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The reddit founders talked and thought about this tremendously, and ultimately decided that it was more important to have distinct communities, so that the same

by raldi 15y ago

The reddit founders talked and thought about this tremendously, and ultimately decided that it was more important to have distinct communities, so that the same story can be on /r/aww and /r/photography without one group overrunning the other. Or /r/TwoXChromosomes and /r/MensRights. Or /r/politics and /r/economics. I think that this was one of the most important strategic decisions in reddit's history, and that they got it right. I'm not saying tags can never work, just that any proposed tags system needs to supplement, not destroy, the siloing of subreddit communities. And be simple to use, even for the 99% of redditors who never even vote or subscribe to anything.

underwater 15y ago
I was strongly opposed to subreddits when they were proposed. I thought tagging, like Delicious did, would be a better solution. I'll happily admit that tagging could not have grown Reddit to anywhere near its current size without the site collapsing on itself. The different feel to each community (compare F7U12 are AskScience) is much more appealing than a single homogeneous group. However, I think that it was the first step towards breaking the promise to create an personalized news aggregator. I for one was disappointed when the recommended posts feature was dropped. The initial missteps with whitelabel sites like the Wired-branded reddit and lipstick.com are amusing in hindsight. I'm not sure how reddit with a pink background with Courier as the primary font was supposed to attract a female audience.
citricsquid 15y ago
My idea of how tags work would be on top of subreddits. Subreddits are a fantastic idea and make reddit reddit but tags would work along side that and a way to associate stories with multiple subreddits. For example, if a post could be tagged "startups" and was posted to r/business, when I tried to find other subreddits besides r/startups about startups I could search "subreddits with x or more stories tagged "startups"" and I'd be presented with r/business. They wouldn't exist as a replacement for subreddits, they'd exist along side and serve as a way to connect subreddits by topic. Subreddits currently exist as their own entities with no crossover which doesn't work well for expanding a users subscriptions to other subreddits relevant to their interest.
tomjen3 15y ago
They would be useful for something like what stackoverflow does by allowing people to block tags or highlight others (e.g. Block Ron Paul posts in /r/politics). That said don't listen to me. I have quit using reddit, except for /r/gonewild.
- raldi 15y ago
  Negative filtering would be a disaster. The power users do most of the voting and almost all of the reporting. If they all could block Ron Paul, those stories wouldn't get downvoted and, when offtopic, reported. This would cause the Ron Paul stories to take over the site for the 99% of users who wouldn't be using the filter.

by raldi 15y ago

underwater 15y ago

I was strongly opposed to subreddits when they were proposed. I thought tagging, like Delicious did, would be a better solution. I'll happily admit that tagging could not have grown Reddit to anywhere near its current size without the site collapsing on itself. The different feel to each community (compare F7U12 are AskScience) is much more appealing than a single homogeneous group. However, I think that it was the first step towards breaking the promise to create an personalized news aggregator. I for one was disappointed when the recommended posts feature was dropped. The initial missteps with whitelabel sites like the Wired-branded reddit and lipstick.com are amusing in hindsight. I'm not sure how reddit with a pink background with Courier as the primary font was supposed to attract a female audience.

citricsquid 15y ago

My idea of how tags work would be on top of subreddits. Subreddits are a fantastic idea and make reddit reddit but tags would work along side that and a way to associate stories with multiple subreddits. For example, if a post could be tagged "startups" and was posted to r/business, when I tried to find other subreddits besides r/startups about startups I could search "subreddits with x or more stories tagged "startups"" and I'd be presented with r/business. They wouldn't exist as a replacement for subreddits, they'd exist along side and serve as a way to connect subreddits by topic. Subreddits currently exist as their own entities with no crossover which doesn't work well for expanding a users subscriptions to other subreddits relevant to their interest.

tomjen3 15y ago

They would be useful for something like what stackoverflow does by allowing people to block tags or highlight others (e.g. Block Ron Paul posts in /r/politics). That said don't listen to me. I have quit using reddit, except for /r/gonewild.

raldi 15y ago
Negative filtering would be a disaster. The power users do most of the voting and almost all of the reporting. If they all could block Ron Paul, those stories wouldn't get downvoted and, when offtopic, reported. This would cause the Ron Paul stories to take over the site for the 99% of users who wouldn't be using the filter.