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I think the main improvement of reddit over message boards was just the small but extremely useful concept of messages being ordered by votes in a tree format.

by kace91 6y ago

I think the main improvement of reddit over message boards was just the small but extremely useful concept of messages being ordered by votes in a tree format. Nostalgia aside, navigating a flat, chronologically ordered message board post is extremely frustrating once you've tried the better way. To a lesser extent, the lack of friction caused by not having to register individually to each message board to stop lurking, and the lack of friction creating new communities also matter, but none of those improvements require a centralised site to exist - niche reddit communities should be relatively easy to move from the site if such tooling existed, much easier than moving people from social networks at least.

keiferski 6y ago
I disagree that organizing by votes is inherently better than a chronological view. You simply end up with different problems. I’d probably argue that diversity of thought is much penalized in a voting system, which might be worse in the bigger picture. A better way forward would somehow combine the two.
- kace91 6y ago
  Perhaps I should have clarified that I meant better in a UX sense. Those cons you mention definitely do exist, they're an emergent problem of the conversations and communities that arise, but opinion bubbles never seem to be a bottleneck for a platform gaining popularity - which makes sense since they, by definition, favor the majority's opinion. I'm also not convinced that chronological ordering is better for diversity of opinion: comments might not be hidden directly, but they can be drowned. In a reddit-like system each user can downvote you just once, while in a message board system each user can post N times, with each post making your opinion a smaller portion of the conversation. What chronological posts are better at is favoring power users over casual users: there is a clear advantage for those who can post early and/or often. For everything besides the starting post of the thread, it also rewards short and not very thoughtful posts (since posting later is punished in visibility). The result is also a bubble, and one dictated by the people that spend their lives on the boards. And in my personal opinion, there's not a lot of overlap between the people that lead interesting lives and are great at their fields and those willing to spend a great portion of their life in a message board.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Hmm. Maybe a solution to this is a limited number of posts per day/week. Or a limited number of upvotes/downvotes to give out. It would (helpfully) people to be concise and thoughtful with their comments.

by kace91 6y ago

keiferski 6y ago

I disagree that organizing by votes is inherently better than a chronological view. You simply end up with different problems. I’d probably argue that diversity of thought is much penalized in a voting system, which might be worse in the bigger picture. A better way forward would somehow combine the two.

kace91 6y ago
Perhaps I should have clarified that I meant better in a UX sense. Those cons you mention definitely do exist, they're an emergent problem of the conversations and communities that arise, but opinion bubbles never seem to be a bottleneck for a platform gaining popularity - which makes sense since they, by definition, favor the majority's opinion. I'm also not convinced that chronological ordering is better for diversity of opinion: comments might not be hidden directly, but they can be drowned. In a reddit-like system each user can downvote you just once, while in a message board system each user can post N times, with each post making your opinion a smaller portion of the conversation. What chronological posts are better at is favoring power users over casual users: there is a clear advantage for those who can post early and/or often. For everything besides the starting post of the thread, it also rewards short and not very thoughtful posts (since posting later is punished in visibility). The result is also a bubble, and one dictated by the people that spend their lives on the boards. And in my personal opinion, there's not a lot of overlap between the people that lead interesting lives and are great at their fields and those willing to spend a great portion of their life in a message board.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Hmm. Maybe a solution to this is a limited number of posts per day/week. Or a limited number of upvotes/downvotes to give out. It would (helpfully) people to be concise and thoughtful with their comments.