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Not a power Reddit user here. I only stumble upon random posts that search engines throw my way when I'm looking things up so I might very well be missing somet
by n4bz0r 5y ago
Not a power Reddit user here. I only stumble upon random posts that search engines throw my way when I'm looking things up so I might very well be missing something.
The main questions:
Considering all the bad practices, why people keep using Reddit and what makes it so great? Why people make custom clients instead of looking for a full-fledged alternative?
The questions are genuine, not a sarcasm. The following is just a rant and emotions, feel free to ignore.
My questions mostly come from these thoughts:
- As far as I'm concerned, it's people that bring value to online forums, not the other way around. Established communities must have no issues moving wherever.
- Creating a huge online forum (even from scratch) has it's challenges, but ultimately isn't the most complex engineering task.
As we live we learn to accept the fact that everything we love eventually dies. Not being an active user I might see it differently, but to me it looks like the forum (the technical part of it!) that people knew and loved is dead.
Why workarounds? Isn't it the time to move on to creating/finding something new instead of feeding the corpse-milkers and digesting whatever they spit back? It's a glorified database client, not a secret non-replicable alien technology.
Edit: reading the other comments I came to realization that Reddit must mostly serve community leaders (who most likely use alternative clients) as a discovery mechanism. And content-consumers would do whatever it takes to consume however inconvenient. I can see how that keeps people there, but don't clearly see why there is no popular alternatives. I guess it's really hard to gain the critical mass in the online-forum market.
- rognjen 5y ago> Considering all the bad practices, why people keep using Reddit and what makes it so great? I think it's the sheer amount of content they have and the fact that the average user is much less tech and privacy savvy so they just register.
- PhillyG 5y agoI'd assume that savvy people determined to set up a user account, and not aware they can avoid providing an email address, would just set up a throwaway email account on some free service
- GordonS 5y ago> The main questions: Considering all the bad practices, why people keep using Reddit and what makes it so great? Why people make custom clients instead of looking for a full-fledged alternative? Critical mass, and inertia. Reddit has already captured by far the largest share of foum users, and that isn't going to change any time soon. I'm only an occasional user, generally arriving via a Google search, and it's the sheer quantity of posts that keep my searches hitting Reddit. Doesn't mean I like the UI/UX or their dark patterns tho - I can't bloody stand them!
- mynameishere 5y agoIt just has the most users of all link aggregators. If you want to discuss subject A, or news story B, or product C, it's the best place--because of the users, and despite the increasingly trash design. It got those users by being best-in-class a long time ago when things like Digg were futzing and fumbling around the same way Reddit is now. As soon as some non-user-hostile site gets enough people Reddit will go away.
- cunthorpe 5y agoThey have good content and good comments. Funny junk is interspersed with news and occasional trivia and life stories. The thoughtful comments really are great and have helped me understand some POVs and hear about other people’s lives. This just does not happen on Facebook for example. Most groups and posts are run into the ground by junk comments that make discussion impossible because there’s no downvote that eventually hides them. In a way Facebook is more equal but unfortunately not every commenter is equally decent.
- realce 5y agoEver notice the difference is that people on FB have identities to defend but reddit users are just anon usernames with no identity tied to it? I think this is a serious aspect of why they produce different conversations.
- cunthorpe 5y agoI think you haven’t been on Facebook in a while. People say the most ridiculous things and bully each other. No such thing as shame on Facebook.