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What are the technology challenges is Reddit facing? Clearly not scaling as it's been pretty reliable. New features? What more feature does one need from Reddit

What are the technology challenges is Reddit facing? Clearly not scaling as it's been pretty reliable. New features? What more feature does one need from Reddit? It's pretty good for what it's doing.

dublinben 11y ago
The moderation tools are absolutely archaic. Moderating any subreddit of sufficient size requires a small army of bots and third party tools. Basic forum moderation tools like IP banning persistent troublemakers and spammers are still not available.
- tallerholler 11y ago
  hello, what challenges in particular? Are you a moderator? edit: I saw you posted a few challenges :) I don't work for reddit but if you're a moderator Id be interested to PM you about something around that...
  - dublinben 11y ago
    I am a moderator of several large (300k plus) subreddits. Same username here as there, or also @gmail.com. I'm happy to chat about the challenges of moderating these large communities.
  - amyjess 11y ago
    It's widely held that modmail is horribly designed. The admins have recently made some changes to that (threaded modmail), so there's definitely some improvement in that direction though.
dntrkv 11y ago
Maybe one day they will fix search?
- boomzilla 11y ago
  Most people I know just use Google for site search by adding the site name to the query. More sophisticated queries can use site:reddit.com syntax, but usually adding reddit to a query should have the desired effect. If any DuckDuckGo guy around here, is there a command for reddit search, like !rd or something.
  - danielki 11y ago
    The only DuckDuckGo ones I know of (!r, !reddit) use reddit's own search. Not sure if there are any others that don't
- raldi 11y ago
  What's an example of a search you did, and a submission that belonged in the results but wasn't?
  - raldi 11y ago
    (sound of crickets chirping)
- orky56 11y ago
  How about using Algolia like HN?
pavs 11y ago
Reddit still borks during peak hour, after all this years. But not as often as it used to. There was a huge discussion about reddit not implementing better moderation/spamming/vote-rigging and site wide feature tools that has been promised for years. Basically reddit has been bit stagnant feature wise for some time now. Lot were promise with lotsa new hires but nothing much to show for it. With spez being back, hopefully it will change. he doesnt have a habbit of bullshitting, unlike recent CEOs.
- boomzilla 11y ago
  I mostly read Reddit while not logged in, so I've never seen any latency. I guess it's mostly because of authentication/personalized content stuff, which should be easy to fix, by doing less of them or lazy loading.
  - pavs 11y ago
    Its a lot more than that I am sure. Considering its the 10th most visited site. Handling 1000s of comments per second (if not more), among other things, is no trivial thing. Their shadowbanning is the worst, I have an 8 year old account and I was shaddowbanned countless time, I was finally un-shadowbanned after years of whining about it. I have a feeling Spez will get this right. Lets see.
  - praneshp 11y ago
    I'm always logged in into reddit, but have no personalizations (like favorite subreddit, etc). I know that doesn't really guarantee anything, but reddit still borks at peak time for me. I'd assume it's very little compute for my personalization to load.
  - bluecalm 11y ago
    Maybe they serve more cached content to not logged users while being more careful about serving up-to-date one to the logged ones? It's just a wild guess I have no idea how it works.
    - dublinben 11y ago
spike021 11y ago
I can't say how often, but I've dealt with Reddit issues pretty frequently (at least once a week) where for at least three to five minutes I get the alien mascot (yes I forgot the name) saying the site is down/needs maintenance. It's not so good. Maybe if it was just once or even twice a month it wouldn't be so bad, but for me it's noticeable (so much so that I remember it happening).

What are the technology challenges is Reddit facing? Clearly not scaling as it's been pretty reliable. New features? What more feature does one need from Reddit? It's pretty good for what it's doing.

dublinben 11y ago

The moderation tools are absolutely archaic. Moderating any subreddit of sufficient size requires a small army of bots and third party tools. Basic forum moderation tools like IP banning persistent troublemakers and spammers are still not available.

tallerholler 11y ago
hello, what challenges in particular? Are you a moderator? edit: I saw you posted a few challenges :) I don't work for reddit but if you're a moderator Id be interested to PM you about something around that...
- dublinben 11y ago
  I am a moderator of several large (300k plus) subreddits. Same username here as there, or also @gmail.com. I'm happy to chat about the challenges of moderating these large communities.
- amyjess 11y ago
  It's widely held that modmail is horribly designed. The admins have recently made some changes to that (threaded modmail), so there's definitely some improvement in that direction though.

dntrkv 11y ago

Maybe one day they will fix search?

boomzilla 11y ago
Most people I know just use Google for site search by adding the site name to the query. More sophisticated queries can use site:reddit.com syntax, but usually adding reddit to a query should have the desired effect. If any DuckDuckGo guy around here, is there a command for reddit search, like !rd or something.
- danielki 11y ago
  The only DuckDuckGo ones I know of (!r, !reddit) use reddit's own search. Not sure if there are any others that don't
raldi 11y ago
What's an example of a search you did, and a submission that belonged in the results but wasn't?
- raldi 11y ago
  (sound of crickets chirping)
orky56 11y ago
How about using Algolia like HN?

pavs 11y ago

Reddit still borks during peak hour, after all this years. But not as often as it used to. There was a huge discussion about reddit not implementing better moderation/spamming/vote-rigging and site wide feature tools that has been promised for years. Basically reddit has been bit stagnant feature wise for some time now. Lot were promise with lotsa new hires but nothing much to show for it. With spez being back, hopefully it will change. he doesnt have a habbit of bullshitting, unlike recent CEOs.

boomzilla 11y ago
I mostly read Reddit while not logged in, so I've never seen any latency. I guess it's mostly because of authentication/personalized content stuff, which should be easy to fix, by doing less of them or lazy loading.
- pavs 11y ago
  Its a lot more than that I am sure. Considering its the 10th most visited site. Handling 1000s of comments per second (if not more), among other things, is no trivial thing. Their shadowbanning is the worst, I have an 8 year old account and I was shaddowbanned countless time, I was finally un-shadowbanned after years of whining about it. I have a feeling Spez will get this right. Lets see.
- praneshp 11y ago
  I'm always logged in into reddit, but have no personalizations (like favorite subreddit, etc). I know that doesn't really guarantee anything, but reddit still borks at peak time for me. I'd assume it's very little compute for my personalization to load.
- bluecalm 11y ago
  Maybe they serve more cached content to not logged users while being more careful about serving up-to-date one to the logged ones? It's just a wild guess I have no idea how it works.
  - dublinben 11y ago

spike021 11y ago

I can't say how often, but I've dealt with Reddit issues pretty frequently (at least once a week) where for at least three to five minutes I get the alien mascot (yes I forgot the name) saying the site is down/needs maintenance. It's not so good. Maybe if it was just once or even twice a month it wouldn't be so bad, but for me it's noticeable (so much so that I remember it happening).