4 ms·

The subreddit system did, in fact, save Reddit. It's not the a perfect answer to the Eternal September problem, but it's one of the best I've seen so far. AskSc

The subreddit system did, in fact, save Reddit. It's not the a perfect answer to the Eternal September problem, but it's one of the best I've seen so far. AskScience is one of the best examples of the bunch, but there are many others. It's a shame Reddit's gotten such a bad rap and that it's so hard to find the quality subreddits.

joejohnson 15y ago
They should clean up the front page. Too many of the default subreddits that appear are super lame. /r/gaming? And all of the image ones? Even the more "thoughtful" ones, say /r/politics is filled with awful, insipid comments. They should adopt better rules like /r/askscience has, and let the children form their own meme subreddits.
- rthomas6 15y ago
  The problem with putting the high quality subreddits on the front page is that most high quality subreddits can afford to be that way because of a relatively small and insular community. There is a fear frequently expressed on some of these subreddits that the quality will drop if they're put on the front page. Good examples are /r/truereddit and /r/moderatepolitics. Those subreddits have a comparatively higher signal to noise ratio due in part to their comparative obscurity.
  - joejohnson 15y ago
    I'd never heard of /r/truereddit. Thank you for that.
  - mmatants 15y ago
    It's interesting how the obscurity is a self-selection filter for quality contributors. Making quality contributions requires more effort. Having the front-page content as a "honeypot" of sorts weeds out those individuals who are primarily in the "drive-by" mode, anxious to blurt out emotional statements for immediate gratification. The interesting thing, too, is that there is a necessary friction to maintaining high editorial quality. There must be conflict to be able to enforce "creme de la creme" level of content for consumption. Which is fine, and not personal. All of us have our thoughtful/contemplative mood and the rash impatient one. At least on a relative scale.
  - SpiderX 15y ago
    I think it's more to do with the moderators to posters ratio that contributes to a higher signal to noise ratio. They have about 30 moderators.
- snarkyturtle 15y ago
  I would say /r/politics would be good if it weren't on the frontpage. reddit is fine the way it is, since the frontpage acts as a filter for the masses. A userbase as large as reddit gravitates back towards the norm content-wise as its numbers increase, and the frontpage reddit's moderators couldn't enforce the rules nearly as well as askscience (they were on the frontpage but asked to be taken down due to moderator consensus.) So to anyone who wants to explore reddit, which most people don't, they'd unsubscribe from the frontpage reddits and dig deep. THEN you get the tight communities with common interests that reddit was in the first place. EDIT: That being said /r/pics recently put a rules system up that works tremendously well. It used to be meme-filled but now generally has great content (except for the MS paint trend popping up as of lately.)
  - zxoq 15y ago
    Actually, r/askscience is still on the frontpage, they were only off it during Christmas due to the expected influx of users.
- jerf 15y ago
  A subreddit being on the default set causes the subreddit to be "super lame".
- vacri 15y ago
  What the hell is 'super lame' with gaming? Lots of people do it, why wouldn't they want to talk about it? I also find it odd that you're complaining about lack of thoughtful content but are happy to use terms like 'super lame'. Would you use it in your preferred politics thread: 'Too many of Obama's policies are super lame'? Sounds exactly like what you're complaining about.
- bh42222 15y ago
  They should clean up the front page. Too many of the default subreddits that appear are super lame. No. That's what mass popularity is ALWAYS like. What they need to do is create a better way to find sub-reddits you are interested in but which are not popular.
SkyMarshal 15y ago
>It's a shame Reddit's gotten such a bad rap and that it's so hard to find the quality subreddits. It's not that hard, just look for any subreddit that starts with or contains 'true', 'depth', or 'meta', among other keywords. Example: http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit

joejohnson 15y ago

They should clean up the front page. Too many of the default subreddits that appear are super lame. /r/gaming? And all of the image ones? Even the more "thoughtful" ones, say /r/politics is filled with awful, insipid comments. They should adopt better rules like /r/askscience has, and let the children form their own meme subreddits.

rthomas6 15y ago
The problem with putting the high quality subreddits on the front page is that most high quality subreddits can afford to be that way because of a relatively small and insular community. There is a fear frequently expressed on some of these subreddits that the quality will drop if they're put on the front page. Good examples are /r/truereddit and /r/moderatepolitics. Those subreddits have a comparatively higher signal to noise ratio due in part to their comparative obscurity.
- joejohnson 15y ago
  I'd never heard of /r/truereddit. Thank you for that.
- mmatants 15y ago
  It's interesting how the obscurity is a self-selection filter for quality contributors. Making quality contributions requires more effort. Having the front-page content as a "honeypot" of sorts weeds out those individuals who are primarily in the "drive-by" mode, anxious to blurt out emotional statements for immediate gratification. The interesting thing, too, is that there is a necessary friction to maintaining high editorial quality. There must be conflict to be able to enforce "creme de la creme" level of content for consumption. Which is fine, and not personal. All of us have our thoughtful/contemplative mood and the rash impatient one. At least on a relative scale.
- SpiderX 15y ago
  I think it's more to do with the moderators to posters ratio that contributes to a higher signal to noise ratio. They have about 30 moderators.
snarkyturtle 15y ago
I would say /r/politics would be good if it weren't on the frontpage. reddit is fine the way it is, since the frontpage acts as a filter for the masses. A userbase as large as reddit gravitates back towards the norm content-wise as its numbers increase, and the frontpage reddit's moderators couldn't enforce the rules nearly as well as askscience (they were on the frontpage but asked to be taken down due to moderator consensus.) So to anyone who wants to explore reddit, which most people don't, they'd unsubscribe from the frontpage reddits and dig deep. THEN you get the tight communities with common interests that reddit was in the first place. EDIT: That being said /r/pics recently put a rules system up that works tremendously well. It used to be meme-filled but now generally has great content (except for the MS paint trend popping up as of lately.)
- zxoq 15y ago
  Actually, r/askscience is still on the frontpage, they were only off it during Christmas due to the expected influx of users.
jerf 15y ago
A subreddit being on the default set causes the subreddit to be "super lame".
vacri 15y ago
What the hell is 'super lame' with gaming? Lots of people do it, why wouldn't they want to talk about it? I also find it odd that you're complaining about lack of thoughtful content but are happy to use terms like 'super lame'. Would you use it in your preferred politics thread: 'Too many of Obama's policies are super lame'? Sounds exactly like what you're complaining about.
bh42222 15y ago
They should clean up the front page. Too many of the default subreddits that appear are super lame. No. That's what mass popularity is ALWAYS like. What they need to do is create a better way to find sub-reddits you are interested in but which are not popular.

SkyMarshal 15y ago

>It's a shame Reddit's gotten such a bad rap and that it's so hard to find the quality subreddits. It's not that hard, just look for any subreddit that starts with or contains 'true', 'depth', or 'meta', among other keywords. Example: http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit