Reddit and freely edit or move unfitting submissions & comments, I've always felt the lack of moderation on Reddit for the most part has been the reason for attracting trolls and users making hatefu…

The whole 'free speech/minimal moderation/no-censorship' is one of the core reason Reddit 'scales'. Unlike most sites, there's no sign out front saying you can't post there. No matter how terrible you are, someone will agree with you, and if you find the right sub-sub-sub-reddit, everyone will agree with you.

The other aspect is that voting systems are groupthink systems. Once the userbase gets large enough, the moderation system does not function in a way that encourages debate or questions common assumptions. It seems to be a terminal problem, which nobody knows how to fix except to escape to smaller fora.