Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

berbaquero.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 99 posts

Re: Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

#41

Post by rjbond3rd »

cryptoz wrote: post #38
Karunamon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Software won't fix these major problems. They're issues with the community itself. Each sub is its own community. If you're having troubles like you mentioned above, you haven't found the right ones yet.

That's not a legitimate way of thinking about the problem, though. Some of the communities in question are very large and powerful places; making a popular comment there can have a large impact on a huge number of people's lives. And many of the subreddits are run by totalitarian dictators, so you end up with large and powerful subreddits that are curated by crazy moderators. It's not about finding the "right communi…

What do you mean by legitimate? I think you're just frustrated that thoughtful moderation is labor-intensive, and civility doesn't scale too well.

But at any rate, haven't you undermined your own argument? You've found the community of HN is right enough for you.

Anyway, I find your argument interesting nonetheless, especially if we substitute the word "country" for "subreddit" and so on. A country can be ruled illegitimately by dictator(s), and yet, if you can choose to switch, switching arguably may be a legitimate strategy or solution.

Re: Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

#42

Post by redwood »

Honestly IMO the biggest problem with reddit's subreddit UX is that you can't choose the ratio of which subreddits are most important to you. Unfortunately you're not really fixing that... I think that would be more powerful than showing groups of subreddits.

In other words, I should be able to say "I want 30% of my links to come from r/worldnews, 10% from r/science, 5% each from r/biology, r/programming, r/chemistry, r/physics, r/neuro, 20% from r/foodforthought, and 20% from r/truereddit.

Even a simple UI dragger that would let me boost the prominence of certain subreddits in my feed would be great.. Otherwise, small but awesome subreddits have a tough time getting seen anywhere near the top of my feed.

Re: Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

#43

Post by Karunamon »

cryptoz wrote: post #38
Karunamon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Software won't fix these major problems. They're issues with the community itself. Each sub is its own community. If you're having troubles like you mentioned above, you haven't found the right ones yet.

That's not a legitimate way of thinking about the problem, though. Some of the communities in question are very large and powerful places; making a popular comment there can have a large impact on a huge number of people's lives. And many of the subreddits are run by totalitarian dictators, so you end up with large and powerful subreddits that are curated by crazy moderators. It's not about finding the "right communi…

>That's not a legitimate way of thinking about the problem, though. Some of the communities in question are very large and powerful places; making a popular comment there can have a large impact on a huge number of people's lives.

Perspective, please. I believe you seriously overstate the impact of having a popular post on an internet discussion board.

In any case, that doesn't really change my point.

>And many of the subreddits are run by totalitarian dictators, so you end up with large and powerful subreddits that are curated by crazy moderators.

Step 1 to enjoying Reddit is to unsubscribe every single one of the default subs. They all have this problem (the reasons which and how seriously are up for debate, but that's another discussion.. for now, let's take it as given).

Step 2 is to find a smaller sub for your interests. The readership of this site would probably enjoy r/sysadmin, netsec, programming, definitely more. It is a different kind of community, granted, but it's not near as negative or not "legitimate" as you claim.

Re: Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

#44

Post by Karunamon »

koko775 wrote: post #40
cryptoz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a good thing. No, it's not. The moderators of r/conservative think that climate change is a hoax. If you write an on-topic, polite comment that even suggests that climate change is real, you will be banned . This is a terrible, terrible way to run a community. The conservatives on reddit live in a bubble where all science is banned. It's not a positive state of affairs. (Edit: I'm not conservative, but I fr…

That's their right, though. The same process that allows a teen to invade a subreddit and fill it with memes is the same thing that allows anyone to invade a subreddit and fill it with their opinions. No matter how valid that opinion is, it's still disruptive to a community. If subreddits are to be self-policing, they can't be obligated to not live in a bubble, however unfortunate that bubble may be, if that is what…

>It has some lightly-moderated pressure valves, but the more topical forums keep a leash on discussions without chilling the conversation.

I really hope this is a joke. The moderators at something awful hand out bans and "probations" (arbitrary length bans from posting only) like candy and take personal offense when questioned why.

Here's a fun game. Click on a random username to look at their "rap sheet" and see how many times they've been hit with various punishments. You can click on the incident to go to where and when it happened. Then try to figure out which of the site or board rules they broke to get those black marks.

The wrong opinion in the wrong place will be punished just as harshly as on some of the more echo-chamberey subreddits, except worse since you can be globally banned and be out real cash for your trouble.

All punishments apply sitewide. At least on Reddit if a moderator who feels personally insulted at your posting bans you, it's only from that sub.

Something Awful is not my favorite website.

Re: Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

#46

Post by cryptoz »

Karunamon wrote: post #43
cryptoz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a legitimate way of thinking about the problem, though. Some of the communities in question are very large and powerful places; making a popular comment there can have a large impact on a huge number of people's lives. And many of the subreddits are run by totalitarian dictators, so you end up with large and powerful subreddits that are curated by crazy moderators. It's not about finding the "right communi…

>That's not a legitimate way of thinking about the problem, though. Some of the communities in question are very large and powerful places; making a popular comment there can have a large impact on a huge number of people's lives. Perspective, please. I believe you seriously overstate the impact of having a popular post on an internet discussion board. In any case, that doesn't really change my point. >And many of th…

> Perspective, please. I believe you seriously overstate the impact of having a popular post on an internet discussion board.

Really? Well, first, tens of thousands of people clicked on Obama's link and filled out the voting information on Election day. Sure, that's an extreme and rare example, but a popular link can influence democracy.

More realistically, though: my life has been dramatically altered and formed by comments I've read on reddit. I learned python and lisp because of reddit, studied algorithms more intently, learned enormous amounts about politics and world news. There have been countless comments that have fundamentally altered the way I think about math and science, about morals and life.

I can't imagine how much I would have missed in life without a place like the reddit comments. Sure I would have picked up some of that stuff elsewhere, but it happened for me on reddit.

I think you are underestimating the impact of reddit comments.

> Step 1....Step 2....

I enjoy reddit by doing quite the opposite of your suggestions, so that's really a personal preference. I cannot enjoy using a site where hundreds of thousands of people will read 'climate change is fake!!! scientists are liars!!' with no rebuttal, while I'm off participating in a thread about pythonisms.

Re: Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

#47

Post by kybernetyk »

Posibyte wrote: post #35
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problems with reddit aren't so much how to read it, but rather what can be read there. Most of the major subreddits are no longer worth following, unless you're interested in hipsterism or curious about the meme-of-the-hour. The smaller subreddits generally have limited traffic, resulting in very slow discussion. Email mailing lists are far superior for discussions with this size of a community. Censorshi…

I think this is a radical idea, but hear me out: I fully believe the community could be better curated if they took the down-vote button away. (Or, at least, reserved it for the highest echelon of users) Looking from the island of HackerNews, back to the continent of Reddit where I wasted so many years of productivity, I've seen amazing wonders in the way HN uses its down-vote systems. In essence, it's there to "nudg…

Why have voting at all? I think that this kind of pre-filtering content only encourages group think and isn't a good system at all.

Re: Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

#48

Post by [deleted] »

Karunamon wrote: post #43
cryptoz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a legitimate way of thinking about the problem, though. Some of the communities in question are very large and powerful places; making a popular comment there can have a large impact on a huge number of people's lives. And many of the subreddits are run by totalitarian dictators, so you end up with large and powerful subreddits that are curated by crazy moderators. It's not about finding the "right communi…

>That's not a legitimate way of thinking about the problem, though. Some of the communities in question are very large and powerful places; making a popular comment there can have a large impact on a huge number of people's lives. Perspective, please. I believe you seriously overstate the impact of having a popular post on an internet discussion board. In any case, that doesn't really change my point. >And many of th…

[deleted]

Re: Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

#49

Post by Karunamon »

cryptoz wrote: post #46
Karunamon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's not a legitimate way of thinking about the problem, though. Some of the communities in question are very large and powerful places; making a popular comment there can have a large impact on a huge number of people's lives. Perspective, please. I believe you seriously overstate the impact of having a popular post on an internet discussion board. In any case, that doesn't really change my point. >And many of th…

> Perspective, please. I believe you seriously overstate the impact of having a popular post on an internet discussion board. Really? Well, first, tens of thousands of people clicked on Obama's link and filled out the voting information on Election day. Sure, that's an extreme and rare example, but a popular link can influence democracy. More realistically, though: my life has been dramatically altered and formed by…

That's just it, you're conflating the discussion software or the domain name with the communities using it.

>I cannot enjoy using a site where hundreds of thousands of people will read 'climate change is fake!!! scientists are liars!!' with no rebuttal

There are hundreds or thousands of communities out there where people are crapping on science, yet here you are on Hacker News.

About the only thing two unrelated subreddits share is the first part of their domain name. They have different moderators, different users, a different focus. They are effectively completely different communities - the fact that you treat them as related in any way but tangentially is an illusion, nothing more.

Post reply on HN