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For me it was the UI / commenting system. I had been a lurker on slashdot for years but never made a comment. Then I went to reddit and was commenting 5 times

by zmmmmm 15y ago

For me it was the UI / commenting system. I had been a lurker on slashdot for years but never made a comment. Then I went to reddit and was commenting 5 times a day because it was so light weight and easy and was totally pseudononymous. (re: the last point - I have not made one single public comment on Google+, while I have made thousands on reddit. Reddit has just the right balance of pseudonymity). I also think that making it possible to edit or delete your comment after writing it, which was quite radical at the time, improved the average quality of conversations enormously. The very few poor quality posts I made were either voted to oblivion, edited to improve them within 5 minutes or deleted if I realized I should never have opened my mouth.

zeynalov 15y ago
For you pseudonymity is good, but would it not be better for other users to see a real human thoughts instead of comments of some anonymous nickname? For example, I prefer to speak to real human.
- herval 15y ago
  We're all anonymous nicknames here, and it does work well That said, it's a lot easier to attract trolls with nicknames than with their real faces...
- zmmmmm 15y ago
  > would it not be better for other users to see a real human thoughts instead of comments of some anonymous nickname? I think that's a false premise. My thoughts are no less human because of coming from a nickname. While I'd agree there's a tradeoff (some people will be total assholes) on the balancing side you actually get far more honest (and 'human') thoughts from me because I'm pseudonymous than you do if you ask me to broadcast publicly.
- shingen 15y ago
  Facebook login provides the holy grail of that: a (likely) real user behind an anonymous nickname. You can also judge the user by how many friends they have on FB, in terms of whether they're likely to be a real person. That said, some developers hate using FB for anything, and some users hate connecting with their FB accounts.
- BuddhaSource 15y ago
  Pseudonymity is good and gives user more confident when they face a wider bigger social base. Keep it real is more effective with small circles & friends

by zmmmmm 15y ago

zeynalov 15y ago

For you pseudonymity is good, but would it not be better for other users to see a real human thoughts instead of comments of some anonymous nickname? For example, I prefer to speak to real human.

herval 15y ago
We're all anonymous nicknames here, and it does work well That said, it's a lot easier to attract trolls with nicknames than with their real faces...
zmmmmm 15y ago
> would it not be better for other users to see a real human thoughts instead of comments of some anonymous nickname? I think that's a false premise. My thoughts are no less human because of coming from a nickname. While I'd agree there's a tradeoff (some people will be total assholes) on the balancing side you actually get far more honest (and 'human') thoughts from me because I'm pseudonymous than you do if you ask me to broadcast publicly.
shingen 15y ago
Facebook login provides the holy grail of that: a (likely) real user behind an anonymous nickname. You can also judge the user by how many friends they have on FB, in terms of whether they're likely to be a real person. That said, some developers hate using FB for anything, and some users hate connecting with their FB accounts.
BuddhaSource 15y ago
Pseudonymity is good and gives user more confident when they face a wider bigger social base. Keep it real is more effective with small circles & friends