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The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

toddwschneider.com

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Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#41

Post by eli »

skwirl wrote: post #33
mrfusion wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd the Ron Paul was popular on Reddit for a while though. How do you explain that?

Ron Paul was "popular" on almost every website on the internet because his fanatical supporters flooded the web with an endless barrage of Ron Paul support. Reddit, newspaper comments, other discussion boards, polls, you name it, they were there to tell the world about Ron Paul. They were a very loud minority.

That sounds like a borderline conspiracy theory. If Ron Paul's popularity on Reddit around 2008 was a fascade, it was very convincing.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#42

Post by pb2au »

selmnoo wrote: post #4

One thing I'm interested in knowing is whether Reddit manipulates the votes on its own submissions. See, for example, r/blog: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/new/ Every submission made there went to the frontpage. What are the chances? I mean, it's hard to believe that mainstream Redditors at this point are so interested in Reddit news that they keep sending every Reddit announcement to the top. What's more likely, to m…

Reddit does intend to have the /r/blog posts on the front page, but they don't necessarily need to rig the votes.

As mentioned in the article, the algorithm for selecting which posts appear on the homepage seems to allocate slots for each subreddit. If one subreddit has more people voting than another subreddit, they can both appear alongside each other, rather than the larger one always filling the homepage.

Since the only posts made to /r/blog are infrequent, they will always get the slot for the subreddit and will likely always appear on the front page or second page even with few votes. Then, because they are visible to many users, they can attract more votes.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#43

Post by drhayes9 »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #16
ThomPete wrote: post #7

I left reddit years ago (and found HN) because although I agree with mostly liberal views it became too much of an echo-chamber for liberal views the frontpage is the extreme example of that. There are many great sub-reddits of course but it's not a place for politicial discussions (in fact I am still looking for a good place to have political discussions) Edit: Why does my personal experience get downvoted?

> I am still looking for a good place to have political discussions I sometimes wonder if such a place can exist. Outside of friendships, I kind of don't think it can.

I think, at least in the US, our extreme politicization makes that difficult: http://www.vox.com/2014/11/1/7136343/gamergate-and-the-polit...

My favorite part of this article is the graph showing how "Do you think Twelve Years a Slave should win an Oscar" breaks down by party lines.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#44

Post by ncallaway »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #16
ThomPete wrote: post #7

I left reddit years ago (and found HN) because although I agree with mostly liberal views it became too much of an echo-chamber for liberal views the frontpage is the extreme example of that. There are many great sub-reddits of course but it's not a place for politicial discussions (in fact I am still looking for a good place to have political discussions) Edit: Why does my personal experience get downvoted?

> I am still looking for a good place to have political discussions I sometimes wonder if such a place can exist. Outside of friendships, I kind of don't think it can.

I really want a place for a _structured_ political or philosophical discussion to take place. The same way that Stack Overflow placed a lot of structure and moderation around a Q & A panel.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#45

Post by sillysaurus3 »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #36
selmnoo wrote: post #4

One thing I'm interested in knowing is whether Reddit manipulates the votes on its own submissions. See, for example, r/blog: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/new/ Every submission made there went to the frontpage. What are the chances? I mean, it's hard to believe that mainstream Redditors at this point are so interested in Reddit news that they keep sending every Reddit announcement to the top. What's more likely, to m…

> it's hard to believe that mainstream Redditors at this point are so interested in Reddit news that they keep sending every Reddit announcement to the top. "Mainstream Redditors" don't decide what is on the homepage because they don't vote. Only about 20% of redditors vote, and only about 20% of voters comment [1]. If you still find it hard to believe, just read the 900+ comments written in less than a day on their…

Only about 20% of redditors vote, and only about 20% of voters comment [1].

That doesn't really ring true. If you make a post with a question in the title, you'll often get 5+ answers before a single person votes. Even downvotes.

Maybe it's more accurate to say "Of those people who don't hang out in the new submissions queue, only about 20% of the voters comment."

But, really, Reddit could do anything it wants internally, and we'd have no idea. Only they have access to the stats. They already compress the votes so that it only looks like there are ~10,000 votes maximum, when in fact hundreds of thousands of people have probably voted on certain posts.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#46

Post by minimaxir »

ehmorris wrote: post #30
Guvante wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1500 people hitting up arrow because the poster is an admin is believable to me given Reddit's size.

The score does not correlate directly w/ number of upvotes

It's not a r = 1 correlation, but it's definitely strongly correlated.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#47

Post by thenmar »

ThomPete wrote: post #7

I left reddit years ago (and found HN) because although I agree with mostly liberal views it became too much of an echo-chamber for liberal views the frontpage is the extreme example of that. There are many great sub-reddits of course but it's not a place for politicial discussions (in fact I am still looking for a good place to have political discussions) Edit: Why does my personal experience get downvoted?

I don't really buy that... the only liberal views I can think of that are popular in the aggregate on reddit are about the war on drugs and sometimes socialized medicine. In general, reddit is pretty hostile towards women, skeptical of feminism, overtly racist, and pro-military.

I guess I would characterize it more as libertarianism strongly centered on the perspectives of middle class, white men.

Edit: I guess "I don't really buy that" was a poor choice of words. I don't think you're lying to me. But your experience was very different from my experience. I stopped using reddit because I felt like all the big subreddits were too socially conservative!

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#48

Post by josu »

mrfusion wrote: post #13
ThomPete wrote: post #7

I left reddit years ago (and found HN) because although I agree with mostly liberal views it became too much of an echo-chamber for liberal views the frontpage is the extreme example of that. There are many great sub-reddits of course but it's not a place for politicial discussions (in fact I am still looking for a good place to have political discussions) Edit: Why does my personal experience get downvoted?

It's odd the Ron Paul was popular on Reddit for a while though. How do you explain that?

Libertarians align with the left on personal freedom (Weed, abortion, relatively blind to race or sex, less foreign intervention...) and they align with the right about economic freedom.

I use to hang around Reddit back then, but I don't clearly remember. My guess is that reddit found all the personal freedom stuff appealing, while mostly ignoring of the facts about closing the Fed, eliminating minimum wages, reducing intervention... But remember that during that time (2009-2011) most of the econ talk was surrounding the bank bailouts. Ron Paul's speech was actually aligned with that of Occupy WS, since most libertarians opposed the bailouts and oppose big corporations, given that they usually lead to crony capitalism. I also have the feeling that there was less nonsense on reddit back then, but this might just be my perception.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#49

Post by ChrisArchitect »

mrfusion wrote: post #3

Dumb question but what is the reddit front page? Isn't it customized for everyone depending on what you're subscribed to? Or are there a ton of users that never log in? It seems like you wouldn't get much value out of reddit if you just view the front page without logging in?

yeah, not a dumb question - there are a ton of not logged in 'casuals' who just come by to consume consume consume whatever frontpage throws up

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#50

Post by oftenwrong »

mrfusion wrote: post #10
lbotos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has a default frontpage for people who don't have accounts. I lurked for years and was just fine without actually creating an account. :)

Isn't the default page mostly cat pictures and jokes? I tried viewing it logged out one time and I couldn't figure out who would like that?

For many people, reddit is merely a source of internet junk food. They go there for cheap, quick hits of mindless amusement.

See also: buzzfeed, 9gag, imgur, funnyjunk, etc.

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