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Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

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Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#261

Post by ryl00 »

ameister14 wrote: post #240
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…

Why should all these things be centralized, though? Before Reddit, there were disparate forums with different rules and structures - Reddit organized and unified them, but is now applying changes that make forums non-viable as a reddit use-case.

Because it's a lot easier to find them. To me, Reddit is the modern day Usenet...

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#262

Post by gizmo686 »

joemi wrote: post #225
Fifer82 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This confused me as well. See Izkata below your comment with a wired link to screenshots. But I see the old reddit as well.

I wonder if you have to be logged in for that link to work? I'm at work right now and I never log in to reddit from here.

Nope.

I'm logged in and still getting redirected to the original.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#263

Post by flukus »

jacques_chester wrote: post #31

Mobile phones. Again. It's always mobile phones that ruin good websites these days. They optimise for swipe, scroll and tap. Look, like, emoji. They don't optimise for text. In fact they are increasingly hostile to it. The Tinderfication of online dating has been a depressing race to the bottom. The internet was never going to be as great as we thought it was. No other technology has been. Folks thought the telegraph…

It's not like reddit is particularly well optimized for phones, in the mobile site or the app. Their mobile versions are unusable and if it weren't for third party apps I'd have given up reddit entirely.

Reddit should fit nicely into a mobile first site with good desktop functionality, it's just their useless team of designers.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#264

Post by adventured »

ryandrake wrote: post #242
dgreensp wrote: post #107

From reading Reddit threads about the redesign: pretty much everyone hates it, especially Reddit’s most passionate users, who have been very articulate, consistent, and aligned about exactly what they don’t like, and Reddit just keeps brushing them off and dismissing their point of view. Maybe the purpose of the redesign is something like monetization? Or maybe they are just out of touch and by the time they really u…

I remember the Slashdot redesign and the Fark redesign too, and now this one. The general pattern is the site owners’ unwavering certainty that the redesign is great and everyone is wrong, in the face of vocal criticism from users. Remember “You’ll get over it”? EDIT: I’d love to see actual measured metrics published showing a particular design change actually making sense. Is the new one faster for any particular ta…

One of the few aggressive, rapid turnabouts I've ever seen in the Internet space, was Netflix & Reid Hoffman absorbing the immense negative reaction about Qwikster and deciding to do the right thing and listen to their customers. Had they persisted and ignored the feedback, there would plausibly be no Netflix as we know it today (probably stomped by competitors given a big opening and or acquired).

The Netflix stock chart tells the tale nicely: https://i.imgur.com/sZ9FjeP.jpg

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#265

Post by x404 »

skoocda wrote: post #260
msla wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike trying to talk about "The Reddit Community" for the same reason I'd dislike trying to talk about "The New York City Community" or "The Tokyo Community": You don't have a million-member community. You can talk about Dunbar's Number, you can talk about the simple fact nobody goes out and meets a million people even if they're all on the same website/within a half-mile radius of their home, but the result is t…

But these community members aren't insulated entirely, ever. A new account is always provided the same front page experience, due to default subscriptions, and most Redditors only add subreddits to that front page, never removing any. Even if they curate to an extreme level, the Popular feed is always the same for everyone. You need to manually override that feed with RES filters to eliminate content. So I think it's…

I prefer to call it the "United Communities of Reddit".

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#266

Post by curioussavage »

skoocda wrote: post #260
msla wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike trying to talk about "The Reddit Community" for the same reason I'd dislike trying to talk about "The New York City Community" or "The Tokyo Community": You don't have a million-member community. You can talk about Dunbar's Number, you can talk about the simple fact nobody goes out and meets a million people even if they're all on the same website/within a half-mile radius of their home, but the result is t…

But these community members aren't insulated entirely, ever. A new account is always provided the same front page experience, due to default subscriptions, and most Redditors only add subreddits to that front page, never removing any. Even if they curate to an extreme level, the Popular feed is always the same for everyone. You need to manually override that feed with RES filters to eliminate content. So I think it's…

Defaults have been gone for a while. Doesn’t affect older users but going forward every users front page will be more different.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#267

Post by nicoburns »

skoocda wrote: post #260
msla wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike trying to talk about "The Reddit Community" for the same reason I'd dislike trying to talk about "The New York City Community" or "The Tokyo Community": You don't have a million-member community. You can talk about Dunbar's Number, you can talk about the simple fact nobody goes out and meets a million people even if they're all on the same website/within a half-mile radius of their home, but the result is t…

But these community members aren't insulated entirely, ever. A new account is always provided the same front page experience, due to default subscriptions, and most Redditors only add subreddits to that front page, never removing any. Even if they curate to an extreme level, the Popular feed is always the same for everyone. You need to manually override that feed with RES filters to eliminate content. So I think it's…

I visit a few subreddits regularly, but I literally never visit the frontpage intentionally. I'll bet this is true of a fair number of reddit users.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#268

Post by Zak »

orky56 wrote: post #257
shostack wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I wonder if that is true at night with the lights off. When I read in bed at night, I much prefer light on dark text. Combined with Android's night mode to tint things red, it is fantastic. In fact, I wish the Kindle Paperwhite would come out with an inverted mode already (although I think I read there were some challenges with doing so). It can be fairly straining on my eyes to have the sidelit screen bri…

Majority of reading is done in a brighter setting so many factors contribute to using dark text in white background. In the case of reading in the dark or low light settings, using a Kindle Paperwhite gets complicated since you want to make the background darker while still maintaining sufficient contrast to read the text which is always in a dark font color. In the UX StackExchange post, it's stated that astigmatism…

I would like operating systems, browsers and websites to globally support a "night mode" where a dark background is used. Especially with the proliferation of mobile devices, people increasingly use technology in low-light environments. As it stands today, I have to add external stylesheets to websites to get this effect, and if I want to toggle them, I have to toggle each one manually. It's similar, but worse for Android apps because the app itself has to support themes.

I find having a significant portion of the screen white when my eyes are relatively dark-adapted uncomfortable, even when the brightness is set fairly low. I find a dark background with light text very preferable under those conditions. I do not care if there is research suggesting I should not have this preference.

From talking to others in person and online, I get the impression that my preference is very common. Android was supposed to get something resembling this, but the feature has been dropped or delayed.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#269

Post by Zak »

skykooler wrote: post #203
TeMPOraL wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes AMOLED still not old enough to enter the general consciousness of the designers. They're optimizing for the screens they (and everyone they know) are used to.

Looking at older screen technologies, CRTs also use less power for dark screens.

I suspect not in a way that people care very much about compared to mobile device battery life.

Re: Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits

#270

Post by tzs »

strifey wrote: post #215
joemi wrote: post #181

I don't get it. What exactly is changing? From the screenshots from the reddit post about it, it looks.... like reddit. There's posts and the posts have upvote/downvote buttons, and there's a link to the comments that shows how many there are. Am I missing something? The OP article doesn't actually have any screenshots of changes, and I made it several paragraphs into the article still not understanding what is chang…

You should be able to interact with the redesign directly at https://new.reddit.com . The main complaints I've seen leveled at the redesign are: user profiles becoming more like Facebook profiles, the new chat functionality missing core features, and the newly created "best" ranking becoming the default.

My main complaint is that I still don't see any way to do subscripts or mathematical expressions. Some subreddits recommend browser extensions that allow embedding some kind of TeX variant and render it, but that only helps if you use one of the browsers that has one of those extensions.
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