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

Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

changemyview.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 286 posts

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#161

Post by StellarTabi »

Two reasons why Reddit isn't "digg-ing" their own grave right now:

1. This change is much smaller and less destructive than digg's big change (although the long term effects can be just as destructive).

2. When Digg's redesign caused an exodus, Reddit was extremely well known as "that ugly digg clone" and "this digg link was on Reddit yesterday". Reddit doesn't have a well known established "number two" the way digg did. Raddleme is a leftist fringe site, voat is a racist fringe site, HN is a technology fringe site. Discord servers rely on Reddit for discoverability and member vetting. When this has been discussed before, I've never seen a viable candidate mentioned. Since the only people who can leave are people who only use fringe topics, Reddit won't be able to loose critical mass and then the fringers will have to come back.

On the other hand, these changes appear to be a step into the Twitter/Instagram/facebook market. I'm curious if Reddit will be ready in time to take advantage of this upcoming Facebook exodus, also if there will even be an exodus.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#162

Post by dwild »

blub wrote: post #91
bluedevil2k wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2018 and you're criticizing a site for not running well with JS disabled. You're the one actively deciding to make websites harder to use, why should they design the site for you?

It's 2018 and web developers are still not competent enough to build simple websites (blogs, news, reddit) without forcing visitors to use JS. JS is the technology responsible for most of the malware infections and spyware ad-tracking. It's not like people disable it just to piss off developers, there are very good reasons to turn it off.

> most of the malware infections

Can you give a source for that?

I keep asking for it and never had any good response. The best I have found is that it helps show phishing. A link that said "Install me" and trigger the download of an executable when you click on it doesn't make HTML responsible for malware infections.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#164

Post by ProAm »

vesinisa wrote: post #4

Sadly, the reddit website has become a travesty - especially on mobile. A huge "DOWNLOAD THE REDDIT APP" banner obscures literally 30% of the page. There is a teeny-tiny "view on mobille site" link in small, low-contrast text that can be used to dismiss the annoying banner. Due to its size and user-hostile design, the Reddit banner is even worse than most news sites that try to push their newsletter/app/subscription…

i.reddit.com is what I was using. Super compact and pretty easy to use. But its not meant for participating only for browsing.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#165

Post by ropans808 »

MisterTea wrote: post #129
soundwave106 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsolete is a bit of an exaggeration. As far as I know, almost all programming (including for mobile devices) is still done with a keyboard and a mouse, and I honestly don't see this changing anytime soon (the only way I personally can see changing this is if voice recognition combined with enough AI to make dictating instructions to a computer a reality... or if a visual programming environment actually succeeds, de…

> Obsolete is a bit of an exaggeration. As far as I know, almost all programming (including for mobile devices) is still done with a keyboard and a mouse, and I honestly don't see this changing anytime soon... How many programmers and developers are there vs consumers? The traditional keyboard and mouse interface is dying in consumer space. Sure it will live on in business and content creation, but the majority of de…

I think there are quite a bit more consumers than is obvious at first glance. I am currently surrounded by a hundred or so non-technical people typing away at their work computers. Not sure if those will be replaced by touch interfaces anytime soon.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#166

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #58
criley2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A web browser is an inferior tool for the job of accessing reddit API in a mobile context. Reddit has always been app-first on mobile, web-first on desktop. This has been true since the very first reddit mobile app. If you're okay using your very inferior solution, then please do not come in here to complain about your willfully chosen inferior experience, because the people here will only seek to help you by educati…

> Reddit has always been app-first on mobile No it hasn't, they only released the official reddit app in 2016. Reddit bought alien blue in 2014 but even that was only available on iOS

I think they meant in the sense that users heavily made use of third party mobile apps, even long before the web site had a usable mobile version. Reddit has always had a dev-friendly API enabling these things.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#167

Post by return1 »

in other news how is their new profile design going? I keep adding /overview to mine and other profiles to be able to actually click on things . Why do they keep breaking functionality for no apparent reason? It's becoming a theme in many high-traffic websites (google adsense, analytics come to mind), it's as if new managers roll in and decide to piss all around their territory.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#168

Post by 2bitencryption »

StellarTabi wrote: post #161

Two reasons why Reddit isn't "digg-ing" their own grave right now: 1. This change is much smaller and less destructive than digg's big change (although the long term effects can be just as destructive). 2. When Digg's redesign caused an exodus, Reddit was extremely well known as "that ugly digg clone" and "this digg link was on Reddit yesterday". Reddit doesn't have a well known established "number two" the way digg…

You've painted a picture in my mind of Reddit as this massive blob connecting Discord, so-called "fringe communities", etc.

It actually makes me appreciate Reddit a bit more -- it can be garbage, but it's also a bit of a centralized meeting place for so many smaller communities. Even if the bulk of those smaller communities doesn't take place on Reddit itself, they still flow through Reddit.

Reddit is like the central bazaar of discoverability. The community you end up in might not live on Reddit, but in all likelihood, you discovered it through Reddit.

So despite how terrible the big communities can be (which is not a Reddit-exclusive problem), I'm still glad it exists. Maybe an alternative is needed, but at the very least, I respect how Reddit has mostly retained this unique ability over the years.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#169

Post by [deleted] »

StellarTabi wrote: post #161

Two reasons why Reddit isn't "digg-ing" their own grave right now: 1. This change is much smaller and less destructive than digg's big change (although the long term effects can be just as destructive). 2. When Digg's redesign caused an exodus, Reddit was extremely well known as "that ugly digg clone" and "this digg link was on Reddit yesterday". Reddit doesn't have a well known established "number two" the way digg…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN