one very big mistake reddit made was removing /r/reddit.com and leaving a vacuum for "default, catch-all subreddit" that people are now trying to shoehorn other defaults like /r/pics and /r/funny into
Amazingly enough the thread about his passing [1] has 34.340 upvotes and 31.742 downvotes.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/16fjjm/aaron_shwartz_r...
Re:Aaron is dead. From: Tim Berners-Lee
by drzaiusapelord on Saturday January 12, 2013 @04:34PM
(#5048977)
My understanding is that the system begins faking upvotes and downvotes at a certain point to fool spammers.
Which is still curious, because it's common knowledge at this point that the numbers are fudged. Why even display it at this point? It serves nothing but to cause confusion.
Even though people know it's fake, I am sure it still plays an important role in gamification.
On the upside, I do have faith that once his story gets out of the eternal september kiddie's paws, the facts and deep moral issues here will percolate to the surface, eventually. It'll just take some time.