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Reddit does two things really: 1. Link Discovery 2. Discussion There are a few options for Link Discovery. I have a bunch of fora and sites hooked up to an rs

Reddit does two things really: 1. Link Discovery 2. Discussion There are a few options for Link Discovery. I have a bunch of fora and sites hooked up to an rss reader (the old reader, since google shutdown reader) which does pretty well (although I'd like it to do a bit more). The link discovery thing is like the equivalent of having channels on your TV. You can stream any program (website) of a huge number but a channel gives you a reason to think about a specific one right now. I've been looking at https://pinboard.in/popular/ https://pinboard.in/popular/, but it doesn't support rss which is a shame. There's really nothing to compare with reddit for discussion of the links though (and that includes scoring and karma and responses etc). And a big part of that is because of network effects. Reddit is where the discussion is happening, because it's where the people are because it's where the discussion is happening. What's really awkward here is that some of the alternatives have ended up as seeding around communities that were too toxic for mainstream reddit. That toxicity will make it harder for them to grow. I do find myself wondering what a system that connected my rss feed reader with global comments about webpages might look like.

stinkytaco 3y ago
> I do find myself wondering what a system that connected my rss feed reader with global comments about webpages might look like. Newsblur has this. It would probably be fine with more people. Occasionally there's something interesting, but usually there's no much of anything.
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  after you and another commenter suggested it, I checked it out. It does look pretty interesting. Unfortunately I can't find any way to import my OPML so I'm a bit stuck. The discovery of feeds contrasts rather poorly with my podcast player. And forcing me to manually copy a whole bunch of hard to find urls one at a time is not a fun onboarding experience.
  - stinkytaco 3y ago
    If you click the gear in the bottom right (at least of my screen) the menu that pops up will have an option called "Import or upload sites". That has an OPML upload option. It's a cluttered user experience, though fairly configurable once you've started to find your way around. It's definitely a kitchen sink style tool, however. EDIT: It's bottom left, sorry. I browse the web in a mirror.
    - kybernetikos 3y ago
      I think the gear was greyed out until I added my first site, but it's working now. Thanks for the suggestion, and I'll give it a try!
      - stinkytaco 3y ago
        If you decide you like it, let us know your username. I'm always looking for interesting people to follow.
brianmiddleton 3y ago
You can also look at it as discussion forums for pretty much any topic with single sign-on. Think of anything and you'll probably find it plus porn of it on Reddit with a quick search.
- seanalltogether 3y ago
  Right, I join in on the Conan and sunny in philly subreddits, and these forums simply do not exist outside of reddit, literally nowhere.
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  The single sign on / all my comments and posts in one place aspect is definitely valuable too, good point.
webscout 3y ago
[dead]
PMunch 3y ago
I've been having this exact same idea. Basically a way for any RSS reader to discover comments from anywhere. Of course you run into the problems of moderation and latency, but I believe some clever systems around prefetching and shared lists of verified and banned users could work. But the main problem I've run into for link discovery is the voting system. If you actually want a distributed system counting votes becomes expensive fast.
crosvenir 3y ago
Reddit does another thing that is very important to me: 3. Content Rehosting You see this on subreddits such as /r/IdiotsInCars and /r/Earthporn. The former allows the user to upload videos while the latter is for images. This helps the user have a more pleasant experience because it reduces/eliminates - popup fatigue (worldstar, local news sites, etc.), - back button hijacking (CNN, local news sites, etc.), and - walled gardens (NYT, Newyorker, WSJ, etc.). I think reddit could encourage their users to attribute (some if not most would) by adding an optional source (sauce) link field to post forms. Might be nice to have a way the OP/mod could approve a crowd-sourced source edit.
- nehal3m 3y ago
  It's been a little better lately, but their video player kinda sucks ass. Scrubbing usually causes total lock for me, requiring a reload of the entire page. Sometimes the video and the controls will get stuck but the audio keeps playing, even if you fold shut the player on old. It got to the point where I don't bother unfolding the video unless it's embedded.
  - beret4breakfast 3y ago
    Hence why 3pa like Apollo are great, it’s video/gif player is (was :’( ) the best.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      Honestly, I can't believe it that here it is 2023(!!), and there still exist sites that can't figure out reliable cross-browser video playback. These sites should just give up, provide the URL to the raw video file, and let users play them back in whatever way works for them.
      - wott 3y ago
        > Honestly, I can't believe it that here it is 2023(!!), and there still exist sites that can't figure out reliable cross-browser video playback. Ah! I was telling myself the same thing last month (how is it possible in 2023 that things which seemed solved _years_ ago, actually still do not work?), when I was trying to watch some recording of a sport event. The site proposed several players (generally 3). 3 different computers (Linux_A, Windows_A, Windows_B). Linux_A with browser_A: only player_A worked OK. Windows_A with browser_B: player_A some days worked, some days didn't; player_B and player_C worked OK. Windows_B with browser_B: player_A gave audio but no video; player_B stuttered; player_C didn't work ==> no success with this OS+browser combination Windows_B with browser_C: only player_C worked OK; We can note that among those combinations, we had two systems with the same OS and the same browser, and yet the behaviour was completely different. > These sites should just give up, provide the URL to the raw video file, and let users play them back in whatever way works for them. In general, I agree I'd also rather _not_ have web players. However, in the specific case I am talking about, the videos were more or less 6 hours long, so I'd rather not download the whole high resolution stuff (and likely see the process fail), but be able to skip parts and/or watch/download a few parts in lower resolution and other ones in high resolution.
KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
I'm not sure the rss comparison really works. The link discovery and discussion are one and the same because they are being driven by the same community. Significant reaction and discussion of one post leads to more posts extending that premise, and then more discussion, and so on. I don't think replacing Reddit is just about throwing a toolbox at the problem
- deeviant 3y ago
  This is literally what Digg did to self-destruct, in that they basically eliminated user powers and created some automatic feed. And, it died literally overnight.
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  > The link discovery and discussion are one and the same because they are being driven by the same community. I don't think they necessarily have to be the same thing, but the voting for links to bring quality ones to the top, and the choosing of which site to be looking at today is very much like having a TV channel. Lots of people find themselves watching films that are being aired on specific channels, despite the fact that they had access to that film for years on a streaming service and didn't watch it. I think of the link discovery aspect of Reddit as similar to an aggregated DJ or TV channel.
ekanes 3y ago
> I do find myself wondering what a system that connected my rss feed reader with global comments about webpages might look like. Love this.
irrational 3y ago
There is also original content. A few weeks ago someone made a similar argument, so I went to three of the subs I most frequent (boardgames, woodworking, and baking). The very first post of each thread was original content. Someone had made their own themed version of a game, someone had made a woodworking project, and someone had baked something. Since those subs are now dark, I can’t share similar links this time.
nerdponx 3y ago
I know Reddit search isn't great, but the ability to search at all is useful. Compared to e.g. Discord where threading is weak at best and searching is borderline useless because it's a chatroom, not a forum. Reddit is a low-effort replacement for traditional forums, solving several problems of traditional forums: 1. One account for all communities. Nobody wants to make 100 accounts, whereas it's really easy to just click "join" and start participating in a new subreddit. 2. Consistent, uniform, familiar interface with Markdown for text. The old PHPBB etc. forums all had different layouts and slightly incompatible markup. And Discourse is just weird. 3. Easy to stay "casually engaged" with the community because of the customized per-user front page and the ability to group communities together with multireddits. Whereas with individual forums, you need to get email notifications or manually check several different sites to stay connected, which is much higher-effort. Also, it's easy to passively follow a low-population subreddit in the hope that it gains more users, while you're much less likely to make a new account on a forum that seems quiet. This helps keep the appearance of a high active population in niche communities, because people are less likely to forget about the community and can easily drop in and out. 4. Easy discovery of new communities and being a name brand makes it easy to attract users: people just assume a subreddit for X exists. The alternative is that they'd have to hunt around for a forum that will probably be low-population anyway. 5. Upvoting and downvoting helps the community moderate spam and bad actors. It also creates incentives to post content, in the hope that you get upvotes. Yes, there are problems with the system, but I think "the market has spoken" to some extent on this: the individual enjoyment of voting outweighs the systemic incentive problems associated with it. It's easy to say that Reddit is "just" the two things that you mentioned, but that to me is reductionist to the point where it obfuscates why people prefer Reddit for discussion compared to other options. Note that Discord has many of the same advantages over its alternatives, and I think similar points are relevant for both platforms.
- deafpolygon 3y ago
  Importantly, reddit allows the creation of microforums. Not everyone has the time, energy or ability to build out a full site with a complete forum to make it worth everyone's while. I see Facebook & Discord taking Reddit's piece of the pie in the short term.
pfista 3y ago
> I do find myself wondering what a system that connected my rss feed reader with global comments about webpages might look like. To some extent, this is what Artifact.news is doing though it's mostly mainstream news right now. They have a neat feature that aggregates comments across different articles covering the same topic.
mamoul 3y ago
https://newsblur.com/ https://newsblur.com/ I think this might be pretty close to what you're looking for. It's an RSS feed reader with a platform for discussions.

stinkytaco 3y ago

> I do find myself wondering what a system that connected my rss feed reader with global comments about webpages might look like. Newsblur has this. It would probably be fine with more people. Occasionally there's something interesting, but usually there's no much of anything.

kybernetikos 3y ago
after you and another commenter suggested it, I checked it out. It does look pretty interesting. Unfortunately I can't find any way to import my OPML so I'm a bit stuck. The discovery of feeds contrasts rather poorly with my podcast player. And forcing me to manually copy a whole bunch of hard to find urls one at a time is not a fun onboarding experience.
- stinkytaco 3y ago
  If you click the gear in the bottom right (at least of my screen) the menu that pops up will have an option called "Import or upload sites". That has an OPML upload option. It's a cluttered user experience, though fairly configurable once you've started to find your way around. It's definitely a kitchen sink style tool, however. EDIT: It's bottom left, sorry. I browse the web in a mirror.
  - kybernetikos 3y ago
    I think the gear was greyed out until I added my first site, but it's working now. Thanks for the suggestion, and I'll give it a try!
    - stinkytaco 3y ago
      If you decide you like it, let us know your username. I'm always looking for interesting people to follow.

brianmiddleton 3y ago

You can also look at it as discussion forums for pretty much any topic with single sign-on. Think of anything and you'll probably find it plus porn of it on Reddit with a quick search.

seanalltogether 3y ago
Right, I join in on the Conan and sunny in philly subreddits, and these forums simply do not exist outside of reddit, literally nowhere.
kybernetikos 3y ago
The single sign on / all my comments and posts in one place aspect is definitely valuable too, good point.

webscout 3y ago

[dead]

PMunch 3y ago

I've been having this exact same idea. Basically a way for any RSS reader to discover comments from anywhere. Of course you run into the problems of moderation and latency, but I believe some clever systems around prefetching and shared lists of verified and banned users could work. But the main problem I've run into for link discovery is the voting system. If you actually want a distributed system counting votes becomes expensive fast.

crosvenir 3y ago

Reddit does another thing that is very important to me: 3. Content Rehosting You see this on subreddits such as /r/IdiotsInCars and /r/Earthporn. The former allows the user to upload videos while the latter is for images. This helps the user have a more pleasant experience because it reduces/eliminates - popup fatigue (worldstar, local news sites, etc.), - back button hijacking (CNN, local news sites, etc.), and - walled gardens (NYT, Newyorker, WSJ, etc.). I think reddit could encourage their users to attribute (some if not most would) by adding an optional source (sauce) link field to post forms. Might be nice to have a way the OP/mod could approve a crowd-sourced source edit.

nehal3m 3y ago
It's been a little better lately, but their video player kinda sucks ass. Scrubbing usually causes total lock for me, requiring a reload of the entire page. Sometimes the video and the controls will get stuck but the audio keeps playing, even if you fold shut the player on old. It got to the point where I don't bother unfolding the video unless it's embedded.
- beret4breakfast 3y ago
  Hence why 3pa like Apollo are great, it’s video/gif player is (was :’( ) the best.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Honestly, I can't believe it that here it is 2023(!!), and there still exist sites that can't figure out reliable cross-browser video playback. These sites should just give up, provide the URL to the raw video file, and let users play them back in whatever way works for them.
    - wott 3y ago
      > Honestly, I can't believe it that here it is 2023(!!), and there still exist sites that can't figure out reliable cross-browser video playback. Ah! I was telling myself the same thing last month (how is it possible in 2023 that things which seemed solved _years_ ago, actually still do not work?), when I was trying to watch some recording of a sport event. The site proposed several players (generally 3). 3 different computers (Linux_A, Windows_A, Windows_B). Linux_A with browser_A: only player_A worked OK. Windows_A with browser_B: player_A some days worked, some days didn't; player_B and player_C worked OK. Windows_B with browser_B: player_A gave audio but no video; player_B stuttered; player_C didn't work ==> no success with this OS+browser combination Windows_B with browser_C: only player_C worked OK; We can note that among those combinations, we had two systems with the same OS and the same browser, and yet the behaviour was completely different. > These sites should just give up, provide the URL to the raw video file, and let users play them back in whatever way works for them. In general, I agree I'd also rather _not_ have web players. However, in the specific case I am talking about, the videos were more or less 6 hours long, so I'd rather not download the whole high resolution stuff (and likely see the process fail), but be able to skip parts and/or watch/download a few parts in lower resolution and other ones in high resolution.

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago

I'm not sure the rss comparison really works. The link discovery and discussion are one and the same because they are being driven by the same community. Significant reaction and discussion of one post leads to more posts extending that premise, and then more discussion, and so on. I don't think replacing Reddit is just about throwing a toolbox at the problem

deeviant 3y ago
This is literally what Digg did to self-destruct, in that they basically eliminated user powers and created some automatic feed. And, it died literally overnight.
kybernetikos 3y ago
> The link discovery and discussion are one and the same because they are being driven by the same community. I don't think they necessarily have to be the same thing, but the voting for links to bring quality ones to the top, and the choosing of which site to be looking at today is very much like having a TV channel. Lots of people find themselves watching films that are being aired on specific channels, despite the fact that they had access to that film for years on a streaming service and didn't watch it. I think of the link discovery aspect of Reddit as similar to an aggregated DJ or TV channel.

ekanes 3y ago

> I do find myself wondering what a system that connected my rss feed reader with global comments about webpages might look like. Love this.

irrational 3y ago

There is also original content. A few weeks ago someone made a similar argument, so I went to three of the subs I most frequent (boardgames, woodworking, and baking). The very first post of each thread was original content. Someone had made their own themed version of a game, someone had made a woodworking project, and someone had baked something. Since those subs are now dark, I can’t share similar links this time.

nerdponx 3y ago

I know Reddit search isn't great, but the ability to search at all is useful. Compared to e.g. Discord where threading is weak at best and searching is borderline useless because it's a chatroom, not a forum. Reddit is a low-effort replacement for traditional forums, solving several problems of traditional forums: 1. One account for all communities. Nobody wants to make 100 accounts, whereas it's really easy to just click "join" and start participating in a new subreddit. 2. Consistent, uniform, familiar interface with Markdown for text. The old PHPBB etc. forums all had different layouts and slightly incompatible markup. And Discourse is just weird. 3. Easy to stay "casually engaged" with the community because of the customized per-user front page and the ability to group communities together with multireddits. Whereas with individual forums, you need to get email notifications or manually check several different sites to stay connected, which is much higher-effort. Also, it's easy to passively follow a low-population subreddit in the hope that it gains more users, while you're much less likely to make a new account on a forum that seems quiet. This helps keep the appearance of a high active population in niche communities, because people are less likely to forget about the community and can easily drop in and out. 4. Easy discovery of new communities and being a name brand makes it easy to attract users: people just assume a subreddit for X exists. The alternative is that they'd have to hunt around for a forum that will probably be low-population anyway. 5. Upvoting and downvoting helps the community moderate spam and bad actors. It also creates incentives to post content, in the hope that you get upvotes. Yes, there are problems with the system, but I think "the market has spoken" to some extent on this: the individual enjoyment of voting outweighs the systemic incentive problems associated with it. It's easy to say that Reddit is "just" the two things that you mentioned, but that to me is reductionist to the point where it obfuscates why people prefer Reddit for discussion compared to other options. Note that Discord has many of the same advantages over its alternatives, and I think similar points are relevant for both platforms.

deafpolygon 3y ago
Importantly, reddit allows the creation of microforums. Not everyone has the time, energy or ability to build out a full site with a complete forum to make it worth everyone's while. I see Facebook & Discord taking Reddit's piece of the pie in the short term.

pfista 3y ago

> I do find myself wondering what a system that connected my rss feed reader with global comments about webpages might look like. To some extent, this is what Artifact.news is doing though it's mostly mainstream news right now. They have a neat feature that aggregates comments across different articles covering the same topic.

mamoul 3y ago

https://newsblur.com/ https://newsblur.com/ I think this might be pretty close to what you're looking for. It's an RSS feed reader with a platform for discussions.