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The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

toddwschneider.com

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Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#91

Post by reitanqild »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #78
ketralnis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They already compress the votes so that it only looks like there are ~10,000 votes maximum, when in fact hundreds of thousands of people have probably voted on certain posts Again I'm out of the loop by several years here. But to my knowledge, no that's not true. There are just fewer voters than you think there are.

It's possible, but it seems unlikely. https://www.reddit.com/comments/z1c9z Obama's AMA. According to the sidebar, (upvotes - downvotes) = 14,700, with upvotes/(upvotes+downvotes) = 94%. Reddit recently changed their algorithms so that the 94% figure is very accurate. That means 14,700/0.94 ~= 15,600 people voted, according to the sidebar. Here are Reddit's traffic stats for the Obama AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IA…

I like the way you ask yourself critical questions and adjust!

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#94

Post by tedks »

hiou wrote: post #89
phillmv wrote: post #34

This is a gorgeous post and I shiver at the thought of how much work went into this! Thoughtful, detailed and chock full of great visualizations of the data. I'd be interested in a similar analysis of HN, as I'm interested in the editorial intent thus revealed. On tangential note, though, I was a bit surprised by the hypothesis. 'Meritocracy' to begin with is a dubious fiction, but especially so when mapped on to the…

I like as describe Reddit and HN to be voter nominated, not voter selected. Votes nominate stories, but then the algorithm decides which ones to pick from that pile.

And for HN, the "algorithm" is the subjective judgment of the moderation staff, as witnessed by countless articles on the misogyny in tech (as an example) getting axed from the front page.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#95

Post by gwillen »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #78
ketralnis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They already compress the votes so that it only looks like there are ~10,000 votes maximum, when in fact hundreds of thousands of people have probably voted on certain posts Again I'm out of the loop by several years here. But to my knowledge, no that's not true. There are just fewer voters than you think there are.

It's possible, but it seems unlikely. https://www.reddit.com/comments/z1c9z Obama's AMA. According to the sidebar, (upvotes - downvotes) = 14,700, with upvotes/(upvotes+downvotes) = 94%. Reddit recently changed their algorithms so that the 94% figure is very accurate. That means 14,700/0.94 ~= 15,600 people voted, according to the sidebar. Here are Reddit's traffic stats for the Obama AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IA…

I feel like people vote only partly on whether they think something is good or bad; they also (or maybe mostly) vote based on whether they think something has a higher or lower score than they think it deserves. So as a post or comment's score rises, people will stop upvoting when they feel it's got enough.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#96

Post by bluthru »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #63
thenmar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy that... the only liberal views I can think of that are popular in the aggregate on reddit are about the war on drugs and sometimes socialized medicine. In general, reddit is pretty hostile towards women, skeptical of feminism, overtly racist, and pro-military. I guess I would characterize it more as libertarianism strongly centered on the perspectives of middle class, white men. Edit: I guess "I do…

I'm not sure how being skeptical of feminism is an inherently non-liberal view. I'd say it depends on whether the feminism in question is oriented around civil rights, or around some form of critical gender theory. "Feminism" alone is not descriptive enough to make any judgment over. Pro-military? How? I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinist…

>I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinistic "support the troops" mentality and a belief that military service does not make one righteous in of itself.

Enough kids who grew up playing Call of Duty has shifted reddit into being more pro-military and pro-weapons. There is also a steady stream of "coming home" photos and videos with kids and pets.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#97

Post by beambot »

minimaxir wrote: post #53
phillmv wrote: post #34

This is a gorgeous post and I shiver at the thought of how much work went into this! Thoughtful, detailed and chock full of great visualizations of the data. I'd be interested in a similar analysis of HN, as I'm interested in the editorial intent thus revealed. On tangential note, though, I was a bit surprised by the hypothesis. 'Meritocracy' to begin with is a dubious fiction, but especially so when mapped on to the…

A note about the graphics: all the charts were made with R/ggplot2. Not only ggplot2, but basic ggplot2: the charts in the blog post can be made with about 5 lines of code maximum each. You can customize ggplot2 for even more beautiful charts, such as the ones used in my analysis of HN comments: http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/ Note that reproducing this analysis for the HN front page is harde…

Not all the charts are ggplot2. It looks like the big interactive one is javascript, specifically HighCharts.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#98

Post by vezzy-fnord »

bluthru wrote: post #96
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how being skeptical of feminism is an inherently non-liberal view. I'd say it depends on whether the feminism in question is oriented around civil rights, or around some form of critical gender theory. "Feminism" alone is not descriptive enough to make any judgment over. Pro-military? How? I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinist…

>I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinistic "support the troops" mentality and a belief that military service does not make one righteous in of itself. Enough kids who grew up playing Call of Duty has shifted reddit into being more pro-military and pro-weapons. There is also a steady stream of "coming home" photos and videos with kids and pet…

Not sure why being pro-weapons is bad, but alright.

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#99

Post by ketralnis »

dazmax wrote: post #77
mason240 wrote: post #6

>Much to my surprise, I found out that reddit's front pages are not a pure "meritocracy" based on votes, but that rankings depend heavily on subreddits. Is this really a surprise? If just went by upvotes alone, a sub with 1M subscribers will always dominate a sub with 500k. You need to factor in the that context.

That's what I thought at first too, but the data makes it clear that it isn't just based on votes weighted by subscriber count either.

It's not votes weighted by subscriber count at all. It's "hotness" weighted by the hotness of the highest-hotness link per subreddit

Hotness: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_s...

Front-page weighting: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma...

Re: The Reddit Front Page Is Not a Meritocracy

#100

Post by jedberg »

This post is interesting, but he should have just read the code:

https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma...

This is an effect of the normalization algorithm, which biases towards trying to have a post from as may different subreddits as possible on the front page.

Edit: At least we're consistent! Ketralnis said the same thing about an hour ago. :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568021

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