Frankly I don't really see the logic. You're failing to disambiguate "generally better" with "better for Reddit inc" or "better for redditors," which are all s

Frankly I don't really see the logic. You're failing to disambiguate "generally better" with "better for Reddit inc" or "better for redditors," which are all separate things. That is, I'm not convinced that a Reddit search engine would necessarily be subject to the same level of gaming, for a variety of reasons: * Reddit groups are moderated in a way that "THE INTERNET" as a whole isn't. * Reddit is a destination in itself. It's not like Google, which is a means to arrive at various destinations. * A Reddit search engine just has to index Reddit. It can do things like entirely filter out clickable external links, which would make SEO much less fruitful. * Reddit is dependent on being an effective conversational watercooler. For financial reasons, it's not going to allow itself to become filled with the same level of cruft as the entire web is. This is somewhat evidenced by the difference between Reddit and Usenet. Compared with how Usenet quickly devolved into an unmanageable morass with the advent of spam, Reddit has managed to stay fairly legible. (BTW off topic but personally I think this whole post could've just been a comment subthread in the original post. Of course we all want our ideas to bubble to the top. But if everybody started a whole new thread every time they thought they had something REALLY IMPORTANT to say that shouldn't be ignored, then every large thread would give birth to dozens of baby threads and make HN less effective overall. On the other hand, I see someone else thanked you for putting this in a separate "breakout room" so to speak, so what do I know? Cheers.)