12 ms·

Historical code from reddit.com

119 points by tech234a 3y ago

mohsinulhaq 3y ago
Was it just open sourced or was it already there?
- piperswe 3y ago
  It's been there for a long time.
- redhal 3y ago
  It's been there since at least 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180201224409/https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit https://web.archive.org/web/20180201224409/https://github.co...
  - bpicolo 3y ago
    It was OSS from 2008 through 2017 [0] [0]https://web.archive.org/web/20120501073813/http://blog.reddit.com/2008/06/reddit-goes-open-source.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120501073813/http://blog.reddi...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- prepend 3y ago
  I wish GitHub made it clear when the repo was created. The commit history comes from git and frequently predates the GitHub creation when imported from somewhere else. The api shows created_at as 2008-06-18 but this seems like relevant info that should display in the ui.
dralley 3y ago
The day "old reddit" stops being a usable option is the day I stop using reddit entirely.
- Arrath 3y ago
  I think you and I are far from alone in that sentiment.
  - RosanaAnaDana 3y ago
    100% The real value of reddit goes down annually. They got rid of the boobies and kept the gore and violence. Its mostly a machine for manufacturing Marvel & SW fandom.
    - anoonmoose 3y ago
      I don't know what Reddit you're seeing but I assure you there are still plenty of thriving NSFW subreddits. I might even say tons. I've seen a few get deleted here and there but it was always for pretty specific, targeted reasons.
    - thatguy0900 3y ago
      The only NSFW subs taken down were the unmoderated ones for the most part
  - dagurp 3y ago
    They would have killed it a long time ago otherwise. I would keep using Reddit sync I guess.
    - proto-n 3y ago
      They just confirmed killing 3rd party apps with unreasonable pricing
  - dc-programmer 3y ago
    This may be an unpopular opinion, but I prefer new Reddit when I’m on my phone (which nowadays is my primary causal scrolling device). I think part of the reason people stick to old Reddit is because they haven’t ripped off the nostalgia band-aid yet
mg 3y ago
Could be a fun project to put all the steps outlined in the install guide [1] into a single script which turns a fresh Debian 12 install into a running Reddit instance. [1] https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/wiki/Install-guide https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/wiki/Install-guide
- Klonoar 3y ago
  At the risk of beating a dead horse: one could also say "no" to another silo'd instance and instead opt to try running something like Lemmy: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
mkl95 3y ago
I've been using old Reddit for a few years, pretty much since I found out it was a thing. Judging by their current iteration's UX, the code is probably horrific enough that open sourcing it would hurt their reputation. As you may know Reddit is owned by Conde Nast or some sibling company, and they love outsourcing their stuff to bodyshops.
danjoredd 3y ago
Them going closed source is one of the many, many changes I have seen on that site. It used to be somewhat cool back in the day but Reddit feels like it is trying as hard as it can be to be FaceBook these days. I had to leave because it feels nothing like it used to be.
voytec 3y ago
(2008)
Lammy 3y ago
For an actively-maintained project, see the code that runs rDrama-dot-net (sup /h/slackernews lol) and watchpeopledie-dot-tv https://fsdfsd.net/rDrama/rDrama https://fsdfsd.net/rDrama/rDrama
- dabluecaboose 3y ago
  Unfortunately, it's based on new reddit and a UX nightmare on desktop.
jrflowers 3y ago
This reminds me that LiveJournal is also open source! https://stat.livejournal.com/doc/server/lj.index.html https://stat.livejournal.com/doc/server/lj.index.html
jasonladuke0311 3y ago
It’s unbelievable how user-hostile old Reddit has become on mobile. Overriding the back button to remove the referring page from history. Modals popping up after x amount of browsing, etc.
dabluecaboose 3y ago
I still think that tree-style comments and voting are far, far superior to old-style forums. Especially for hobby information or someone looking for info years after the fact. I have spent way too much time following 3 separate conversations in a forum thread looking for the specific information I want. With reddit (and HackerNews) it's so much easier to track individual sub-threads and see what's going on, and the voting system (while it can and does lead to echo chambers) is also great for promoting better content, IMO.
- scythe 3y ago
  On the contrary, they're better for browsing, but much worse for participating. Reddit's key innovation was making the site attractive to viewers who weren't yet members of the community. It used to be that you joined a community when you found it and people had to be asked to lurk — "lurk moar" even became a meme — until reddit came around and people browsed /r/funny (which was actually good once) for months before getting an account. The downside is that every discussion feels like a race. Trying to have a conversation on Reddit or HN is vastly more stressful than it ever was on old forums — even compared to places where people were screaming at each other. You have six hours to get your point across before the thread dies. There's a tendency for unproductive one-on-ones to occur that wouldn't be possible with traditional threads. But the upside is that Reddit is (so far) the best place to find out whether I should try the new cookies at Trader Joe's or whether some off-brand of iPhone cables are reliable.
  - dabluecaboose 3y ago
    I disagree that they're necessarily worse for participating. The issues of following a popular forum thread would still make it obnoxious to participate in the conversation. And in a forum, when two people get into unproductive one-on-ones it tends to stifle the entire conversation, because it's put right inline with all other posts. The problem with massive threads, I feel like, still exists with forums, but the opposite. It's usually folly to comment on a popular thread early on a traditional forum, as your comment will just be swept up with all the other excited comments. I think the answer to both is to use them for smaller communities, which is why I think reddit is best for hobby communities and whatnot.
winrid 3y ago
Neat, looks like a custom Python framework... was expecting Django.
- Lammy 3y ago
  RIP aaronsw https://webpy.org/ https://webpy.org/ “(The site was rewritten using other tools after being acquired by Condé Nast.)”
  - notatoad 3y ago
    was reddit ever on webpy? i thought it was lisp back in the day before conde nast
    - Lammy 3y ago
      http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit “Over at reddit.com, we rewrote the site from Lisp to Python in the past week. It was pretty much done in one weekend. (Disclosure: We used my web.py library.) The others knew Lisp (they wrote their whole site in it) and they knew Python (they rewrote their whole site in it) and yet they decided liked Python better for this project. The Python version had less code that ran faster and was far easier to read and maintain.”
- Klonoar 3y ago
  Someone would have to correct me if I'm wrong here as my history is hazy, but wasn't Reddit originally built in Lisp and then ported to Python due to other factors (i.e hard to find talent/hard to maintain/speed of iteration/etc)? Django back then had notable nuances at scale and if you were migrating over a codebase in another language I'm not sure it would've been a viable thing to entertain.
lol768 3y ago
Didn't they stop updating that repo at some point? I'm not sure it was at the same time that they replaced the main site with a SPA - so it's probably not entirely accurate to say "Old Reddit" (which to me means old.reddit.com) is open-source. Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update_on_the_state_of_the_redditreddit_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update...
- dang 3y ago
  Ok, we've changed the title to say what the page says. Submitted title was "Old Reddit is open source".
  - lol768 3y ago
    Thanks, dang!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rvba 3y ago
Why in 2023 it takes like 4 seconds for every site to load on a mobile phone? Does anyone on reddit even use reddit on phone? They dont know that their page takes forever to load? Or do they just want to get rid of users that try to read stuff and make it some sort of a picture-based site? Seriously did anyone there ever even try to optimize loading ? I go to /r/askreddit - open a random thread - and it takes few seconds to load. Compare it on mobile to old i.reddit that loaded instantly even with thoustands of comments. I tried like 10 different reddit apps. None of them has the look and feel of the light-weight i.reddit did. I dont even mention that those apps often dont have tabs + history cannot be shared with browser.. Seriously why there is no app that behaves the way i.reddit behaved? I also dont understand how the really-really old reddit "frame" (top 10 upvoted comments on left side of the screen) died. This was just so damn good. Internet supposedly moved forward due to "security", but why there cant be some sort of a browser plugin that can display the original site on 90% of the screen and top 10 reddit comments (i.reddit style with nesting) on the left?
mvexel 3y ago
Ha! I was hoping to see some web.py / Aaron Swartz code. This is cool too, though.
htrp 3y ago
from some of the numbers I've seen. new reddit is only 11% of total users, old reddit is only 12% at this point

119 points by tech234a 3y ago

mohsinulhaq 3y ago

Was it just open sourced or was it already there?

piperswe 3y ago
It's been there for a long time.
redhal 3y ago
It's been there since at least 2018 https://web.archive.org/web/20180201224409/https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit https://web.archive.org/web/20180201224409/https://github.co...
- bpicolo 3y ago
  It was OSS from 2008 through 2017 [0] [0]https://web.archive.org/web/20120501073813/http://blog.reddit.com/2008/06/reddit-goes-open-source.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120501073813/http://blog.reddi...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
prepend 3y ago
I wish GitHub made it clear when the repo was created. The commit history comes from git and frequently predates the GitHub creation when imported from somewhere else. The api shows created_at as 2008-06-18 but this seems like relevant info that should display in the ui.

dralley 3y ago

The day "old reddit" stops being a usable option is the day I stop using reddit entirely.

Arrath 3y ago
I think you and I are far from alone in that sentiment.
- RosanaAnaDana 3y ago
  100% The real value of reddit goes down annually. They got rid of the boobies and kept the gore and violence. Its mostly a machine for manufacturing Marvel & SW fandom.
  - anoonmoose 3y ago
    I don't know what Reddit you're seeing but I assure you there are still plenty of thriving NSFW subreddits. I might even say tons. I've seen a few get deleted here and there but it was always for pretty specific, targeted reasons.
  - thatguy0900 3y ago
    The only NSFW subs taken down were the unmoderated ones for the most part
- dagurp 3y ago
  They would have killed it a long time ago otherwise. I would keep using Reddit sync I guess.
  - proto-n 3y ago
    They just confirmed killing 3rd party apps with unreasonable pricing
- dc-programmer 3y ago
  This may be an unpopular opinion, but I prefer new Reddit when I’m on my phone (which nowadays is my primary causal scrolling device). I think part of the reason people stick to old Reddit is because they haven’t ripped off the nostalgia band-aid yet

mg 3y ago

Could be a fun project to put all the steps outlined in the install guide [1] into a single script which turns a fresh Debian 12 install into a running Reddit instance. [1] https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/wiki/Install-guide https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/wiki/Install-guide

Klonoar 3y ago
At the risk of beating a dead horse: one could also say "no" to another silo'd instance and instead opt to try running something like Lemmy: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

mkl95 3y ago

I've been using old Reddit for a few years, pretty much since I found out it was a thing. Judging by their current iteration's UX, the code is probably horrific enough that open sourcing it would hurt their reputation. As you may know Reddit is owned by Conde Nast or some sibling company, and they love outsourcing their stuff to bodyshops.

danjoredd 3y ago

Them going closed source is one of the many, many changes I have seen on that site. It used to be somewhat cool back in the day but Reddit feels like it is trying as hard as it can be to be FaceBook these days. I had to leave because it feels nothing like it used to be.

voytec 3y ago

(2008)

Lammy 3y ago

For an actively-maintained project, see the code that runs rDrama-dot-net (sup /h/slackernews lol) and watchpeopledie-dot-tv https://fsdfsd.net/rDrama/rDrama https://fsdfsd.net/rDrama/rDrama

dabluecaboose 3y ago
Unfortunately, it's based on new reddit and a UX nightmare on desktop.

jrflowers 3y ago

This reminds me that LiveJournal is also open source! https://stat.livejournal.com/doc/server/lj.index.html https://stat.livejournal.com/doc/server/lj.index.html

jasonladuke0311 3y ago

It’s unbelievable how user-hostile old Reddit has become on mobile. Overriding the back button to remove the referring page from history. Modals popping up after x amount of browsing, etc.

dabluecaboose 3y ago

I still think that tree-style comments and voting are far, far superior to old-style forums. Especially for hobby information or someone looking for info years after the fact. I have spent way too much time following 3 separate conversations in a forum thread looking for the specific information I want. With reddit (and HackerNews) it's so much easier to track individual sub-threads and see what's going on, and the voting system (while it can and does lead to echo chambers) is also great for promoting better content, IMO.

scythe 3y ago
On the contrary, they're better for browsing, but much worse for participating. Reddit's key innovation was making the site attractive to viewers who weren't yet members of the community. It used to be that you joined a community when you found it and people had to be asked to lurk — "lurk moar" even became a meme — until reddit came around and people browsed /r/funny (which was actually good once) for months before getting an account. The downside is that every discussion feels like a race. Trying to have a conversation on Reddit or HN is vastly more stressful than it ever was on old forums — even compared to places where people were screaming at each other. You have six hours to get your point across before the thread dies. There's a tendency for unproductive one-on-ones to occur that wouldn't be possible with traditional threads. But the upside is that Reddit is (so far) the best place to find out whether I should try the new cookies at Trader Joe's or whether some off-brand of iPhone cables are reliable.
- dabluecaboose 3y ago
  I disagree that they're necessarily worse for participating. The issues of following a popular forum thread would still make it obnoxious to participate in the conversation. And in a forum, when two people get into unproductive one-on-ones it tends to stifle the entire conversation, because it's put right inline with all other posts. The problem with massive threads, I feel like, still exists with forums, but the opposite. It's usually folly to comment on a popular thread early on a traditional forum, as your comment will just be swept up with all the other excited comments. I think the answer to both is to use them for smaller communities, which is why I think reddit is best for hobby communities and whatnot.

winrid 3y ago

Neat, looks like a custom Python framework... was expecting Django.

Lammy 3y ago
RIP aaronsw https://webpy.org/ https://webpy.org/ “(The site was rewritten using other tools after being acquired by Condé Nast.)”
- notatoad 3y ago
  was reddit ever on webpy? i thought it was lisp back in the day before conde nast
  - Lammy 3y ago
    http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit “Over at reddit.com, we rewrote the site from Lisp to Python in the past week. It was pretty much done in one weekend. (Disclosure: We used my web.py library.) The others knew Lisp (they wrote their whole site in it) and they knew Python (they rewrote their whole site in it) and yet they decided liked Python better for this project. The Python version had less code that ran faster and was far easier to read and maintain.”
Klonoar 3y ago
Someone would have to correct me if I'm wrong here as my history is hazy, but wasn't Reddit originally built in Lisp and then ported to Python due to other factors (i.e hard to find talent/hard to maintain/speed of iteration/etc)? Django back then had notable nuances at scale and if you were migrating over a codebase in another language I'm not sure it would've been a viable thing to entertain.

lol768 3y ago

Didn't they stop updating that repo at some point? I'm not sure it was at the same time that they replaced the main site with a SPA - so it's probably not entirely accurate to say "Old Reddit" (which to me means old.reddit.com) is open-source. Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update_on_the_state_of_the_redditreddit_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update...

dang 3y ago
Ok, we've changed the title to say what the page says. Submitted title was "Old Reddit is open source".
- lol768 3y ago
  Thanks, dang!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

rvba 3y ago

Why in 2023 it takes like 4 seconds for every site to load on a mobile phone? Does anyone on reddit even use reddit on phone? They dont know that their page takes forever to load? Or do they just want to get rid of users that try to read stuff and make it some sort of a picture-based site? Seriously did anyone there ever even try to optimize loading ? I go to /r/askreddit - open a random thread - and it takes few seconds to load. Compare it on mobile to old i.reddit that loaded instantly even with thoustands of comments. I tried like 10 different reddit apps. None of them has the look and feel of the light-weight i.reddit did. I dont even mention that those apps often dont have tabs + history cannot be shared with browser.. Seriously why there is no app that behaves the way i.reddit behaved? I also dont understand how the really-really old reddit "frame" (top 10 upvoted comments on left side of the screen) died. This was just so damn good. Internet supposedly moved forward due to "security", but why there cant be some sort of a browser plugin that can display the original site on 90% of the screen and top 10 reddit comments (i.reddit style with nesting) on the left?

mvexel 3y ago

Ha! I was hoping to see some web.py / Aaron Swartz code. This is cool too, though.

htrp 3y ago

from some of the numbers I've seen. new reddit is only 11% of total users, old reddit is only 12% at this point