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Does anyone know why Reddit seems to be alone among the world’s most popular sites in having so many outages and frequent periods of slowness? I’ve been on it f

Does anyone know why Reddit seems to be alone among the world’s most popular sites in having so many outages and frequent periods of slowness? I’ve been on it for more than a decade and its unreliability has been fairly constant. Is the engineering team more resource constrained than others or held back by unusual amounts of legacy code, or is it simply confirmation bias resulting from earlier experiences?

jakemal 7y ago
To me, it feels like outages are much less frequent than they were 7-10 years ago. It used to be a couple times a month. I don't remember the last time I saw one of their snoo error pages.
EasyToRemember 7y ago
There was a AMA from the engineering team. I don't remember the technical details but in the picture there was like max 10 persons, That seem a little understaffed for a website a this scale
mtmail 7y ago
From AMA (ask [Reddit sysadmins] anything) announcement 2019/09/19 https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9ver7h/14nov_reddit_infrastructure_ama/ https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9ver7h/14nov_redd... "I can answer this! According to various sources (mainly, complaints on the redesign subreddit), the new.reddit interface is a lot less tolerant of timeouts and delays. Old.reddit was much more relaxed and would wait longer before throwing up errors (like logouts and such), but new.reddit is RESPONSIVE!, and the backend isn't playing nice with the new, tighter tolerances." Full AMA https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9x577m/were_reddits_infrastructure_team_ask_us_anything/ https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9x577m/were_reddi... Also a 2018 AMA summaryhttps://github.com/yanhan/notes/blob/master/reddit-sysadmins-ama.md https://github.com/yanhan/notes/blob/master/reddit-sysadmins...
- wycy 7y ago
  Wow, I didn't know there was actually more to dislike about "new" reddit.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  Even if it were truely the reason (it's just someone uninvolved who saw a lot of complaints about the new interface) it doesn't explain the rest of the decade where there was no "new interface" and it was still a meme that Reddit was constantly down.
- xen0 7y ago
  "Responsive" is not a word that comes to mind when thinking about reddit's new interface.
  - TwoForOne 7y ago
    In my world (UX Designer) "responsive" means it responds to browser window size and accommodates all sizes from phone to desktop. Compare Old reddit and New reddit by shrinking your browser window in the x-axis on desktop.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      Is that the way 'responsive' is being used in this particular context? What does reflowing a webpage when the browser's window changes size have to do with these timeouts and delays in the backend?
      - basch 7y ago
        theres some ironic use of the word in the post above. they are mocking that the new and improved "responsive web" site isnt responsive in a speed context.
caust1c 7y ago
Outages are definitely less common than they used to be. But I would guess that reddit is one of the most popular sites on the internet because it's basically like an anonymous(ish) facebook with content guaranteed to be popular with the majority (by design). They've also made major efforts to keep the site socially sane for the majority of users (for better or worse, IMO generally better) with their moderation model. Whether or not it's a great site technically is irrelevant. It's something people want and something I keep coming back to because there's no equivalent when it comes to niche communities.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >keep coming back to because there's no equivalent when it comes to niche communities. Niche specific forums are better at everything niche communities want/need in a discussion space except bringing on new users. Considering the kinds of users you get when you're in close proximity to a colossus of internet riff-raff I don't think this is a big tradeoff.

jakemal 7y ago

To me, it feels like outages are much less frequent than they were 7-10 years ago. It used to be a couple times a month. I don't remember the last time I saw one of their snoo error pages.

EasyToRemember 7y ago

There was a AMA from the engineering team. I don't remember the technical details but in the picture there was like max 10 persons, That seem a little understaffed for a website a this scale

mtmail 7y ago

From AMA (ask [Reddit sysadmins] anything) announcement 2019/09/19 https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9ver7h/14nov_reddit_infrastructure_ama/ https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9ver7h/14nov_redd... "I can answer this! According to various sources (mainly, complaints on the redesign subreddit), the new.reddit interface is a lot less tolerant of timeouts and delays. Old.reddit was much more relaxed and would wait longer before throwing up errors (like logouts and such), but new.reddit is RESPONSIVE!, and the backend isn't playing nice with the new, tighter tolerances." Full AMA https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9x577m/were_reddits_infrastructure_team_ask_us_anything/ https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9x577m/were_reddi... Also a 2018 AMA summaryhttps://github.com/yanhan/notes/blob/master/reddit-sysadmins-ama.md https://github.com/yanhan/notes/blob/master/reddit-sysadmins...

wycy 7y ago
Wow, I didn't know there was actually more to dislike about "new" reddit.
zamadatix 7y ago
Even if it were truely the reason (it's just someone uninvolved who saw a lot of complaints about the new interface) it doesn't explain the rest of the decade where there was no "new interface" and it was still a meme that Reddit was constantly down.
xen0 7y ago
"Responsive" is not a word that comes to mind when thinking about reddit's new interface.
- TwoForOne 7y ago
  In my world (UX Designer) "responsive" means it responds to browser window size and accommodates all sizes from phone to desktop. Compare Old reddit and New reddit by shrinking your browser window in the x-axis on desktop.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    Is that the way 'responsive' is being used in this particular context? What does reflowing a webpage when the browser's window changes size have to do with these timeouts and delays in the backend?
    - basch 7y ago
      theres some ironic use of the word in the post above. they are mocking that the new and improved "responsive web" site isnt responsive in a speed context.

caust1c 7y ago

Outages are definitely less common than they used to be. But I would guess that reddit is one of the most popular sites on the internet because it's basically like an anonymous(ish) facebook with content guaranteed to be popular with the majority (by design). They've also made major efforts to keep the site socially sane for the majority of users (for better or worse, IMO generally better) with their moderation model. Whether or not it's a great site technically is irrelevant. It's something people want and something I keep coming back to because there's no equivalent when it comes to niche communities.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>keep coming back to because there's no equivalent when it comes to niche communities. Niche specific forums are better at everything niche communities want/need in a discussion space except bringing on new users. Considering the kinds of users you get when you're in close proximity to a colossus of internet riff-raff I don't think this is a big tradeoff.