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Which subreddits do you subscribe to where you see that unwanted content? It shouldn't matter what subreddits I subscribe to (and the encroachment of certain t

Which subreddits do you subscribe to where you see that unwanted content? It shouldn't matter what subreddits I subscribe to (and the encroachment of certain trends keeps herding people to yet new subreddits. /r/gaming -> rage comics and DAE remember. Okay, everyone to /r/games...rinse repeat. /r/atheism -> ridiculous and obviously fake caricatures for people to knock down. /r/programming -> beginner material, so what, /r/notbeginnerprogramming?) That is a hack, manual solution for machine learning of the things I am interested in. Netflix uses strong algorithms and a lot of data crunching to suggest movies I might be interested in, rather than simply forcing me to subscribe to wholesale genres (you like Action movies so here's every movie that dropped in the Action bin). The eventually winner of the social news game will be those who effectively transfer that sort of learning to this genre. Note that you can take it beyond simply finding correlation indexes between users -- analyze the linked site to determine factors like is it image heavy, what is the grade level / complexity level of the writing, discern the subject matter, etc.

AlexanderZ 14y ago
If you think that subreddits don't matter, then you are clearly expecting from Reddit something that it was not designed to have. The most popular subreddits are swarmed with teenagers and the quality has gone downhill, that's true. But the value of Reddit is in its (less popular) subreddits.
- sp332 14y ago
  huggyface's point is that Reddit should hide uninteresting-for-me material and surface interesting-for-me material automatically. Subscribing to subreddits is a manual process that shouldn't be necessary.
  - AlexanderZ 14y ago
    How is subscribing to a subreddit fundamentally different from upvoting? To get recommendations, you need to somehow feed the recommendation engine with your interests. Look at it this way: when you upvote a fitness-related submission, you say "hey, I'm somewhat interested in fitness", when you subscribe to /r/fitness, you say "hey, I'm really interested in fitness." So, both upvoting and subscribing are actually manual actions.
    - huggyface 14y ago
      you say "hey, I'm really interested in fitness." With which you also say -- or so Reddit believes in its current level of imperfection -- "and I have complete affinity with everyone else who happens to vote in /r/fitness". Is that true? Is there any subreddit where that is true? It perplexes me that this is being treated like an either/or. It is not. In reality subreddits see a constantly exploding entropy as users try to fix a broken mechanism of correlation -- the fact that I like gaming doesn't mean that I like the same thing as every other reader of /r/gaming, for instance. Just fix that by splitting off into /r/truegaming, or maybe /r/games, or maybe...
      - sp332 14y ago
        the fact that I like gaming doesn't mean that I like the same thing as every other reader of /r/gaming, for instance. So, the site should be unique for each user, right? But if you take the tactic you mentioned in a previous post: "Give users the ability to dislike something strongly enough that anyone who voted it up is excluded from all vote counts/rankings/recommendations as provided to that user for some period of time." You'll pretty quickly run out of any other users to interact with.
        huggyface 14y ago
        While I'm being extreme, in practical application it would be a simple reduced weighting of negative correlation users. e.g. if five people I correlate heavily with liked a /r/programming entry, that will rise above a post liked by one hundred people I have a poor correlation with. Rinse/repeat. Heavy math/statistical analysis that can be tuned to create a productive enjoyable experience, with the side benefit that it reduces gaming and exploitation.
      - AlexanderZ 14y ago
        With which you also say -- or so Reddit believes in its current level of imperfection -- "and I have complete affinity with everyone else who happens to vote in /r/fitness". No. With that I tell Reddit to show me different opinions on fitness coming from people who aren't morons (since the submission was not downvoted). You seem to think that if a person subscribes to /r/fitness, he surely has the same opinions as the hivemind. That's not true at all. Good subreddits allow all kinds of opinions. And by allow I mean they aren't being downvoted automatically. Of course, there is the hivemind and a dominating opinion, but other opinions are not repressed, that's my point.
  - Goronmon 14y ago
    And I think most users of reddit would disagree. Sometimes I visit /r/gaming or even gasp /r/all knowing what I'm going to get. Likewise, I visit /r/games knowing I'm not going to get the same content as /r/gaming. Trying to make everything automatic seems like a job for a different site entirely.
    - sp332 14y ago
      Like maybe a new Digg? :)
- huggyface 14y ago
  If you think that subreddits don't matter Categorization does still matter (in the Netflix example they can competently recommend and rank for me, but they still allow me to filter into specific categories). Subreddits are useful. However subreddits are a very coarse, manual solution to what I described. To the comment about what reddit is designed for, it started sans subreddits. Indeed, an original focus was recommendations, but either the algorithms or the hardware wasn't there to support it, the result being a bit of a disaster. So they went down the manual binning approach.
  - betterth 14y ago
    Manual binning is more than the "hack", it's the reason Reddit is successful and the reason why Digg will not be (unless they emulate). Manual binning does something magical: each bin is a separate community run by moderators. Each one has different rules, different posters, different content and different discussion. If you automatically sort into bins, then you will automatically lose the distinction between bins. You cannot get your users to respect the difference between communities if you are unwilling to show them that each community is different, and deserves individual attention. Sure, find a better algorithm for the front page and logged out users. But to destroy the autonomy of the subreddit would be to destroy the very thing that makes reddit successful.
    - huggyface 14y ago
      Why do you think they can't coexist? In fact my actual suggestion is that they should coexist. But the "just subscribe appropriately" response is fundamentally broken, and only provides a partial solution. This approach absolutely benefits any subreddit as well.
      - AlexanderZ 14y ago
        What exactly is fundamentally broken in subscribing to subreddits? If you are interested in fitness, you subscribe to /r/fitness. Fitness materials won't all of a sudden be posted to /r/gaming where you (if you are not subscribed) will miss them. So, what's the point of automatic recommendations on Reddit? If there is any fitness-related material on Reddit, I'll see it in /r/fitness anyway. Besides, how are you going to train the recommendation engine? By analyzing what submissions people upvoted?
thisAintNoGame 14y ago
I'm not sure machine learning algorithms are the right approach. Crowd curation mechanisms (i.e. the upvote/downvote systems but one could imagine other systems) have the advantage of quickly adapting to the ever changing tastes of a community. I don't think machine learning approaches can be simultaneously good and flexible in such a diverse environment. The Netflix analogy isn't the best because Netflix deals with a pretty structured problem in comparison to the "recommend me things on the internet that I will like" problem. I will also claim that subreddits are by no means a hack. They are THE key feature of Reddit that allows users to join together on the basis of common interests. There's no replacing subreddits because they are a killer feature in their own right.
derleth 14y ago
> It shouldn't matter what subreddits I subscribe to Also, it shouldn't matter what Usenet newsgroups I read and what TV channels I watch.
- huggyface 14y ago
  Let me welcome you to the modern era. While you might have once had your content dictated by the radio station you listened to, or the one channel your TV could receive, here in the 21st century we have other, slightly more refined mechanisms. "I like NBC" or "I enjoy the Top 40 station" are no longer the limits of your filtering mechanism. Enjoy your stay.
  - derleth 14y ago
    Right, because trying to use an algorithm to filter a firehose will never end up with a firehose blasting through that particular kleenex. If you want to see a bad job of filtering, by all means rely on an algorithm that is designed to give minimal acceptable performance because anything else would soak up too much CPU. I'll stick to moderation and subfora.
    - huggyface 14y ago
      Your false dichotomy is an enjoyable bit of fiction.
      - derleth 14y ago
        If my post is a false dichotomy, you really suck at expressing an idea in written English.
        huggyface 14y ago
        Alternately, you're just entirely too dense to have any participation in this conversation, completely miss the point in your haste to post "witty" and hilariously inappropriate analogies.

AlexanderZ 14y ago

If you think that subreddits don't matter, then you are clearly expecting from Reddit something that it was not designed to have. The most popular subreddits are swarmed with teenagers and the quality has gone downhill, that's true. But the value of Reddit is in its (less popular) subreddits.

sp332 14y ago
huggyface's point is that Reddit should hide uninteresting-for-me material and surface interesting-for-me material automatically. Subscribing to subreddits is a manual process that shouldn't be necessary.
- AlexanderZ 14y ago
  How is subscribing to a subreddit fundamentally different from upvoting? To get recommendations, you need to somehow feed the recommendation engine with your interests. Look at it this way: when you upvote a fitness-related submission, you say "hey, I'm somewhat interested in fitness", when you subscribe to /r/fitness, you say "hey, I'm really interested in fitness." So, both upvoting and subscribing are actually manual actions.
  - huggyface 14y ago
    you say "hey, I'm really interested in fitness." With which you also say -- or so Reddit believes in its current level of imperfection -- "and I have complete affinity with everyone else who happens to vote in /r/fitness". Is that true? Is there any subreddit where that is true? It perplexes me that this is being treated like an either/or. It is not. In reality subreddits see a constantly exploding entropy as users try to fix a broken mechanism of correlation -- the fact that I like gaming doesn't mean that I like the same thing as every other reader of /r/gaming, for instance. Just fix that by splitting off into /r/truegaming, or maybe /r/games, or maybe...
    - sp332 14y ago
      the fact that I like gaming doesn't mean that I like the same thing as every other reader of /r/gaming, for instance. So, the site should be unique for each user, right? But if you take the tactic you mentioned in a previous post: "Give users the ability to dislike something strongly enough that anyone who voted it up is excluded from all vote counts/rankings/recommendations as provided to that user for some period of time." You'll pretty quickly run out of any other users to interact with.
      - huggyface 14y ago
        While I'm being extreme, in practical application it would be a simple reduced weighting of negative correlation users. e.g. if five people I correlate heavily with liked a /r/programming entry, that will rise above a post liked by one hundred people I have a poor correlation with. Rinse/repeat. Heavy math/statistical analysis that can be tuned to create a productive enjoyable experience, with the side benefit that it reduces gaming and exploitation.
    - AlexanderZ 14y ago
      With which you also say -- or so Reddit believes in its current level of imperfection -- "and I have complete affinity with everyone else who happens to vote in /r/fitness". No. With that I tell Reddit to show me different opinions on fitness coming from people who aren't morons (since the submission was not downvoted). You seem to think that if a person subscribes to /r/fitness, he surely has the same opinions as the hivemind. That's not true at all. Good subreddits allow all kinds of opinions. And by allow I mean they aren't being downvoted automatically. Of course, there is the hivemind and a dominating opinion, but other opinions are not repressed, that's my point.
- Goronmon 14y ago
  And I think most users of reddit would disagree. Sometimes I visit /r/gaming or even gasp /r/all knowing what I'm going to get. Likewise, I visit /r/games knowing I'm not going to get the same content as /r/gaming. Trying to make everything automatic seems like a job for a different site entirely.
  - sp332 14y ago
    Like maybe a new Digg? :)
huggyface 14y ago
If you think that subreddits don't matter Categorization does still matter (in the Netflix example they can competently recommend and rank for me, but they still allow me to filter into specific categories). Subreddits are useful. However subreddits are a very coarse, manual solution to what I described. To the comment about what reddit is designed for, it started sans subreddits. Indeed, an original focus was recommendations, but either the algorithms or the hardware wasn't there to support it, the result being a bit of a disaster. So they went down the manual binning approach.
- betterth 14y ago
  Manual binning is more than the "hack", it's the reason Reddit is successful and the reason why Digg will not be (unless they emulate). Manual binning does something magical: each bin is a separate community run by moderators. Each one has different rules, different posters, different content and different discussion. If you automatically sort into bins, then you will automatically lose the distinction between bins. You cannot get your users to respect the difference between communities if you are unwilling to show them that each community is different, and deserves individual attention. Sure, find a better algorithm for the front page and logged out users. But to destroy the autonomy of the subreddit would be to destroy the very thing that makes reddit successful.
  - huggyface 14y ago
    Why do you think they can't coexist? In fact my actual suggestion is that they should coexist. But the "just subscribe appropriately" response is fundamentally broken, and only provides a partial solution. This approach absolutely benefits any subreddit as well.
    - AlexanderZ 14y ago
      What exactly is fundamentally broken in subscribing to subreddits? If you are interested in fitness, you subscribe to /r/fitness. Fitness materials won't all of a sudden be posted to /r/gaming where you (if you are not subscribed) will miss them. So, what's the point of automatic recommendations on Reddit? If there is any fitness-related material on Reddit, I'll see it in /r/fitness anyway. Besides, how are you going to train the recommendation engine? By analyzing what submissions people upvoted?

thisAintNoGame 14y ago

I'm not sure machine learning algorithms are the right approach. Crowd curation mechanisms (i.e. the upvote/downvote systems but one could imagine other systems) have the advantage of quickly adapting to the ever changing tastes of a community. I don't think machine learning approaches can be simultaneously good and flexible in such a diverse environment. The Netflix analogy isn't the best because Netflix deals with a pretty structured problem in comparison to the "recommend me things on the internet that I will like" problem. I will also claim that subreddits are by no means a hack. They are THE key feature of Reddit that allows users to join together on the basis of common interests. There's no replacing subreddits because they are a killer feature in their own right.

derleth 14y ago

> It shouldn't matter what subreddits I subscribe to Also, it shouldn't matter what Usenet newsgroups I read and what TV channels I watch.

huggyface 14y ago
Let me welcome you to the modern era. While you might have once had your content dictated by the radio station you listened to, or the one channel your TV could receive, here in the 21st century we have other, slightly more refined mechanisms. "I like NBC" or "I enjoy the Top 40 station" are no longer the limits of your filtering mechanism. Enjoy your stay.
- derleth 14y ago
  Right, because trying to use an algorithm to filter a firehose will never end up with a firehose blasting through that particular kleenex. If you want to see a bad job of filtering, by all means rely on an algorithm that is designed to give minimal acceptable performance because anything else would soak up too much CPU. I'll stick to moderation and subfora.
  - huggyface 14y ago
    Your false dichotomy is an enjoyable bit of fiction.
    - derleth 14y ago
      If my post is a false dichotomy, you really suck at expressing an idea in written English.
      - huggyface 14y ago
        Alternately, you're just entirely too dense to have any participation in this conversation, completely miss the point in your haste to post "witty" and hilariously inappropriate analogies.