and again this why you should use http://www.sagebump.com/?info&view=technocrat to manage your social aggregator news
The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
141–150 of 151 posts
Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#142There's no such thing as a meritocracy, unless you include ability to game the system in your measure of merit. Either that, or every system is a meritocracy, and you're just not trying hard enough to win.
Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#143This post is interesting, but he should have just read the code: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma... This is an effect of the normalization algorithm, which biases towards trying to have a post from as may different subreddits as possible on the front page. Edit: At least we're consistent! Ketralnis said the same thing about an hour ago. :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568021
out of curiosity, what does the 'r2' stand for? does the two indicate that it's a rewrite of the original lisp code, as in r(eddit)2?
It's actually the second python version. :)
Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#144Earlier 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?
reddit has been around since at least '07. I remember visiting the default front page back then and it was mostly developer-specific stuff.
A lot has changed.
Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I wish so hard I could filter out the junk posts. Just give me something to read, a good article, a debate.
Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I wish so hard I could filter out the junk posts. Just give me something to read, a good article, a debate.
Log in, unsubscribe from all the default front-page subreddits, and put together your own mix based on stuff you're interested in. The Reddit I read by doing this is a pretty genteel and sensible place.
Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#147I 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.
You might want to look at http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview
Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's likely that, at any given time, the top 2-3 links of /r/funny are highly-ranked enough to make the front page -- except the algorithm won't let more than one from that subreddit through at a time. So the alpha-funny link makes it, and the beta-funny link has to sit on page 3, suppressed, unable to take its rightful spot... until suddenly alpha-funny is too old, and is kicked off the front page, at which point be…
I see. That does make sense. Bit of a curious view on "normalization" but I can see how that would result in the strange graphs.
It appears the normalized_hot is only used for the first two pages. The rankings after that are subreddit-agnostic.
Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#149Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy
#150Popularity isn't exactly a meritocracy either.
That is, while popularity is correlated with quality, the two are rarely considered identical, and one is often a poor heuristic for the other.