Ready For a Reddit Replacement? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#31

Post by zalew » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:31 AM UTC

rorrr wrote: post #3

Reddit's beauty is in sub-reddits. Don't like the front page? Just unsubscribe from it, and subscribe to whatever you like. http://forhiremedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/map-of-re...

yes, you can say reddit is what you make it. I no longer subscribe to frontpage and replaced extremely mainstream subreddits such as /r/pics with more fresh and entertaining like r/RedditThroughHistory and so on, and the experience is much more pleasant. yet, the decline of average submission and comment quality is noticable even in smarter subreddits such as r/TrueReddit. the digg migration put reddit in eternal september, first it was easily noticable only in /new (oh boy, going down there is only for hardcore users) and comments, now it's spread all over the site.

I've been a big fan of reddit for years, but nowadays, the only reason I don't get out is that if I happen to step by without my account I'd meet the general frontpage and that could be depressing.

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#32

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:31 AM UTC

akkartik wrote: post #21

fookyong wrote: post #14

On Hubski, user follow one another, rather than communities, as they do on Reddit. Instead of voting a post up and down, you simply share it. That propagates it to your readers; the more people share it, the hotter that post becomes. sounds like he has created Twitter.

But with threading, and without artificial length constraints.

[deleted]

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#33

Post by repsilat » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:32 AM UTC

rorrr wrote: post #3

Reddit's beauty is in sub-reddits. Don't like the front page? Just unsubscribe from it, and subscribe to whatever you like. http://forhiremedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/map-of-re...

The downside is that if a particularly good post in your favourite subreddit hits the front page the Visigoths are going to come in and leave stupid comments one way or another. /r/AskReddit is incredible because of its judicious moderation, but the same can't be said for /r/programming or /r/technology, for example.

What reddit really needs is a ranking engine recommending users, submissions and comments to you based on the users you've friended and the comments and submissions you've upvoted. Just take a quick approximation of PCA/SVD/eigenvalue/tachyon-polarity and let the users see if they like it.

EDIT: Another simple idea is ranking comment trees by their first few comments instead of ranking them just by their first comment. I'm going to read the immediate replies of the top post either way, and I'd rather get three or four good comments than one great comment and two or three crappy replies to it.

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#34

Post by ohashi » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:32 AM UTC

dorian-graph wrote: post #26

rorrr wrote: post #3

Reddit's beauty is in sub-reddits. Don't like the front page? Just unsubscribe from it, and subscribe to whatever you like. http://forhiremedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/map-of-re...

The frontpage isn't some singular magical land that was the only one affected by the apparent degradation of quality, others seem to be following suit.

It's really up to each subreddit to decide what kind of content it will be filled with - frontpage or not.

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#35

Post by phillmv » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:36 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #30

dillona wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is most certainly having its own Eternal September. I can not say I like that community much at all anymore

IMO it's all in the moderation. Reddit's very rudimentary up/downvote system, well, sucks. It lets the lowest common denominator rise to the top, which oddly enough is not what most users want to see. I'm imagining right now a Reddit with Slashdot's moderation system... but, I continue dreaming.

Slashdot… just failed remarkably. Randomly assigning moderation points based on existing karma was clever but… somehow the same, SAME five memes kept getting (Score: 5, funny) and the interface made it actively painful to browse through the comments.

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#36

Post by hackinthebochs » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:43 AM UTC

parfe wrote: post #22

georgieporgie wrote: post #4

Give users a basic IQ and personality test. Provide different content based upon where they fall.

What does IQ have to do with content? Steven Hawking could enjoy lolcats and your garbage man might be an ardent reader of philosophy. Stereotyping based on IQ or profession is fairly stupid. Smart people can like dumb things and dumb people can enjoy intellectual pursuits. If you want to pigeon hole people into categories go back to a high school cafeteria.

Is it even possible to have a dumb person who enjoys truly intellectual pursuits? I'm not outright stating its impossible, but I'd like to see a plausible scenario.

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#37

Post by haecib » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:45 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #30

dillona wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is most certainly having its own Eternal September. I can not say I like that community much at all anymore

IMO it's all in the moderation. Reddit's very rudimentary up/downvote system, well, sucks. It lets the lowest common denominator rise to the top, which oddly enough is not what most users want to see. I'm imagining right now a Reddit with Slashdot's moderation system... but, I continue dreaming.

> Reddit's very rudimentary up/downvote system, well, sucks. It lets the lowest common denominator rise to the top,

Which is why Hubski's solution is interesting. You're recognizing the quality of the content does not really lie in a singular post or link, but with the poster, in a general sense. There are certainly certain posters on Reddit who I know I can always look to for good content, -makes sense to have your feed populated by good content providers rather than up-votes from the crowd.

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#38

Post by dhugiaskmak » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:47 AM UTC

da_dude4242 wrote: post #28

jackolas wrote: post #7

No social platform is going to disrupt the existing systems until they decouple content and organization. The main issue is that we assume that all 'upvotes' are equal. If a user can select who is in their filter layer (like in Twitter), as opposed to selecting content (a subreddit), there will be a shift away from the cycle of bread and circuses. Hubski may be doing that but only implementing this one graph node dee…

>If a user can select who is in their filter layer (like in Twitter), as opposed to selecting content (a subreddit), there will be a shift away from the cycle of bread and circuses. Are you sure this isn't already happening to some degree? What reaches the front page of my account is different from what reaches the front page with cookies cleared. I suspect reddit is already using AI algorithms to filter out what is…

When you're logged in the front page only shows you the content from the reddits you're subscribed to, I believe.

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#39

Post by pbreit » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:49 AM UTC

hendzen wrote: post #18

ScottWhigham wrote: post #8

I always think it's ridiculous when I hear "It's the new reddit" and then see what basically amounts to a Wordpress blog layout. Reddit, digg, HN were all partly successful because of their layout, not in spite of it. I don't want to scroll past the meta of every article today just to see what you have; I want a list of what's happening that is sorted/controlled by the community. And the less images, the better. I li…

I would say that HN is successful in spite of its layout.

I think if you're going to make the "in spite of" argument (on any site), you have to bring some solid supporting evidence.

Re: Ready For a Reddit Replacement?

#40

Post by kissickas » Thu, Sep 01, 2011, 2:51 AM UTC

fookyong wrote: post #14

On Hubski, user follow one another, rather than communities, as they do on Reddit. Instead of voting a post up and down, you simply share it. That propagates it to your readers; the more people share it, the hotter that post becomes. sounds like he has created Twitter.

That's not fair. It has comment pages for each post (?) with proper comment threads- better than Google+ and facebook in that regard.

Edit: And, of course, twitter, the one without comments, comment sections, comment pages...