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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 ar

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?

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?