How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’s unstoppable force

Re:How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’... by TylerE on Saturday January 21, 2012 @12:37PM (#3494035)

That would make things worse. The biggest problem with Reddit right now is that not enough people downvote weak content. Making downvotes harder will only increase the rate at which the 4chan refugees meme the place up.

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Re:How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’... by Anechoic on Saturday January 21, 2012 @12:46PM (#3494056)

The biggest problem with Reddit right now is that not enough people downvote weak content

IMO the biggest problem with Reddit is that too many people downvote well-supported arguments because it goes against their belief system which really stymies the conversation. I'd like to see downvotes haves some 'cost' associated with them so they are used sparingly and on content that really deserves to be downvoted.

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Re:How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’... by mkr-hn on Saturday January 21, 2012 @01:21PM (#3494183)

The problem with this is that even the best communities have types of arguments that get plenty of upvotes. That would make it easy for someone who knows how to win upvotes to get all the downvote points they need, while making it hard on people who play fairly.

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Re:How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’... by saryant on Saturday January 21, 2012 @03:30PM (#3494484)

This was essentially Slashdot's approach to voting. Make mod points a sparse currency, forcing users to be far more cautious in their use of them.

I don't agree with their policy that those who vote in a thread may not comment in that thread but I think a lot can still be learned from Slashdot's model.

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Re:How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’... by Anechoic on Saturday January 21, 2012 @01:55PM (#3494251)

It doesn't have to be "downvote points", perhaps it's a limit on downvotes per day, perhaps it's a hit on karma (every downvote means a costs x number of karma points, and below a certain karma you can no longer downvote), etc.

There's always going to be a way for determined users to get around the limits, but if it can reduce the number of reflexive downvotes from most users it could still be a net win.

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Re:How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’... by adharmad on Saturday January 21, 2012 @01:58PM (#3494260)

One tweak to this can be to segregate karma points by category (or sub-reddit). That way, any downvote points that you need will need to be "earned" in the same topic.

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Re:How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’... by zhazam on Saturday January 21, 2012 @08:16PM (#3495267)

Arguably the bigger problem is that interesting content is determined by popular consensus, which rewards ingroup signifiers and pandering to the majority.

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Re:How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’... by tkahn6 on Saturday January 21, 2012 @02:03PM (#3494269)

> The biggest problem with Reddit right now is that not enough people downvote weak content

No the biggest problem is that for the majority of reddit users that 'weak content' is actually what they come to reddit for. It's a systemic problem with the community. The comment system works fine.

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