Re:How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet
by moultano on Wednesday May 30, 2012 @04:48PM
(#4044748)
Communities are a great start, but I feel like reddit is missing out on central observations about how things get upvoted: Things that you can upvote quickly get upvoted more.
Suppose there are two links of equal quality. (Whatever that means.) One is a photograph that I can digest in 10 seconds of wow. One is an article that I can read in half an hour of wow.
The photograph I upvote immediately because I'm done and move on. The article I read for half an hour, return to my redditing shell shocked and amazed, and upvote.
Now if something has to get a high volume of upvotes quickly to make it to the front page and linger, you're going to see a lot of quick content, and not a lot of slow content, because the click upvote cycle is just faster.
This feels like a social problem, but it's actual a technical problem. Long stuff gets upvotes slower than short stuff, and nothing in the system accounts for that. The social problem emerges from the technical problem.
Suppose there are two links of equal quality. (Whatever that means.) One is a photograph that I can digest in 10 seconds of wow. One is an article that I can read in half an hour of wow.
The photograph I upvote immediately because I'm done and move on. The article I read for half an hour, return to my redditing shell shocked and amazed, and upvote.
Now if something has to get a high volume of upvotes quickly to make it to the front page and linger, you're going to see a lot of quick content, and not a lot of slow content, because the click upvote cycle is just faster.
This feels like a social problem, but it's actual a technical problem. Long stuff gets upvotes slower than short stuff, and nothing in the system accounts for that. The social problem emerges from the technical problem.