I've enjoyed Reddit for years, but I'm about at my limit. Incessant memes, novelty accounts, meta-commentary about novelty accounts, reposts, complaints about reposts, kitten pics, and a million other annoyances that trace back to karma whoring make the site difficult to tolerate. If the new Digg could successfully counteract this trend, I'd be on board.
Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
51–60 of 69 posts
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is subscribing to a subreddit fundamentally different from upvoting? To get recommendations, you need to somehow feed the recommendation engine with your interests. Look at it this way: when you upvote a fitness-related submission, you say "hey, I'm somewhat interested in fitness", when you subscribe to /r/fitness, you say "hey, I'm really interested in fitness." So, both upvoting and subscribing are actually man…
you say "hey, I'm really interested in fitness." With which you also say -- or so Reddit believes in its current level of imperfection -- "and I have complete affinity with everyone else who happens to vote in /r/fitness". Is that true? Is there any subreddit where that is true? It perplexes me that this is being treated like an either/or. It is not. In reality subreddits see a constantly exploding entropy as users t…
With which you also say -- or so Reddit believes in its current level of imperfection -- "and I have complete affinity with everyone else who happens to vote in /r/fitness".
No. With that I tell Reddit to show me different opinions on fitness coming from people who aren't morons (since the submission was not downvoted). You seem to think that if a person subscribes to /r/fitness, he surely has the same opinions as the hivemind. That's not true at all.
Good subreddits allow all kinds of opinions. And by allow I mean they aren't being downvoted automatically. Of course, there is the hivemind and a dominating opinion, but other opinions are not repressed, that's my point.
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#53The really interesting thing about the redesign of Digg, is in a way it's kind of the first example, of the possibility of seeing gentrification ported to the internet.
I don't think they will be successful, but its a really interesting concept.
One of the hardest parts of any kind of community driven website is to generate the community in the first place. Of course, as the idea of eternal september demonstrates communities deteriorates in quality over time as the community grows to a broader variety of people.
Its interesting then, to try to take an existing community that has settled at the lowest common denominator of content and to try to revitalize it.
If you take the metaphor further, if you think of artists as the cultivators of culture in a city. And the first step of gentrification is an increase in artists (typically seeking lower rent) who is the cultivators of culture in an internet community. Money doesn't really exist on the internet... well at least the classism associated with it (and rent) so what attracts these culture cultivators back?
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that in the future that's the way to do it, but not right now. Besides, I'm not a fan of automatic recommendations as they have a lot of drawbacks. Their major problem is: they won't help you find something you didn't know you liked.
Their major problem is: they won't help you find something you didn't know you liked. This is patently untrue. It is more likely to find you stuff that you didn't know you like than the lowest common denominator strategy.
Are you talking about any existing recommendation engine that I can try out to prove myself wrong?
Just how exactly will they do it? I'm really interested, maybe I'm missing something?
Simply speaking, if a system knows all I listen to is classical music, it can recommend me a new classical composition, but it cannot all of a sudden recommend me dubstep (which I might actually like).
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their major problem is: they won't help you find something you didn't know you liked. This is patently untrue. It is more likely to find you stuff that you didn't know you like than the lowest common denominator strategy.
Are you talking about any existing recommendation engine that I can try out to prove myself wrong? Just how exactly will they do it? I'm really interested, maybe I'm missing something? Simply speaking, if a system knows all I listen to is classical music, it can recommend me a new classical composition, but it cannot all of a sudden recommend me dubstep (which I might actually like).
We're talking about Digg doing this as a differentiation. It is not commonly used because it is very heavy in IO and CPU for individual users (though a site like reddit could take a shortcut just by periodically ramping up some spot high CPU instances and batch generation correlations between users on every subreddit, then staling that until the next run), and sites like Reddit and previously Digg ran on stacks that greatly limited their ability to scale for this.
Regarding music taste, if the system knows that you have a strong correlation with a number of users who like classical but periodically explore new music, what they like will likely be something you might be interested in. This, in practice, is exactly how music discovery happens in the real world (that the discoveries of the people you share musical tastes with are more likely to interest you).
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#56They can through algorithms, which is something that is painfully lacking on most social media sites (including HN). Give users the ability to dislike something strongly enough that anyone who voted it up is excluded from all vote counts/rankings/recommendations as provided to that user for some period of time. While this leads to a filtered world, that is exactly what users expect from sites like these. Reddit is es…
That's an interesting idea. As it is I have a rather long RES filter list and it's like I need to add several new filters a day to get the crap from hitting my page.
No matter how hard I try, rate comics and Facebook anything still hit my screen.
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you talking about any existing recommendation engine that I can try out to prove myself wrong? Just how exactly will they do it? I'm really interested, maybe I'm missing something? Simply speaking, if a system knows all I listen to is classical music, it can recommend me a new classical composition, but it cannot all of a sudden recommend me dubstep (which I might actually like).
We're talking about Digg doing this as a differentiation. It is not commonly used because it is very heavy in IO and CPU for individual users (though a site like reddit could take a shortcut just by periodically ramping up some spot high CPU instances and batch generation correlations between users on every subreddit, then staling that until the next run), and sites like Reddit and previously Digg ran on stacks that…
What you are talking about is still incapable of recommending (with a high chance of the recommendation being spot-on) new things. In music a new thing would be a completely different genre, not a new song in your favorite genre.
The system you are describing will find people who have a strong correlation with me and who also like:
1) Classical music and Justin Bieber.
2) Classical music and Metallica.
3) Classical music and Dubstep.
And it will recommend me Bieber, Metallica and Dubstep. I might like Dubstep, but I won't like Bieber and Metallica. How is it better than listening to random songs?
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It shouldn't matter what subreddits I subscribe to Also, it shouldn't matter what Usenet newsgroups I read and what TV channels I watch.
Let me welcome you to the modern era. While you might have once had your content dictated by the radio station you listened to, or the one channel your TV could receive, here in the 21st century we have other, slightly more refined mechanisms. "I like NBC" or "I enjoy the Top 40 station" are no longer the limits of your filtering mechanism. Enjoy your stay.
Right, because trying to use an algorithm to filter a firehose will never end up with a firehose blasting through that particular kleenex.
If you want to see a bad job of filtering, by all means rely on an algorithm that is designed to give minimal acceptable performance because anything else would soak up too much CPU. I'll stick to moderation and subfora.
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being into fitness does not mean you share an identical interest/taste/discernment with everyone else who is into fitness. I think you are missing the point of subreddits. They are not for finding people that agree with you, they are for creating communities with all kinds of opinions. I go to /r/fitness exactly because I don't share most of the ideas there. I go there to learn something new. If I want to know everyt…
I'm not missing the point of subreddits at all , and I would suggest that you are so far down the rabbit hole of the cure all subreddit that you refuse to acknowledge the point. I have never said that subreddits should go away. Ever. Each post that again argues one versus the other is tossing up a distraction. They are not for finding people that agree with you Correlation isn't about agreement : An upvote does not m…
If you say "Reddit is essentially falling apart for many users" then you do miss the point of subreddits.
There is no Reddit, there are communities united by the same platform.
In fact, I see this complaint all the time and it is usually coming from people who didn't discover the beauty of subreddits.
Again, there is no Reddit. There is nothing to fall apart.
That's unless you refer to the default front page as Reddit. The front page is falling apart because the default subreddits are being swarmed with teenagers. But the front page is not Reddit, subreddits are Reddit.
Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not missing the point of subreddits at all , and I would suggest that you are so far down the rabbit hole of the cure all subreddit that you refuse to acknowledge the point. I have never said that subreddits should go away. Ever. Each post that again argues one versus the other is tossing up a distraction. They are not for finding people that agree with you Correlation isn't about agreement : An upvote does not m…
If you say " Reddit is essentially falling apart for many users " then you do miss the point of subreddits. There is no Reddit, there are communities united by the same platform. In fact, I see this complaint all the time and it is usually coming from people who didn't discover the beauty of subreddits. Again, there is no Reddit. There is nothing to fall apart. That's unless you refer to the default front page as Red…
The default state of almost every subreddit is endless meta discourse about the subreddit itself. Then there is the inevitable fracturing when some participants disagree, while the original sub descends into the most vapid of the commons.
/r/atheism is the pinnacle example (this is a trend that becomes exaggerated the larger the sub).
The subreddit approach alone does not scale. Or rather it does scale by endless manual fracturing, which is a half-assed, luddite solution.