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The Reddit redesign must be the worst redesign in the history of redesigns. It's super slow to load. It's slow to use (Scroll is sluggish. It loads giant imag

by TekMol 8y ago

The Reddit redesign must be the worst redesign in the history of redesigns. It's super slow to load. It's slow to use (Scroll is sluggish. It loads giant images and puts huge autoplaying videos in your face. Comment function now starts an ugly html wysiwyg editor). It misses features (outgoing links in the sidebars are gone). It takes away screen estate by having a fixed element on top of the screen that stays there when you scroll down. It's buggy (often weird overlaps between elements happen when you resize the screen). It's confusing. When I click on a post I get a view that shows the post in an overlay of the page I was looking at. When I reload the page I suddenly get a completely different view with only the post. It's almost unusable on my iPad (where I have to beg for the desktop version every time I open it because the mobile version is even worse). It seems like they are still A/B testing it. Because sometimes I get the redesign and sometimes the original design. Funny enough, I can see how the redesign might increase user engagement. The endless scroll with content right in your face is kind of addicting. It pulls you in a state of "I hate this. And I hate myself for using it. But I can't stop. I will just scroll down one post further.". So the experience is worse but the KPIs might be better. I bet this is how booking.com became the hell that it is. I would love to see how the numbers of those tests look like.

invalidusernam3 8y ago
This thread in /r/dataisbeautiful seemed to indicate most people hate the new design and avoid it (old.reddit.com) - https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/9e4gvn/reddits_opinion_on_the_redesign_who_loves_it_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/9e4gvn/red...
- wingerlang 8y ago
  7k data point here basically means 7k people that care enough / dislike the redesign enough to be involved in the poll to begin with. How many users each day doesn't give a hoot about the redesign? 100's of thousands?
  - user812 8y ago
    I'm a mod of a small subreddit and during the last 3 months around 10-15% of our visitors used the redesign, 20% browse on mobile, 30% use an App, and the rest use the old design. Engagement is highest in the Apps.
    - mercer 8y ago
      anecdotally, everyone I know primarily uses apps. sometimes multiple apps for various different use-cases. I fear the day reddit closes its API...
    - ddingus 8y ago
      Mine is different. Majority are on desktop. Old reddit on the sub is a small share.
    - dstroot 8y ago
      Thanks for sharing this. I use Reddit primarily on an iPhone using the app. I find it enjoyable. Kudos! I like the new React web site as well visually but agree with the usability issues noted here. I have to manually clear all my cookies to be able to login.
- moufestaphio 8y ago
  I like that your link is to old.reddit hah
  - invalidusernam3 8y ago
    Haha I didn't even notice that, I'm using a chrome plugin to force old.reddit
- ProAm 8y ago
  I still use i.reddit.com on mobile because its a fast good experience
reactor 8y ago
The executive(s) who were/are responsible for their re-design must be shown doors.
- a012 8y ago
  Unless Reddit's userbase is shrinking (share value drops), they'll shove their re-design to all users' throat. I guarantee it.
  - dorfsmay 8y ago
    They keep saying they will never disable old.reddit.com.
simias 8y ago
That's the problem with the vast majority of modern social networks, they're effectively designed from the ground up as a huge bait and switch: be user friendly to attract a community then become advertiser friendly when the community is well established and the network effects mean that most of it is captive. Even if 90% of reddit users are unhappy with the way the platform is run most of them probably won't consider giving up on their favorite subreddits. It's the same situation with Youtube, Facebook and others, and I'm sure it'll eventually be that way with Discord and whatever other flavor-of-the-year social network is popular these days. As far as I can tell the only way around that is distributed and/or not-for-profit social networks where the users are actually in charge. MWWA: Make the Web a Web Again.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Yep. Breaking in the presence of "software blockers" (lol) so that you add reddit to your exception list is an evil feature, not a bug.
  - teddyfrozevelt 8y ago
    You don’t have to whitelist all of reddit, just gateway.reddit.com. Unless something has changed, this still blocks ads. Blame the filter lists.
- ddingus 8y ago
  Had Reddit not been sold, it was self sustaining.
  - simias 8y ago
    I don't think being self sustaining is sufficient if you're a web company these days. Shareholders want growth. Execs whose bonuses are indexed on growth want growth. It's always more, more users, more ads, more engagement... Why earn one million when you can earn two? Who cares if you're the new Digg if you could be the new Facebook instead?
    - 8y ago
tannhaeuser 8y ago
It actually takes so much space away with "get app" nagging that I've got about 2 lines of text for actually editing a post. Which is then not properly scrolled into view so you're basically editing blindly. What's also confusing is that when you're pressing the "send" button, it doesn't give feedback until after about a couple seconds or so. Meanwhile, thinking it didn't "take", you're frantically pressing "send" again a couple of times, which results in as many posts because reddit also doesn't have double-post suppression. Makes you really look like an idiot. Hint: aggressive "get app" placing actually signals to never, ever load the app. I can't believe reddit's strategy of making the mobile web experience so annoying that folks are giving in to install the app is a winning one.
- andreareina 8y ago
  You can append ".compact" (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact ) to the path to get a much better mobile experience.
mscasts 8y ago
I'm an avid reddit user but I completely agree with you. The redesign is outright horrible to the point that if they stop allowing the old design (old.reddit.com) sometime in the future and force me on the new design I will most likely just stop using reddit.
- axilmar 8y ago
  I am on the exact same bandwagon.
mtrycz2 8y ago
Were you there on the Slashdot redesign?
- TekMol 8y ago
  Haha, yeah. I can't remember it well, but I think that one was not great either.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- david-cako 8y ago
  Slashdot on iOS: no back button, no url bar. Perfectly unusable. No idea why they don't remove the web app meta tag. It's terrible. Slashdot is literally unusable if you add it to your home screen.
jccalhoun 8y ago
It is still a beta so I hope that some of the bugs will be ironed out. However, it is frustrating because everything now takes an extra click. Mulireddits, changing from hot to new, or top all used to be right there. Now each of them are hidden behind a dropdown menu. I mean is Big Mouse an investor in Reddit and trying to make our mice wear out twice as fast?
Quequau 8y ago
Several of the subreddits I mod make extensive use of CSS decorations. It's simply impossible to construct anything similar with the redesign. There are also so many missing or broken features that are in a state of flux it's hardly worthwhile to put forth a lot of effort attempting to do so. Moreover watching the traffic stats it's clear that the majority of users access Reddit in the communities I care for do so through mobile apps where not only is it impossible to do nearly any form of differentiation, it's difficult to communicate community standards or other info, like FAQs to casual users. So currently the most functional user interface that can effectively communicate all features available to communities is the old desktop one, which by design is now the least used. It's a farcical disaster.
- j605 8y ago
  Everything is going mobile so you can't fault people for using a mobile app. FWIW I think there is some variety in reddit mobile apps.
  - Quequau 8y ago
    Oh... I'm not faulting users for terrible and woefully incomplete UI design.
  - dorfsmay 8y ago
    A lot of people, myself included, won't install an apps unless it brings value over the website. When you look at it that way, very few apps make sense for the user, most of them are built to capture information about you.
  - Eire_Banshee 8y ago
    Access is going mobile. I would make (the uneducated) argument that most people dont want to install your app, they just want to access your site from a mobile browser. I hate getting 5000 worthless push notifications and cluttering my phone with a bunch of apps.
    - mercer 8y ago
liftbigweights 8y ago
> The Reddit redesign must be the worst redesign in the history of redesigns. Welcome to the user-friendly to ad-friendly switch. They went from being a tech-oriented/friendly company to a news-style company as soon as they were bought by a publisher. An HN post a few days. "Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942237 It's not just the horrible redesign. Reddit changed for the worse in every way possible. The quality of content is pathetic. All you get is just political ads pretending to be reddit content and reposts. But the biggest disappointment is their change in ethos. Reddit used to support free speech, now they support censorship just like most publishers and media companies. When digg screwed up, we had reddit to fall back on. Now that reddit screwed up, there is nothing else to fall back on. "nothing gold can stay."
- globe1337 8y ago
  Reddit is so astroturfed now it's not even funny.
- Timmah 8y ago
  Lots of redditors are coming here, unfortunately
wyldfire 8y ago
While I share some disdain for the redesign, I usually forget that it exists because I'm always logged in and never opted-in to the redesigned site. Let's at least praise reddit for having the sense to make the redesign opt-in.
- sethammons 8y ago
  Many things start opt-in and later become the only option
  - meowface 8y ago
    Definitely, and I think that's very likely reddit's goal here. But I also think they have enough sense to not make it mandatory or opt-out anytime soon, since there are so many complaints.
- jjaredsimpson 8y ago
  Same here. I starting seeing front page posts about how much everyone hated the redesign and I had no idea what anyone was talking about. It's a total non issue to me.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  I never opt in to anything and somehow my account got permanently opted in (as in none of the opt out links work and I have to use a browser extension to keep old.reddit). Further, based on replies to my gripes, this seems to be a common state of affairs. Don't praise them just because you're in the control group ;)
  - wyldfire 8y ago
    Wow, is this really the case? If so, that is really bad and this is worthy of some of the concern/frustration.
    - jjoonathan 8y ago
      Yes, it's really the case. We wouldn't need browser extensions to force old.reddit if the opt-in/opt-out obeyed our wishes.
dorfsmay 8y ago
> It seems like they are still A/B testing it. Because sometimes I get the redesign and sometimes the original design. https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com
protomikron 8y ago
Agreed. And I wouldn't consider myself to be nit-picky regarding design, as I mostly read Reddit for the content in specific subs. Despite some questionable design decisions my main grip with the new design is that it often just does not work at all. I rarely alter default options in software but I had to use old.reddit.com quite often to even use the site: - sometimes the whole page does not work because of cookie issues - sometimes posts don't load (I have to manually refresh) - sub's sidebars missing: there was often useful information (might be the job of the moderators though) - unable to do local search (CTRL-F) due to endless scroll Regarding my last point, Reddit is not the only culprit and many websites unfortunately switch to this style - hopefully at least Google keep their pagination - but I find it terrible. With traditional pagination you can CTRL-F for keywords, go to the next page, and repeat the process, but with endless-scroll content is usually loaded dynamically depending on your viewport, so it's nearly impossible to search in a reliable way.
- Retroity 8y ago
  Exactly. There are often times where I get a blank page and have to refresh. Combine that with the fact that CPU usage is way higher on the redesign for me, and after about a month or so of testing it I reverted to the old design. The fact that Reddit even considered making this the default design for logged out users is laughable.
- headShrinker 8y ago
  > sub's sidebars missing I'm a mod for a few subs and for that reason was forced to start using the new UI. Most of the sidebar can be developed to look and work similar to the old markdown sidebar, but without all the custom css styling. I see the new UI as the a less dramatic version of myspace as the old, and facebook as new.* This includes but not limited to stripping out custom CSS. (You don't have to be a front end developer to style your sub anymore.) The reddit ecosystem as a whole will now look and function much the same everywhere. Some sub designs were getting out of hand. This gives Reddit execs and admins much more control and the lowly mod a lot less. Alas the reddit mod is further relegated the jerk the community maligns for setting arbitrary rules and unfairly limiting free speech. Also a lot of the mod tools are streamlined, link/user flair, user access/banning, etc. I really don't like the look and feel of the new UI and after a month of constant use still prefer the old UI. *(Avoiding any reference to dig 4.0)
skizm 8y ago
https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com
baldfat 8y ago
> The Reddit redesign must be the worst redesign in the history of redesigns www.digg.com
- mercer 8y ago
  considering how much larger Reddit has become than Digg ever was, if the redesign becomes mandatory and if it causes a mass exodus, this one would be worse. The question is if these two things will happen, of course. EDIT: another avenue of foot-shooting might be closing the API off from the unofficial reddit apps.
  - sushibowl 8y ago
    There seems to be a lack of really viable alternatives for an exodus to happen toward. If Reddit is the new Digg, who is the new Reddit?
  - baldfat 8y ago
    Digg was much much larger then Reddit. Then the redesign happened (They also had people gaming the scoring system which soured the waters) Digg died in a few months.
ddingus 8y ago
RES offers endless scroll and it works on old Reddit just fine. Sidebar content is often gems. Seems foolish to ignore it. Like a big middle finger to communities.
DerfNet 8y ago
The endless scroll view looks exactly like 9Gag. I never thought I'd see the day.
drakenot 8y ago
It broke scrolling to the point that my favorite Chrome extension Vimium had to special case the reddit redesign.
BrandonMarc 8y ago
I think you're looking at the re-design from a user-experience perspective, and this is probably wrong. Think of Reddit as a for-profit company, and then consider what that company might want out of a re-design. They'll talk in public up one side and down the other about making it a friendlier place and easier to use, but ... consider some alternative motives. What might those be? I suspect some VERY important goals of the re-design are: INCREASE USER ENGAGEMENT - get users to stay longer, and if they leave, make it less permanent ... tactically: • all external links open in a new tab now • infinite-scroll • simplify subreddit / multireddit management INCREASE AD VIEWS & AD CLICKS - with users more engaged, monetize their attention: • make subreddit designs far more uniform, with fewer CSS tricks to really change the layout / experience • make it difficult / inconsistent (!) to try to do some impressive CSS design, to discourage subreddit managers from taking layout changes beyond a certain threshold • make the "post" ads just a little less obvious and a little more enticing • make the "post" ads far more common than before --- I could be wrong on all these. I suspect I'm right on several.
- finnthehuman 8y ago
  >I think you're looking at the re-design from a user-experience perspective, and this is probably wrong. Think of Reddit as a for-profit company, and then consider what that company might want out of a re-design. But I am a user, how is it wrong that I don't prioritize the business goals in my assessment of the redesign? Their goals are obvious, and the person your replying to already acknowledged them anyway.
m-p-3 8y ago
> The endless scroll with content right in your face is kind of addicting. I think this is why Facebook, 9GAG and others are popular. People just want to binge content with the least amount of effort possible.

by TekMol 8y ago

invalidusernam3 8y ago

This thread in /r/dataisbeautiful seemed to indicate most people hate the new design and avoid it (old.reddit.com) - https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/9e4gvn/reddits_opinion_on_the_redesign_who_loves_it_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/9e4gvn/red...

wingerlang 8y ago
7k data point here basically means 7k people that care enough / dislike the redesign enough to be involved in the poll to begin with. How many users each day doesn't give a hoot about the redesign? 100's of thousands?
- user812 8y ago
  I'm a mod of a small subreddit and during the last 3 months around 10-15% of our visitors used the redesign, 20% browse on mobile, 30% use an App, and the rest use the old design. Engagement is highest in the Apps.
  - mercer 8y ago
    anecdotally, everyone I know primarily uses apps. sometimes multiple apps for various different use-cases. I fear the day reddit closes its API...
  - ddingus 8y ago
    Mine is different. Majority are on desktop. Old reddit on the sub is a small share.
  - dstroot 8y ago
    Thanks for sharing this. I use Reddit primarily on an iPhone using the app. I find it enjoyable. Kudos! I like the new React web site as well visually but agree with the usability issues noted here. I have to manually clear all my cookies to be able to login.
moufestaphio 8y ago
I like that your link is to old.reddit hah
- invalidusernam3 8y ago
  Haha I didn't even notice that, I'm using a chrome plugin to force old.reddit
ProAm 8y ago
I still use i.reddit.com on mobile because its a fast good experience

reactor 8y ago

The executive(s) who were/are responsible for their re-design must be shown doors.

a012 8y ago
Unless Reddit's userbase is shrinking (share value drops), they'll shove their re-design to all users' throat. I guarantee it.
- dorfsmay 8y ago
  They keep saying they will never disable old.reddit.com.

simias 8y ago

That's the problem with the vast majority of modern social networks, they're effectively designed from the ground up as a huge bait and switch: be user friendly to attract a community then become advertiser friendly when the community is well established and the network effects mean that most of it is captive. Even if 90% of reddit users are unhappy with the way the platform is run most of them probably won't consider giving up on their favorite subreddits. It's the same situation with Youtube, Facebook and others, and I'm sure it'll eventually be that way with Discord and whatever other flavor-of-the-year social network is popular these days. As far as I can tell the only way around that is distributed and/or not-for-profit social networks where the users are actually in charge. MWWA: Make the Web a Web Again.

jjoonathan 8y ago
Yep. Breaking in the presence of "software blockers" (lol) so that you add reddit to your exception list is an evil feature, not a bug.
- teddyfrozevelt 8y ago
  You don’t have to whitelist all of reddit, just gateway.reddit.com. Unless something has changed, this still blocks ads. Blame the filter lists.
ddingus 8y ago
Had Reddit not been sold, it was self sustaining.
- simias 8y ago
  I don't think being self sustaining is sufficient if you're a web company these days. Shareholders want growth. Execs whose bonuses are indexed on growth want growth. It's always more, more users, more ads, more engagement... Why earn one million when you can earn two? Who cares if you're the new Digg if you could be the new Facebook instead?
  - 8y ago

tannhaeuser 8y ago

It actually takes so much space away with "get app" nagging that I've got about 2 lines of text for actually editing a post. Which is then not properly scrolled into view so you're basically editing blindly. What's also confusing is that when you're pressing the "send" button, it doesn't give feedback until after about a couple seconds or so. Meanwhile, thinking it didn't "take", you're frantically pressing "send" again a couple of times, which results in as many posts because reddit also doesn't have double-post suppression. Makes you really look like an idiot. Hint: aggressive "get app" placing actually signals to never, ever load the app. I can't believe reddit's strategy of making the mobile web experience so annoying that folks are giving in to install the app is a winning one.

andreareina 8y ago
You can append ".compact" (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact ) to the path to get a much better mobile experience.

mscasts 8y ago

I'm an avid reddit user but I completely agree with you. The redesign is outright horrible to the point that if they stop allowing the old design (old.reddit.com) sometime in the future and force me on the new design I will most likely just stop using reddit.

axilmar 8y ago
I am on the exact same bandwagon.

mtrycz2 8y ago

Were you there on the Slashdot redesign?

TekMol 8y ago
Haha, yeah. I can't remember it well, but I think that one was not great either.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
david-cako 8y ago
Slashdot on iOS: no back button, no url bar. Perfectly unusable. No idea why they don't remove the web app meta tag. It's terrible. Slashdot is literally unusable if you add it to your home screen.

jccalhoun 8y ago

It is still a beta so I hope that some of the bugs will be ironed out. However, it is frustrating because everything now takes an extra click. Mulireddits, changing from hot to new, or top all used to be right there. Now each of them are hidden behind a dropdown menu. I mean is Big Mouse an investor in Reddit and trying to make our mice wear out twice as fast?

Quequau 8y ago

Several of the subreddits I mod make extensive use of CSS decorations. It's simply impossible to construct anything similar with the redesign. There are also so many missing or broken features that are in a state of flux it's hardly worthwhile to put forth a lot of effort attempting to do so. Moreover watching the traffic stats it's clear that the majority of users access Reddit in the communities I care for do so through mobile apps where not only is it impossible to do nearly any form of differentiation, it's difficult to communicate community standards or other info, like FAQs to casual users. So currently the most functional user interface that can effectively communicate all features available to communities is the old desktop one, which by design is now the least used. It's a farcical disaster.

j605 8y ago
Everything is going mobile so you can't fault people for using a mobile app. FWIW I think there is some variety in reddit mobile apps.
- Quequau 8y ago
  Oh... I'm not faulting users for terrible and woefully incomplete UI design.
- dorfsmay 8y ago
  A lot of people, myself included, won't install an apps unless it brings value over the website. When you look at it that way, very few apps make sense for the user, most of them are built to capture information about you.
- Eire_Banshee 8y ago
  Access is going mobile. I would make (the uneducated) argument that most people dont want to install your app, they just want to access your site from a mobile browser. I hate getting 5000 worthless push notifications and cluttering my phone with a bunch of apps.
  - mercer 8y ago

liftbigweights 8y ago

> The Reddit redesign must be the worst redesign in the history of redesigns. Welcome to the user-friendly to ad-friendly switch. They went from being a tech-oriented/friendly company to a news-style company as soon as they were bought by a publisher. An HN post a few days. "Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942237 It's not just the horrible redesign. Reddit changed for the worse in every way possible. The quality of content is pathetic. All you get is just political ads pretending to be reddit content and reposts. But the biggest disappointment is their change in ethos. Reddit used to support free speech, now they support censorship just like most publishers and media companies. When digg screwed up, we had reddit to fall back on. Now that reddit screwed up, there is nothing else to fall back on. "nothing gold can stay."

globe1337 8y ago
Reddit is so astroturfed now it's not even funny.
Timmah 8y ago
Lots of redditors are coming here, unfortunately

wyldfire 8y ago

While I share some disdain for the redesign, I usually forget that it exists because I'm always logged in and never opted-in to the redesigned site. Let's at least praise reddit for having the sense to make the redesign opt-in.

sethammons 8y ago
Many things start opt-in and later become the only option
- meowface 8y ago
  Definitely, and I think that's very likely reddit's goal here. But I also think they have enough sense to not make it mandatory or opt-out anytime soon, since there are so many complaints.
jjaredsimpson 8y ago
Same here. I starting seeing front page posts about how much everyone hated the redesign and I had no idea what anyone was talking about. It's a total non issue to me.
jjoonathan 8y ago
I never opt in to anything and somehow my account got permanently opted in (as in none of the opt out links work and I have to use a browser extension to keep old.reddit). Further, based on replies to my gripes, this seems to be a common state of affairs. Don't praise them just because you're in the control group ;)
- wyldfire 8y ago
  Wow, is this really the case? If so, that is really bad and this is worthy of some of the concern/frustration.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    Yes, it's really the case. We wouldn't need browser extensions to force old.reddit if the opt-in/opt-out obeyed our wishes.

dorfsmay 8y ago

> It seems like they are still A/B testing it. Because sometimes I get the redesign and sometimes the original design. https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com

protomikron 8y ago

Agreed. And I wouldn't consider myself to be nit-picky regarding design, as I mostly read Reddit for the content in specific subs. Despite some questionable design decisions my main grip with the new design is that it often just does not work at all. I rarely alter default options in software but I had to use old.reddit.com quite often to even use the site: - sometimes the whole page does not work because of cookie issues - sometimes posts don't load (I have to manually refresh) - sub's sidebars missing: there was often useful information (might be the job of the moderators though) - unable to do local search (CTRL-F) due to endless scroll Regarding my last point, Reddit is not the only culprit and many websites unfortunately switch to this style - hopefully at least Google keep their pagination - but I find it terrible. With traditional pagination you can CTRL-F for keywords, go to the next page, and repeat the process, but with endless-scroll content is usually loaded dynamically depending on your viewport, so it's nearly impossible to search in a reliable way.

Retroity 8y ago
Exactly. There are often times where I get a blank page and have to refresh. Combine that with the fact that CPU usage is way higher on the redesign for me, and after about a month or so of testing it I reverted to the old design. The fact that Reddit even considered making this the default design for logged out users is laughable.
headShrinker 8y ago
> sub's sidebars missing I'm a mod for a few subs and for that reason was forced to start using the new UI. Most of the sidebar can be developed to look and work similar to the old markdown sidebar, but without all the custom css styling. I see the new UI as the a less dramatic version of myspace as the old, and facebook as new.* This includes but not limited to stripping out custom CSS. (You don't have to be a front end developer to style your sub anymore.) The reddit ecosystem as a whole will now look and function much the same everywhere. Some sub designs were getting out of hand. This gives Reddit execs and admins much more control and the lowly mod a lot less. Alas the reddit mod is further relegated the jerk the community maligns for setting arbitrary rules and unfairly limiting free speech. Also a lot of the mod tools are streamlined, link/user flair, user access/banning, etc. I really don't like the look and feel of the new UI and after a month of constant use still prefer the old UI. *(Avoiding any reference to dig 4.0)

skizm 8y ago

https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com

baldfat 8y ago

> The Reddit redesign must be the worst redesign in the history of redesigns www.digg.com

mercer 8y ago
considering how much larger Reddit has become than Digg ever was, if the redesign becomes mandatory and if it causes a mass exodus, this one would be worse. The question is if these two things will happen, of course. EDIT: another avenue of foot-shooting might be closing the API off from the unofficial reddit apps.
- sushibowl 8y ago
  There seems to be a lack of really viable alternatives for an exodus to happen toward. If Reddit is the new Digg, who is the new Reddit?
- baldfat 8y ago
  Digg was much much larger then Reddit. Then the redesign happened (They also had people gaming the scoring system which soured the waters) Digg died in a few months.

ddingus 8y ago

RES offers endless scroll and it works on old Reddit just fine. Sidebar content is often gems. Seems foolish to ignore it. Like a big middle finger to communities.

DerfNet 8y ago

The endless scroll view looks exactly like 9Gag. I never thought I'd see the day.

drakenot 8y ago

It broke scrolling to the point that my favorite Chrome extension Vimium had to special case the reddit redesign.

BrandonMarc 8y ago

I think you're looking at the re-design from a user-experience perspective, and this is probably wrong. Think of Reddit as a for-profit company, and then consider what that company might want out of a re-design. They'll talk in public up one side and down the other about making it a friendlier place and easier to use, but ... consider some alternative motives. What might those be? I suspect some VERY important goals of the re-design are: INCREASE USER ENGAGEMENT - get users to stay longer, and if they leave, make it less permanent ... tactically: • all external links open in a new tab now • infinite-scroll • simplify subreddit / multireddit management INCREASE AD VIEWS & AD CLICKS - with users more engaged, monetize their attention: • make subreddit designs far more uniform, with fewer CSS tricks to really change the layout / experience • make it difficult / inconsistent (!) to try to do some impressive CSS design, to discourage subreddit managers from taking layout changes beyond a certain threshold • make the "post" ads just a little less obvious and a little more enticing • make the "post" ads far more common than before --- I could be wrong on all these. I suspect I'm right on several.

finnthehuman 8y ago
>I think you're looking at the re-design from a user-experience perspective, and this is probably wrong. Think of Reddit as a for-profit company, and then consider what that company might want out of a re-design. But I am a user, how is it wrong that I don't prioritize the business goals in my assessment of the redesign? Their goals are obvious, and the person your replying to already acknowledged them anyway.

m-p-3 8y ago

> The endless scroll with content right in your face is kind of addicting. I think this is why Facebook, 9GAG and others are popular. People just want to binge content with the least amount of effort possible.