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A comment on Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews. Parent comment

Re:Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion ... by bad_user on Thursday January 05, 2012 @06:14PM (#3431062)
As with any user-generated content website, it has a problem: amongst those many users Reddit has there are also lots of dicks that spoil the conversations for everybody.

I don't think Reddit wants to go on the path of Youtube - useful for finding out links, but with useless and rude conversations that make you mad at waisting time reading them. I think Reddit got popular because in addition to links, users had meaningful things to say about those links, but the overall quality has been constantly dropping. Reddit should try to find ways to alleviate this phenomenon.

Here's a case study from today. I submitted a link to both HN and /r/programming [1] [2]

Most popular comment and criticism on HN:

   1. User tumblr.
   2. You're done.
Most popular comment and criticism on /r/programming:

   Scumbag programmer: Titles post "Blogging for Hackers". 
   Writes the whole thing in Ruby.

   Edit: Whoops - looks like those Ruby rockstars woke up.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3428369

[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/o3v2u/blogging_...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion ... by dekz on Thursday January 05, 2012 @06:31PM (#3431127)
Unfortunately proggit has become a cesspool, a complete juxtaposition of what reddit once was. I'm not familiar nor certain of a case where this has been turned around? Is it even advantageous for Reddit to attempt to remove the dregs from their site?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion ... by bad_user on Thursday January 05, 2012 @06:41PM (#3431160)
It is my belief (and from personal observation) that the bad apples constitute a very loud minority. Punishing just a couple and clearly promoting your values makes a big difference.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion ... by dekz on Thursday January 05, 2012 @06:55PM (#3431202)
I find it much harder to swallow the comments on reddit, at least here on HN there is a guideline which encourages comments which add to the discussion; whereas on reddit, it's a shamble of memes and novelty accounts which depending on the account handle are allowed to be rude/obnoxious/racist.

I find it easier to leave proggit/reddit behind and follow Hacker News simply due to my alignment with the guidelines and the current HN hive-mind (no memes, helpful discussions).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion ... by redthrowaway on Thursday January 05, 2012 @07:34PM (#3431324)
Reddit has a much bigger list of dos and don'ts than does HN: http://www.reddit.com/help/reddiquette

As memes are appropriate for many of the subreddits, they're obviously excluded. Still, HN is really no different than a subreddit run under the same rules.

[ Parent | on HN ]