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Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

lethain.com

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Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#271

Post by synack »

There was an internal alpha build of Digg v4 that had "verticals", which were kinda like subreddits. If there weren't enough stories to fill up the front page, the backend would run a search query and fill in relevant stories from other verticals, or even external search engines. As a vertical got more users, the user-voted stories would be given priority over the algorithmically chosen ones.

From a user perspective, this meant that there was already a subreddit for any topic you could conceive of, even if nobody had ever submitted a story to it. It was pretty magical.

Sadly, this whole system was axed in order to get the thing launched before we ran out of money. I bet you could do an even better version of it now with recommendations based on LLM prompts.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#272

Post by johnwalkr »

what-the-grump wrote: post #67
deergomoo wrote: post #18

Good read. Interesting that the author’s takeaway is that folks consider Digg v4 to be a catastrophic launch because of the myriad technical issues. I don’t even remember there being technical issues, I just remember logging in one day to find a website I enjoyed replaced with a bunch of crap I wasn’t interested in.

Digg was Digg, then V4 launched, and it was no longer Digg. It was really that simple, oh hey I should check Digg maybe there is something interesting went to oh hey I need to find something else to check because Digg is stale, the new UI had much lower information density, coupled with less content meant that there was no reason to go back if you could find a faster feed. New stuff like reddit, insta, twitter, simpl…

Plus it literally didn't load half the time.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#273

Post by ryandrake »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #200
jnwatson wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Musk learned the hard way how hard it is to strike the right balance. Anybody that thinks Reddit is fascist should spend 60 days moderating a popular sub. Your attitude might change. This isn’t to say that there aren’t mods with power trips. Reddit has essentially outsourced their trust and safety department. It isn’t going to be perfect.

> Anybody that thinks Reddit is fascist should spend 60 days moderating a popular sub. I have little in the way of opinions about Reddit, but this strikes me as the wrong approach on general grounds. It might be true that anyone who spends time running a subreddit will change their mind about moderation. However, the only point of a subreddit is for people to talk to each other and to read what others are talking abo…

I briefly modded an old phpBB forum (remember those?) and therefore have sympathy for mods. The job is thankless, and the amount of crap that you need to mod is unending. And this was for a tiny hobby forum, not the vast sewage of Reddit. I'm talking spam, flamewars, spam, harassment, nazis, spam, porn, spam, spam, bigotry, and spam. I can't imagine how hard it would be on a forum with a user base as giant and interconnected as Reddit.

The balance seems impossible. If your moderation is "light touch" the forum ends up like 4chan. If your moderation is heavy handed, you're a power-tripper control freak lording over your site. You can't win.

I don't know how dang does it here. He's some kind of wizard.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#274

Post by paulddraper »

babypuncher wrote: post #213
psygn89 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been called that either, but I know what he means... many of Reddit's bigger community comment section basically seems to devolve into politics or racial issues even if it was a photo of a cute kitten. Often you'll basically see the comment section locked after it runs that course. The old reddit wasn't like that unless you visited political subreddits.

I think it's a product of some reddit communities becoming too big to effectively moderate. I mostly stick with smaller, non-default subs and don't really run into this problem anymore.

Yes, smaller subs do not have this issue.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#275

Post by paulddraper »

biorach wrote: post #3

> Our API server was a Python Tornado service... and one of the most frequently accessed endpoint was used to retrieve user by their name or id. Because it supported retrieval by either name or id, it set default values for both parameters as empty lists. This is a super reasonable thing to do! However, Python only initializes default parameters when the function is first evaluated, which means that the same list is…

Footguns are still footguns.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#276

Post by paulddraper »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #19
biorach wrote: post #3

> Our API server was a Python Tornado service... and one of the most frequently accessed endpoint was used to retrieve user by their name or id. Because it supported retrieval by either name or id, it set default values for both parameters as empty lists. This is a super reasonable thing to do! However, Python only initializes default parameters when the function is first evaluated, which means that the same list is…

Forget about production, how did this make it into python? This is so unbelievably stupid it makes PHP look like a sensible language.

I suspect because it's easier to implement defaults as values than as expressions.

The scoping of list comprehensions in Python 2 was far less justifiable, IMO.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#277

Post by bwat49 »

jredwards wrote: post #217
pdntspa wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with GP, I am part of several subreddits where the moderators clearly enjoy being kings of their precious little fiefdom. Some of these folks are downright fascists, and the only way to fix it is to start a new subreddit or try appeal to reddit staff Maybe the burden of moderation makes them this way, I don't know. But reddit is worse off with them.

Moderation is an incredibly difficult task and almost impossible to get right. There are subs with better mods and worse mods. But lack of moderation is the best way to ensure that a platform becomes absolute garbage as quickly as possible.

see: Voat

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#278

Post by mvdtnz »

btreecat wrote: post #238
torstenvl wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP expressed an opinion about abusive moderators. Your response is to disagree with him, identify yourself as a moderator, and then... be abusive? How exactly did you think that profanity and personal attacks were going to help make your point?

[flagged]

> IDK how you think this is abusive

Let's have a look at some of the adjectives you have used, directed at people in this thread,

Noisy

nonsensical

ridiculous

silly

a problem

ignorant

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#279

Post by mvdtnz »

spookthesunset wrote: post #234
btreecat wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound like the full story.

> That doesn't sound like the full story. Nope. That is it. Many, many subs would outright ban you if you dared to question the narrative or posted to a "misinformation" subreddit like /r/lockdownskepticism. It was pathetic, honestly. God forbid anybody disagree with what society chose to do with covid....

Same thing was happening in the New Zealand for some time.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#280

Post by nailer »

btreecat wrote: post #118
unsupp0rted wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight.…

As someone who used to mod, jfc you're clearly one of the folks who was a problem if that's your opening position. I know that had you stepped up to help out one of your favorite subs, you'd have a different lense. You comment is v clearly just ignorant.

> jfc you're clearly one of the folks who was a problem if that's your opening position

I don’t think “jesus fucking Christ” complies with the HN guidelines, but anyway:

I was recently banned and accused of secretly being a Russian spy by the moderators of a politics subreddit, for my liberal, but not far left views. I am active on at least two subreddits of invading Russian soldiers dying so I would’ve thought it would have been clear that I dislike the Russian government.

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