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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

#51

Post by ThomPete »

thenmar wrote: post #47
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 do…

You don't buy what? my experience?

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#52

Post by JustinAiken »

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?

Reddit liberals and Reddit libertarians are in massive agreement on not starting wars or locking people in a cage because they have a plant; views on economics take a backseat.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#53

Post by minimaxir »

phillmv wrote: post #34

This is a gorgeous post and I shiver at the thought of how much work went into this! Thoughtful, detailed and chock full of great visualizations of the data. I'd be interested in a similar analysis of HN, as I'm interested in the editorial intent thus revealed. On tangential note, though, I was a bit surprised by the hypothesis. 'Meritocracy' to begin with is a dubious fiction, but especially so when mapped on to the…

A note about the graphics: all the charts were made with R/ggplot2. Not only ggplot2, but basic ggplot2: the charts in the blog post can be made with about 5 lines of code maximum each.

You can customize ggplot2 for even more beautiful charts, such as the ones used in my analysis of HN comments: http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/

Note that reproducing this analysis for the HN front page is harder since there is a lot that happens behind the scenes that cannot be generalized. Here's an attempt at performing such an analysis (note dang's comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8533757

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#54

Post by Kalium »

tomphoolery wrote: post #38
vuldin wrote: post #35

This is an interesting study into how Reddit works, but I have to say that I'm fine with the fact that Reddit is neither a meritocracy or democracy when it comes to how posts make it to the front page. I'd rather not see any more funny or aww posts on the front page than are already there (I can go to their subreddits directly when I want to). In fact, I'd rather see a variety of posts from subreddits I don't usually…

> In fact, I'd rather see a variety of posts from subreddits I don't usually go to or usually follow. There is a little line of text on the top of the reddit front page called "trending subreddits"...I've found a bunch of cool stuff that way http://imgur.com/okDu5AN But of course, the best way to find new subreddits is to read the first 5 or so comments on a weird gif or picture. Someone will link to either subreddit…

I'm pretty sure that those are human-selected rather than algorithmically selected.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#55

Post by ChrisArchitect »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #49
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

related recent reddit blog post about the 'defaults', changing them etc...which was not without controversy of course but ...

http://www.redditblog.com/2014/05/whats-that-lassie-old-defa...

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#56

Post by josefresco »

Many years ago I had an article on my personal blog about web design climb it's way to the front page of Digg (I'm dating myself here) and Reddit. Despite my server buckling rather quickly, I still saw at least ~250K visits over a couple days (Digg then was slightly more popular) and to this day (5+ years later) that one first page post continues to deliver tens of thousands of visits a year thanks to a rather healthy Google rank and a huge network of incoming links from related tech blogs.

Reddit exposes you to a huge audience, who then in turn comment, link to, and debate your post. Reddit's memory is short however, and within hours your post will be gone. However the reverberating effects benefit you in many ways and almost guarantee traffic for years if the topic is "evergreen".

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#58

Post by mod »

runevault wrote: post #25
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Theoretically, I think it can exist. However it would take a fair bit of luck for the core group that grows up around it being diverse in their opinions but also open minded. Unfortunately most people these days are more interested in their initial opinion being right than in having real discourse that everyone can learn and grow from.

Political conversations that don't devolve into idiocy and hatred are the exception, and not the rule, in any forum or group I've ever encountered.

I think if your theory involves mass-exclusion/banning you could possibly end up with a place like this. But the conversation would actually lose an important voice at that point. The angry people are (often) angry for a reason, they're just usually pretty bad at making their point civilly.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#60

Post by gus_massa »

phillmv wrote: post #34

This is a gorgeous post and I shiver at the thought of how much work went into this! Thoughtful, detailed and chock full of great visualizations of the data. I'd be interested in a similar analysis of HN, as I'm interested in the editorial intent thus revealed. On tangential note, though, I was a bit surprised by the hypothesis. 'Meritocracy' to begin with is a dubious fiction, but especially so when mapped on to the…

A deep analysis was published in http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 (920 points, 345 days ago, 190 comments)).

AFAIK there are no filters to bind the maximal post of a domain in the front page, but some domains have automatic penalties.

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