An oft cited reason for founding a company is to make the world better in some way. These 25 stories demonstrate that Reddit has undeniably accomplished that.
Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
21–30 of 135 posts
Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#22Are you all forgeting the good deeds reported about in the article? Does that count for anything from an online community?
Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#23As a redditor of going on nearly 5 years, this story brought me to tears (followed each of these events and participated in some) - and is personally my favorite YC spawn.
Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But I would characterize Reddit (as characterized by what's voted up into default visibility) as fairly open-minded, even compulsively contrarian. Have you been there recently? They're "contrarian" in the sense that they disagree with the non-Reddit mainstream, but they hardly respect contrarianism to their own views. I definitely would not call them "open-minded." (At least, not in the main subreddits. There are s…
> Have you been there recently? Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are…
Sure, Reddit's problems are caused by its size, the same way that Digg's are caused by its size. But this does not make the groupthink, mob mentality etc. any less irritating.
Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Have you been there recently? Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are…
Sure, Reddit's problems are caused by its size, the same way that Digg's are caused by its size. But this does not make the groupthink, mob mentality etc. any less irritating.
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Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#26Am I the only one here who doesn't know what's 4chan ?
Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#27Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant? It really is heart-warming to hear of all the good that those on Reddit have done. But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place — discussions got extremely polarised very quickly and there seemed to be very little room for reasoned dialogue. The article makes it sound like a good thi…
> But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made me want to leave Reddit in the first place.
To put in the cliché Freudian speak -- Reddit is the Id and HN is Superego.
Reddit is the place to call people stupid, post silly pictures of cats, but also a place to get together and donate for a cause, talk someone out of a suicide, or just spread around stupid memes for fun. A well placed witty one-liners will get you hundreds of upvotes. Anything too intellectual will likely get a TL;DR type reaction.
HN is the site that discusses issues in depth, rational, evidence backed arguments are expected, civility and maturity is expected as well. A stupid one liner will most likely be frowned upon.
But I think we need both. I am a member of both sites and both provide for a what I consider a healthy outlet for my online presence.
Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But I would characterize Reddit (as characterized by what's voted up into default visibility) as fairly open-minded, even compulsively contrarian. Have you been there recently? They're "contrarian" in the sense that they disagree with the non-Reddit mainstream, but they hardly respect contrarianism to their own views. I definitely would not call them "open-minded." (At least, not in the main subreddits. There are s…
> Have you been there recently? Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are…
>Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded?
Exactly; HN is very myopic - to the point of exhibiting aspergers. HN actually is too 'geek centric' -- whereby the community here is too focused on looking like the in crowd of the YC/FB alumn...
(downvotes welcome)
Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Have you been there recently? Have you been anywhere else recently? Can you give an example of a community, of comparable magnitude, that is more open minded? I am easy to criticize reddit, popular as it is on HN, but it is a surprising community for its large population, and as you say the smaller parts of it can be very good. One can find all the flaws with a thing that one wishes to but, in the end, if none are…
Sure, Reddit's problems are caused by its size, the same way that Digg's are caused by its size. But this does not make the groupthink, mob mentality etc. any less irritating.
Honestly - I don't think that Digg's issues were necessarily size-specific as they were both architecture and community specific.
Digg had a hell of a lot of momentum in the space - but they were too focused on trying to polarize interests around the articles that were submitted - and much much less focused on the community that was providing the interest.
The beauty of reddit (much more a /. approach) was to provide as free a forum for the opinions on submissions. Digg really was submitter focused (which I believe to be too emulative of traditional media) - whereas reddit does an excellent job of the true meta discussions that would occur if you had a crowd in a public square that were presented a story on, say, a billboard and documenting the ensuing conversations.
Reddit truly emulates how people in a quorum would act. Digg tried too hard to play both the publisher and consumer side of media, with too much publisher bias and we see where that got them.
Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism
#30Am I the only one here who doesn't know what's 4chan ?