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Reddit kicked Digg's ass because Reddit is designed as a feedback loop that benefits all users. Digg only rewards elite users. Look at a random Reddit submissi
by jakevoytko 16y ago
Reddit kicked Digg's ass because Reddit is designed as a feedback loop that benefits all users. Digg only rewards elite users.
Look at a random Reddit submission. If it survives the first minute, it makes some user's frontpage. If it is "good," it gets votes and is seen by more people. If the username is popular, it gets upvoted faster. But it turns out this is not necessary for success - I have submitted successful articles without any possible benefit of name recognition, or help from friends.
Reddit's comment section is a great feedback loop: Reddit is designed for discussion, and discussion is great at generating more discussion. Large comment threads form on popular articles, even if they're only lightly inspired by the article or vapid. You must check your recent comments to defend yourself, since the risk is high that someone will strongly and persuasively disagree with you. After all, it's Reddit. Good comments get trophies. Really good comments make /r/bestof.
In contrast, Digg is a feedback loop that benefits the best users. Within a few years of Digg's launch (especially after they dropped the technology-only focus), it was almost impossible to get an article on the frontpage without a friend network, or the blessing of a poweruser. The various sections of Digg were littered with hundreds of high-quality articles with two Diggs. To successfully submit articles to Digg, you needed to focus energy on gaining a network and voting on articles that they submit, and using this network to gain a larger network. The last time I was there, the comments section was also a nightmare. It is designed for single-use comments, and not for discussion. At one point they introduced nested comments, but it seems like they've either done away with it, or don't have enough comments to nest.
The best website designs act as feedback loops. Reddit has polished theirs.
- joshfinnie 16y agoIt is funny, because I agree with your statement. But I never thought of Reddit as made for discussion. Maybe I miss out, but I always have a terrible time following the comments on Reddit (granted I don't even try on Digg and comparing Reddit to HN might be apples to oranges). The comments are usually confusing and non-beneficial to me.
- dpritchett 16y agoI get great mileage out of this "hide replies to comments" bookmarklet - it allows me to quickly read the best-rated comments that reply directly to the article. If a comment is thought-provoking I'll click through to see what discussion it's spawned. http://gist.github.com/582630 http://gist.github.com/582630
- there 16y agoi know from reading reddit often that there are frequently highly-rated comments as replies that are several levels deep, and possibly have nothing to do with the original top-level reply. i recommend sorting comments by "best", and then just cranking up your minimum score rating in your preferences so that comments under, say, 10 will not get shown.
- pstuart 16y agoFunnier still, I see it the opposite way: reddit discussions are, more often than not, more valuable than the articles themselves (although the s/n ratio is diminishing). Same is true for HN, but the s/n ratio remains quite high.
- ethikal 16y agoI think that the community itself matters significantly. IMO, the articles that I get from Hacker News are much more valuable than the articles that I consume from Reddit or Digg. In fact, I have seen a steady decline in the quality of content that I get from Reddit because of the surge of mainstream users.
- moultano 16y agoIt's not a surge of mainstream users. It's a surge of young users. People often forget that the entire internet is younger than you, and will be for the rest of your life. The average age on reddit is 21.