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I thought it was interesting that one of their requirements was to provide an API that was easy to use for both bots and visualization tools. I remember readin

I thought it was interesting that one of their requirements was to provide an API that was easy to use for both bots and visualization tools. I remember reading some speculation when this was running that r/place was intentionally easy to interface with bots, while there were also complaints that the whole thing had been taken over by bots near the end.

gramstrong 9y ago
Without bots, I doubt that /r/place would have been very interesting. It's a nice thought that a million random strangers can be cohesive without automation, but for some reason I don't find that to be particularly realistic..
- kuschku 9y ago
  Oh it is very easy. You just need subreddits with lots of very loyal people who even do frequent meetups, and lots of those subreddits. And soon you get exactly what /r/place was.
- saulrh 9y ago
  As a concrete example, as far as I can tell the entire Puella Magi Madoka Magica section, starting from Homura Did Nothing Wrong next to Darth Plagueis The Wise, was hand-crafted and hand-maintained. On their discord they were actively discouraging community members that wanted to use bots.
- jobigoud 9y ago
  I remember taking part in a big drawing canvas exactly like this about twelve years ago between several Art/Photoshop communities, Worth1000.com, SomethingAwful, Fark.com etc. There wasn't bots at the time but it was still very socially interesting.
- ralfd 9y ago
  But reddit itself is a tool to bring cohesion out of a million random strangers. As others have said subcommunities quickly formed or some subreddits themselves had a orga-thread to paint an iconic logo relevant to their niche.