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I’m not sure if the premise is correct here. What metric is Reddit being judged by? What if the various fashion subreddits, in aggregate, have more users, more

I’m not sure if the premise is correct here. What metric is Reddit being judged by? What if the various fashion subreddits, in aggregate, have more users, more content (both good and bad), and more innovation than websites like AskAndy? I suspect what you’re looking for is: 1. The intimate small town feel of the early internet, and 2. The higher average post quality (because of the type of person that both had internet and used forums back then) as measured by intellectuality, domain specificity, and demonstrated expertise. Reddit doesn’t display those qualities because of the tragedy of the commons phenomenon. Great content is interspersed with what is essentially “noob spam.” Even if it has a greater aggregate amount of quality content, it doesn’t have the same feel as older forums. Reddit can try to fix this by grouping people together into social clusters. If there is a subreddit with 2 million people, why not create many smaller “breakout” groups that coexist with the main thread? Of course, this is easier said than done, but I’m sure it’s possible to execute this idea well. I think VR meeting rooms will be the ultimate solution. They will be intimate by definition, and people will sort into their favorite social groups. An American scientist might join an international “scientist salon” and socialize with scientists everywhere from Germany to Japan. A bulletin would contain and display static text posts by the members of the salon. It would also display things like plebiscites and summaries of important meetings. You’d be able to bounce around different groups with a different subject matter any time you want. Some will have barriers to entry and identity verification, most won’t. Some groups will be purely social and defined more by the members than by any subject matter. Altogether that would make the internet feel more like a collection of physical spaces inhabited by communities of people. What I’m describing ideally shouldn’t be run by one corporation like Facebook or Reddit. The communities should be strung together by a shared backbone under an Internet 3.0. Visiting one should be like visiting a different website. We can use the formation of the original 2D internet as a template for how to proceed in creating a VR internet.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
1) there is no real "tragedy of the commons" in the general case. Google Elinor Ostrum to verify. Even Garret Hardin (originator of the concept) has conceded this, at least in part. The crux is that the "commons" as described by Hardin has essentially never existed in the form that he wrote about - things that are "commons"-like are actually always a complex mixture of law, tradition, culture and social sanctions governing their use. When people screw up "the commons", it's not because there are no mechanisms to prevent it, it is because these people have chosen to ignore them, and have made extra effort to do so. 2) You're seriously claiming that Reddit, a privately held company with sysadmins, subreddit moderation and user voting, could be a venue in which what happens is "a tragedy of the commons" (should such a thing actually exist)?
- baq 6y ago
  Reddit is privately held but has quite of an impact on the public. Facebook is the same, as are other notable walled garden/social networks. There’s a term for that: utility company.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Does that change the possibility of such a "venue" being the context for a "tragedy of the commons", should such a thing ever exist?
noobaccount 6y ago
Most HN comment ever. I don’t care about noob spam or even know what that could possibly be. It just isn’t fun and weirdly addictive in a bad way.
alexchantavy 6y ago
> Reddit doesn’t display those qualities because of the tragedy of the commons phenomenon. I find Reddit is still one of my favorite resources to search for help. If I need help on how to do some home DIY thing or help on making a particular decision, I'll Google for "how to decide blah Reddit" and I'll get much, much better signal than just Googling for "how to decide blah". In the latter case I'll get a bunch of ad-filled garbage and an article that was probably written by an algorithm.
- zhdc1 6y ago
  Reddit is great when the original poster or one or two of the immediate replies are insightful and informative. It's awful when either the original post isn't that great to begin with, or if a knowledgeable comment comes too late or happens to be a reply of a reply of a reply. Case in point, my original post, which was one of the first ten-fifteen comments, has a bunch of up votes. There's no way this would be true if I missed the original post by an hour or if it was the n'th response in a large comment chain.
- pkamb 6y ago
  Stack Exchange is even better, for sites with sufficiently large communities. Stack Overflow and Ask Different are amazing. But low-traffic SE sites just don't compete. I wish SE would change their account system and/or design so that their smaller sites became a better resource.
  - jqgatsby 6y ago
    How would you recommend they change it to help low-traffic stack exchanges?
    - pkamb 6y ago
      I edit and improve hundreds of posts on Stack Overflow. I want to edit posts on SuperUser too... but SE won't let me. Despite having enough rep for complete trust on SO, I'm a bit short of 2000 on Super User. If I try to edit a post, it goes into a queue for review by high-rep SU users. But there aren't enough of those, because the site is lower-traffic. So it takes hours to review. High-rep SO users, of which there are MANY, cannot contribute to this queue. The questions and answers and culture between Stack Overflow, Super User, Ask Different, and their other "tech" sites are essentially exactly the same. There's no reason I couldn't contribute to any of those sites. But their multiple account system makes it impossible.
zhdc1 6y ago
The issue with Reddit is that there's little to no user engagement with older content. Comments on posts older than a day in pretty much every reasonably active subreddit are ignored. This is also an issue on HN. This kills informed discussion - some topics need more than one or two minutes of thought for a thoughtful and articulated response. This simply isn't possible when you know that the person you're replying to likely won't respond if you take more than a couple of hours to reply, that the conversation thread will be hidden behind a 'read more' button after one or two responses, and that the post itself will be buried shortly thereafter. The average post quality on most forums was awful, as much or more so than what you see now on Reddit or HN. The difference is that it was possible for informed posts to persist as the center of discussion for years, if needed. As an example, I don't see how a group of people can become interested and collaboratively participate in something like designing an amplifier circuit on Reddit without moving to a third party site, and in doing so cutting off contact and visibility with potential collaborators who happen to find the discussion a couple of hours too late. That's the level of connectivity and cooperation that was possible through forums and bulletin boards for a bunch of different niche topics, and it's basically been lost now that the 2chan/Digg style format (Reddit) has taken over.
- slightwinder 6y ago
  With modern forums the flow of discussion is different. If you have something for a dated discussion, you just open a new thread. Here on HN you often see those indirect responses happening. Reddit on the other side used to have a better response-interface. You get a message for new responses and can discuss things over weeks and months if it just happen so. New redfit-interface killed yhis a bit.
- ativzzz 6y ago
  > The issue with Reddit is that there's little to no user engagement with older content. Comments on posts older than a day in pretty much every reasonably active subreddit are ignored. This is also an issue on HN. This is even worse with communities using live chat platforms like Discord and IRC. Live chat is an atrocious medium for community building as you constantly have to be involved to keep up or if you just check it for 5 mins you don't actually get anything if there is no conversation at the moment or the conversation isn't interesting.
zrm 6y ago
> The higher average post quality (because of the type of person that both had internet and used forums back then) as measured by intellectuality, domain specificity, and demonstrated expertise. But this should be easy to get back in the same way blogs always did -- have individual blogs. Even if there are now a million blogs full of "noob spam" the good ones should still exist because their authors are the same people they ever were. You still have the discovery problem, but that's kind of the OP's point -- it all falls apart if you can no longer separate the wheat from the chaff because of SEO and anti-SEO.
- keenmaster 6y ago
  While the discoverability issue may have accelerated the decline of blogs, I suspect that it’s not the main problem. It takes more cognitive overhead to follow and visit multiple blogs as opposed to following multiple subreddits. Even if you are willing to expend that cognitive overhead, most people aren’t nowadays. Because of that, bloggers are less likely to publish (smaller audience + less engagement = smaller incentive to publish). That lowers the average quality of blogs, turning away even their most ardent advocates. This was all inevitable. The mere existence of a popular meta-forum attenuates traditional blogs and forums.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > It takes more cognitive overhead to follow and visit multiple blogs as opposed to following multiple subreddits. This is the problem solved by RSS.
  - fivre 6y ago
    > cognitive overhead to follow and visit multiple blogs Didn't used to be an issue really. Then Google killed off Reader and nothing filled the void fast enough.
  - Darkphibre 6y ago
    Not to mention after a certain number of 'followed' subreddits, Reddit will actually only show you a subset each day on your front page. It allows for smaller subreddits to bubble up occasionally, but you're never guaranteed to see the latest from everything you've subscribed to.
jdkee 6y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

1) there is no real "tragedy of the commons" in the general case. Google Elinor Ostrum to verify. Even Garret Hardin (originator of the concept) has conceded this, at least in part. The crux is that the "commons" as described by Hardin has essentially never existed in the form that he wrote about - things that are "commons"-like are actually always a complex mixture of law, tradition, culture and social sanctions governing their use. When people screw up "the commons", it's not because there are no mechanisms to prevent it, it is because these people have chosen to ignore them, and have made extra effort to do so. 2) You're seriously claiming that Reddit, a privately held company with sysadmins, subreddit moderation and user voting, could be a venue in which what happens is "a tragedy of the commons" (should such a thing actually exist)?

baq 6y ago
Reddit is privately held but has quite of an impact on the public. Facebook is the same, as are other notable walled garden/social networks. There’s a term for that: utility company.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Does that change the possibility of such a "venue" being the context for a "tragedy of the commons", should such a thing ever exist?

noobaccount 6y ago

Most HN comment ever. I don’t care about noob spam or even know what that could possibly be. It just isn’t fun and weirdly addictive in a bad way.

alexchantavy 6y ago

> Reddit doesn’t display those qualities because of the tragedy of the commons phenomenon. I find Reddit is still one of my favorite resources to search for help. If I need help on how to do some home DIY thing or help on making a particular decision, I'll Google for "how to decide blah Reddit" and I'll get much, much better signal than just Googling for "how to decide blah". In the latter case I'll get a bunch of ad-filled garbage and an article that was probably written by an algorithm.

zhdc1 6y ago
Reddit is great when the original poster or one or two of the immediate replies are insightful and informative. It's awful when either the original post isn't that great to begin with, or if a knowledgeable comment comes too late or happens to be a reply of a reply of a reply. Case in point, my original post, which was one of the first ten-fifteen comments, has a bunch of up votes. There's no way this would be true if I missed the original post by an hour or if it was the n'th response in a large comment chain.
pkamb 6y ago
Stack Exchange is even better, for sites with sufficiently large communities. Stack Overflow and Ask Different are amazing. But low-traffic SE sites just don't compete. I wish SE would change their account system and/or design so that their smaller sites became a better resource.
- jqgatsby 6y ago
  How would you recommend they change it to help low-traffic stack exchanges?
  - pkamb 6y ago
    I edit and improve hundreds of posts on Stack Overflow. I want to edit posts on SuperUser too... but SE won't let me. Despite having enough rep for complete trust on SO, I'm a bit short of 2000 on Super User. If I try to edit a post, it goes into a queue for review by high-rep SU users. But there aren't enough of those, because the site is lower-traffic. So it takes hours to review. High-rep SO users, of which there are MANY, cannot contribute to this queue. The questions and answers and culture between Stack Overflow, Super User, Ask Different, and their other "tech" sites are essentially exactly the same. There's no reason I couldn't contribute to any of those sites. But their multiple account system makes it impossible.

zhdc1 6y ago

The issue with Reddit is that there's little to no user engagement with older content. Comments on posts older than a day in pretty much every reasonably active subreddit are ignored. This is also an issue on HN. This kills informed discussion - some topics need more than one or two minutes of thought for a thoughtful and articulated response. This simply isn't possible when you know that the person you're replying to likely won't respond if you take more than a couple of hours to reply, that the conversation thread will be hidden behind a 'read more' button after one or two responses, and that the post itself will be buried shortly thereafter. The average post quality on most forums was awful, as much or more so than what you see now on Reddit or HN. The difference is that it was possible for informed posts to persist as the center of discussion for years, if needed. As an example, I don't see how a group of people can become interested and collaboratively participate in something like designing an amplifier circuit on Reddit without moving to a third party site, and in doing so cutting off contact and visibility with potential collaborators who happen to find the discussion a couple of hours too late. That's the level of connectivity and cooperation that was possible through forums and bulletin boards for a bunch of different niche topics, and it's basically been lost now that the 2chan/Digg style format (Reddit) has taken over.

slightwinder 6y ago
With modern forums the flow of discussion is different. If you have something for a dated discussion, you just open a new thread. Here on HN you often see those indirect responses happening. Reddit on the other side used to have a better response-interface. You get a message for new responses and can discuss things over weeks and months if it just happen so. New redfit-interface killed yhis a bit.
ativzzz 6y ago
> The issue with Reddit is that there's little to no user engagement with older content. Comments on posts older than a day in pretty much every reasonably active subreddit are ignored. This is also an issue on HN. This is even worse with communities using live chat platforms like Discord and IRC. Live chat is an atrocious medium for community building as you constantly have to be involved to keep up or if you just check it for 5 mins you don't actually get anything if there is no conversation at the moment or the conversation isn't interesting.

zrm 6y ago

> The higher average post quality (because of the type of person that both had internet and used forums back then) as measured by intellectuality, domain specificity, and demonstrated expertise. But this should be easy to get back in the same way blogs always did -- have individual blogs. Even if there are now a million blogs full of "noob spam" the good ones should still exist because their authors are the same people they ever were. You still have the discovery problem, but that's kind of the OP's point -- it all falls apart if you can no longer separate the wheat from the chaff because of SEO and anti-SEO.

keenmaster 6y ago
While the discoverability issue may have accelerated the decline of blogs, I suspect that it’s not the main problem. It takes more cognitive overhead to follow and visit multiple blogs as opposed to following multiple subreddits. Even if you are willing to expend that cognitive overhead, most people aren’t nowadays. Because of that, bloggers are less likely to publish (smaller audience + less engagement = smaller incentive to publish). That lowers the average quality of blogs, turning away even their most ardent advocates. This was all inevitable. The mere existence of a popular meta-forum attenuates traditional blogs and forums.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > It takes more cognitive overhead to follow and visit multiple blogs as opposed to following multiple subreddits. This is the problem solved by RSS.
- fivre 6y ago
  > cognitive overhead to follow and visit multiple blogs Didn't used to be an issue really. Then Google killed off Reader and nothing filled the void fast enough.
- Darkphibre 6y ago
  Not to mention after a certain number of 'followed' subreddits, Reddit will actually only show you a subset each day on your front page. It allows for smaller subreddits to bubble up occasionally, but you're never guaranteed to see the latest from everything you've subscribed to.

jdkee 6y ago

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September