4 ms·

The day reddit drops old.reddit.com is the last day I ever visit. The redesign is that horrible for anything but mindless scrolling watching clip videos.

awakeasleep 6y ago
Reddit's video player more or less does not work
- lmpostor 6y ago
  It works as a content rip-off machines, which is exactly what it was designed for... but yeah in a vacuum it blows
- erikpukinskis 6y ago
  Every now and then a play a video on Reddit to see if it works yet, and the answer is always no. Sometimes the first second or two plays though.
- jeremy_k 6y ago
  It works, but the video restarts at least once, sometimes two or three times, before it finally plays correctly. Its very annoying
- dhritzkiv 6y ago
  It makes me wonder what's going on at a technical level, that it's still broken after all this time. I would have figured that a dependable native video player is a solved problem.
bonestamp2 6y ago
> The redesign is that horrible for anything but mindless scrolling watching clip videos. That's not entirely true... the redesign has some moderation and content submission improvements. But, if you don't mod or submit content then you might not notice those improvements. That said, like digg, the redesign is also missing a lot of features that old.reddit has. So, if they don't want to digg v4 themselves (which is what made Reddit popular to begin with) then they have to at least keep old.reddit around until there is feature parity. They will definitely shed a lot of users when they drop old.reddit but anyone who uses particular subreddits for their hobbies and interests may bite the bullet and get used to the redesign if they like the community enough. Hopefully Reddit Enhancement Suite makes a lot of improvements when that happens because RES makes reddit so much better.
- Andrex 6y ago
  > That said, like digg, the redesign is also missing a lot of features that old.reddit has. So, if they don't want to digg v4 themselves (which is what made Reddit popular to begin with) then they have to at least keep old.reddit around until there is feature parity. It was less the features or lack there-of that drove Digg users away with v4, and more the change in culture around news websites being "official" and auto-submitting their stories.
  - bonestamp2 6y ago
    I guess it probably varies by user then. Some of the features I used everyday were gone so I finally decided to have a serious look at reddit. I had never taken it seriously before because it looked awful by comparison. But, once you got past the poor design aesthetic, it was a much better community. So, as much as I like old.reddit, I don't blame them for improving the design, it is a turnoff for anyone who is design savvy.
- somehnguy 6y ago
  >That's not entirely true... the redesign has some moderation and content submission improvements. But, if you don't mod or submit content then you might not notice those improvements. But the only reason that is true is because they consciously left those new features out of the old interface. The improvements for moderators could be added to the original layout just the same. For actually using the site the old design is about 100x better in every way except for mindless scrolling.
  - bonestamp2 6y ago
    > they consciously left those new features out of the old interface Sure. But to be fair, that is true with most new versions of any software... the developers could always commit resources to adding the new features to the old version too, but they're trying to migrate users to the new version so they don't have to commit resources to two versions.
    - 6y ago
arabelladonna 6y ago
To be frank, everyone complains about the design of new Reddit, but my biggest problem is just how incredibly slow it is. Plus, it feels like I get CDN inaccessible or server busy errors daily.
- cmehdy 6y ago
  I just tried loading both websites in private windows on firefox and ublock origin: old reddit loads in 1.75 seconds, 77 requests, and 10 things blocked by uOrigin, and I can see 8 pieces of news on the page which take most (75+%) of the visual real estate new reddit loads in 4.75 seconds, 177 requests(!), 13 things blocked by uOrigin, and I can see one(!) actual item, which takes roughly 20% of the visual real estate The new design also leads to one error in the console as my browser blocked a font ("downloadable font: rejected by sanitizer"). I can't imagine using their new design at all, and I'm not sure how they can justify the gap in these metrics for a company worth billions, unless a complete lack of useful information taking 3 times longer to load is what's trending. edit: and it's not just me, pretty much any online tool I found gives similar outcomes. https://www.dareboost.com/en/comparison?reportIds=a_25fd7b3ae34da84155229d0cc&reportIds=a_25fd7b3ae34da84155229d0cd https://www.dareboost.com/en/comparison?reportIds=a_25fd7b3a...
h_anna_h 6y ago
Why not just use a 3rd party client?
- kettro 6y ago
  If they’re going to deactivate old., I imagine they’ll kill the api too.
flancian 6y ago
I wonder if there's an opportunity here for someone to snag a domain such as oldreadit.com (it's available right now) and set up shop, ready to offer disgruntled old.reddit.com users a new home when it's inevitably turned down/broken further -- or earlier. Perhaps use Lemmy, which is trying to evolve into a distributed (federated) architecture: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy The gimmicky name would not be needed, of course, if somehow the old.reddit.com community could use some decision making tool to agree on which alternate reddit implementation/domain to settle upon. Is someone working on solving this coordination problem?
- birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago
  The absence of a reddit competitor on the open internet despite reddit's flaws suggests that the technically advanced users have already reassembled somewhere on an .onion domain. If the old.reddit.com users had the means to start something new, they would have done it a long time ago.
  - somehnguy 6y ago
    I very much doubt the conclusion that a lack of clearnet alternative means people have assembled on TOR. That's ludicrous honestly. There have been a number of reddit alternatives over the years, typically the result of some act of over-moderation that drives angry people to alternatives. These always become cesspools of hate & racism because they advertise as 'free speech' alternatives (due to swinging too far in the opposite direction that drove people there in the first place). I think most people who want to use the old interface are simply just using the old interface. Until they completely drop it I don't think that will change. Because anyone can start a reddit clone but it's useless until you can convince a mass amount of users to switch & stay there, which is extremely difficult.

awakeasleep 6y ago

Reddit's video player more or less does not work

lmpostor 6y ago
It works as a content rip-off machines, which is exactly what it was designed for... but yeah in a vacuum it blows
erikpukinskis 6y ago
Every now and then a play a video on Reddit to see if it works yet, and the answer is always no. Sometimes the first second or two plays though.
jeremy_k 6y ago
It works, but the video restarts at least once, sometimes two or three times, before it finally plays correctly. Its very annoying
dhritzkiv 6y ago
It makes me wonder what's going on at a technical level, that it's still broken after all this time. I would have figured that a dependable native video player is a solved problem.

bonestamp2 6y ago

> The redesign is that horrible for anything but mindless scrolling watching clip videos. That's not entirely true... the redesign has some moderation and content submission improvements. But, if you don't mod or submit content then you might not notice those improvements. That said, like digg, the redesign is also missing a lot of features that old.reddit has. So, if they don't want to digg v4 themselves (which is what made Reddit popular to begin with) then they have to at least keep old.reddit around until there is feature parity. They will definitely shed a lot of users when they drop old.reddit but anyone who uses particular subreddits for their hobbies and interests may bite the bullet and get used to the redesign if they like the community enough. Hopefully Reddit Enhancement Suite makes a lot of improvements when that happens because RES makes reddit so much better.

Andrex 6y ago
> That said, like digg, the redesign is also missing a lot of features that old.reddit has. So, if they don't want to digg v4 themselves (which is what made Reddit popular to begin with) then they have to at least keep old.reddit around until there is feature parity. It was less the features or lack there-of that drove Digg users away with v4, and more the change in culture around news websites being "official" and auto-submitting their stories.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  I guess it probably varies by user then. Some of the features I used everyday were gone so I finally decided to have a serious look at reddit. I had never taken it seriously before because it looked awful by comparison. But, once you got past the poor design aesthetic, it was a much better community. So, as much as I like old.reddit, I don't blame them for improving the design, it is a turnoff for anyone who is design savvy.
somehnguy 6y ago
>That's not entirely true... the redesign has some moderation and content submission improvements. But, if you don't mod or submit content then you might not notice those improvements. But the only reason that is true is because they consciously left those new features out of the old interface. The improvements for moderators could be added to the original layout just the same. For actually using the site the old design is about 100x better in every way except for mindless scrolling.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  > they consciously left those new features out of the old interface Sure. But to be fair, that is true with most new versions of any software... the developers could always commit resources to adding the new features to the old version too, but they're trying to migrate users to the new version so they don't have to commit resources to two versions.
  - 6y ago

arabelladonna 6y ago

To be frank, everyone complains about the design of new Reddit, but my biggest problem is just how incredibly slow it is. Plus, it feels like I get CDN inaccessible or server busy errors daily.

cmehdy 6y ago
I just tried loading both websites in private windows on firefox and ublock origin: old reddit loads in 1.75 seconds, 77 requests, and 10 things blocked by uOrigin, and I can see 8 pieces of news on the page which take most (75+%) of the visual real estate new reddit loads in 4.75 seconds, 177 requests(!), 13 things blocked by uOrigin, and I can see one(!) actual item, which takes roughly 20% of the visual real estate The new design also leads to one error in the console as my browser blocked a font ("downloadable font: rejected by sanitizer"). I can't imagine using their new design at all, and I'm not sure how they can justify the gap in these metrics for a company worth billions, unless a complete lack of useful information taking 3 times longer to load is what's trending. edit: and it's not just me, pretty much any online tool I found gives similar outcomes. https://www.dareboost.com/en/comparison?reportIds=a_25fd7b3ae34da84155229d0cc&reportIds=a_25fd7b3ae34da84155229d0cd https://www.dareboost.com/en/comparison?reportIds=a_25fd7b3a...

h_anna_h 6y ago

Why not just use a 3rd party client?

kettro 6y ago
If they’re going to deactivate old., I imagine they’ll kill the api too.

flancian 6y ago

I wonder if there's an opportunity here for someone to snag a domain such as oldreadit.com (it's available right now) and set up shop, ready to offer disgruntled old.reddit.com users a new home when it's inevitably turned down/broken further -- or earlier. Perhaps use Lemmy, which is trying to evolve into a distributed (federated) architecture: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy The gimmicky name would not be needed, of course, if somehow the old.reddit.com community could use some decision making tool to agree on which alternate reddit implementation/domain to settle upon. Is someone working on solving this coordination problem?

birdsbirdsbirds 6y ago
The absence of a reddit competitor on the open internet despite reddit's flaws suggests that the technically advanced users have already reassembled somewhere on an .onion domain. If the old.reddit.com users had the means to start something new, they would have done it a long time ago.
- somehnguy 6y ago
  I very much doubt the conclusion that a lack of clearnet alternative means people have assembled on TOR. That's ludicrous honestly. There have been a number of reddit alternatives over the years, typically the result of some act of over-moderation that drives angry people to alternatives. These always become cesspools of hate & racism because they advertise as 'free speech' alternatives (due to swinging too far in the opposite direction that drove people there in the first place). I think most people who want to use the old interface are simply just using the old interface. Until they completely drop it I don't think that will change. Because anyone can start a reddit clone but it's useless until you can convince a mass amount of users to switch & stay there, which is extremely difficult.