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Dec 12 '05
On a few occasions, I've voted down highly-ranked junk science articles portraying correlation as causation (http://cr.yp.to/postpropter.html). I've wanted to explain, but of course, I couldn't.
Reddit now has more opportunity to become something like a self-aware community. I have also wondered sometimes why articles have a high rank, and wondered what others were thinking about it.
The web brings you the world, and I can't think of anything better than people thinking about it, writing about it, and having a dialog. It engages the mind, shares insights, and people like "talking."
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u/lisp-hacker Dec 13 '05
In my opinion, the only good part of Slashdot is the comments, so this is a welcome addition for me. It is the editors on Slashdot that seem to be the problem. Most of the time, the comments are more interesting than the linked articles.
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u/rmc Jan 25 '06
Sometime I just skip the article and read the comments. There's nothing wrong with that is there? ;)
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u/jevon Feb 01 '10
They really need to fix their UI though. I can't stand visiting Slashdot anymore.
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u/borland Dec 12 '05
At least the comments are non-intrusive. I liked the fact that reddit wasn't polluted with comments and stuff - remember to keep the interface clean
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u/schwarzwald Dec 13 '05
here's something i've wanted to know. how is reddit a business? how does it make money?
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u/beowulf Dec 13 '05
I suspect they are following Paul Graham's philosophy. It's much harder to make something popular than make it profitable. If you can figure out a way to get a lot of people visiting your site, you can find a way to make money on it.
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u/dylanm Dec 13 '05
I've been wondering that myself. The comments area has a large margin on the right that could fit, well, you know...
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Dec 13 '05
Well...they don't necessarily have to make any money right off the bat.
They can follow the lead of Digg and other 2.0 startups and get something unique and popular up and going and the....boom....VC capital. Or you just get bought outright like del.icio.us.
del.icio.us never had ads, and nonetheless, it ended up making money in the end.
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u/theycallmemorty Dec 12 '05
I would like it better if I could 'open and close' the list of comments on an article without leaving the main page.
Or atleast the 4-5 highest rated comments.
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u/dylanm Dec 12 '05
Wonderful! And it supports a limited amount of markup. I hope that the discussions will be respectful and edifying. It would be nice if the number of comments an entry had were displayed in the list view, and if the comment entry box were a bit larger (or resizeable). Oh, and does comment activity make something "hotter"?
Personally, I thought about leaving the site because the interaction that karma offers is pretty cold -- I certainly don't like seeing (-2) next to my name, and I feel like the negative ratings on legitimate articles are going to discourage some people. How are you guys rating articles? I tend to promote articles that I find interesting, leave alone things which are not of interest to me, and only demote articles which are old or obviously spam.
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Feb 01 '10
I hope that the discussions will be respectful and edifying.
:)
Have you been disappointed this far?
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Dec 12 '05
Now I want feature that lets me see all of a particular user's comments. :D
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u/dylanm Dec 12 '05
Agreed. And I'd like for reddit to keep track of things I've commented on and alert me when new comments (especially replies) have been made.
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u/charlieb Dec 12 '05
There's nothing like simplicity and not following the crowd. I for one welcome our new comment spam overlords. Oh and by the way;
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Come up with a great simple idea
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Wait for a degree of popularity and media attention
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Add unnecessary features
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Profit. Is this what you want?
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u/phob Feb 02 '10
There were memes back then!?
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u/charlieb Feb 02 '10
Wow, I do not remember. The frontpage was usually dominated by programming articles and lisp always got a good showing beyond that, like I say, I cannot remember.
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u/charlieb Dec 12 '05
Have you read slashdot lately? There are no comments on the front-page there either but their tone and idocy seeps through so even the real news stories are presented to a 4th grade reading level. And yes, I am a snob. I like reddit's emphasis on technical matters and programming but it not going to last long now. I guess it's the price of popularity. I wonder how long it'll be before there's some social networking options, "mckirkus has submitted links similar yours would you like to ask this person on a date?"
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Sep 23 '09
Now, three years later, what do you think of reddit?
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u/charlieb Sep 24 '09
Wow, I was pretty pissed off huh, well now three years later I think comments generally contribute to the signal more than the noise. There is no doubt that they changed the nature of the site and the way it's used. They have had the effect of moving a lot of content into reddit when the original idea, as I saw it, was for reddit to always point outwards.
They have helped build more of a sense of community. I'm very happy that reddit survived and I think that while comments helped bring the masses it was those masses that prevented reddit from being swallowed whole by the internet.
And I was only solicited for "friendship" once.
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u/JimThome Dec 12 '05
First, your claim that Slashdot presents stories to a fourth grade reading level is simply irrelevant. As opposed to Slashdot, all Reddit has no front page commentary whatsoever. If you don't want to see the "idocy" of all of the unwashed masses far beneath your pedestal, just don't click on "comments".
Second, this site is quite clearly not intended as a programming/tech specific site. It's quite clearly not intended as an anything specific site. If you love its degree of emphasis on programming and so forth, it should be quite simple for you to implement a similar site with a specific emphasis. Reddit's functionality is not complicated, and as you are a programming and tech "snob" far above our "idocy", you should have no trouble duplicating it.
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Dec 12 '05
Yeah, they aren't bad...but the current design for whatever reason makes it extremely difficult to read these comments.
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u/dylanm Dec 12 '05
An observation: people are beginning to use the comments field to subtitle their submissions.