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Re:Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits by msla on Thursday April 12, 2018 @02:39PM (#16823696)
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 the same.

It's possible to talk about "The Average Redditor" or "The Average New Yorker" or "The Average Tokyo Resident", because statistics isn't about community, but the whole reason Reddit has survived at the size it is is precisely because subreddits allow different people to have vastly different views of "what's on Reddit" based on subscription/unsubscription. This allows The_Donald and EnoughTrumpSpam and dozens of other communities which would fight like cats in a sack were they ever mixed to share the same service.

So Reddit isn't a community. It's a pre-made hosted platform to build a community meeting point that you can largely (or completely, via invitation-only private subreddits) insulate from all the other communities on the same platform.

Re:Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits by skoocda on Thursday April 12, 2018 @08:45PM (#16826221)
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 valid to refer to "The Reddit Community", with some caution, because there is a familiarity with some of the same content, and an ability to relate in certain modes of thinking. The same way as "The Tokyo Community" generally familiar with Shibuya crossing, the local weather patterns, and behavioral expectations.

There's significant standard deviation, but also a commonality that enables a stronger connection to other members of the platform / city.

Re:Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits by nicoburns on Thursday April 12, 2018 @09:41PM (#16826517)
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 by curioussavage on Thursday April 12, 2018 @09:23PM (#16826411)
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 by taylorexpander on Friday April 13, 2018 @11:03AM (#16830606)
I literally just made an account today and it subscribed me to a bunch of defaults.
Re:Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits by x404 on Thursday April 12, 2018 @09:23PM (#16826410)
I prefer to call it the "United Communities of Reddit".