6 ms·

Reddit is my go-to for live-feed style news of major events. there's always somebody in the comments of a front-page thread doing a good running summary of wha

Reddit is my go-to for live-feed style news of major events. there's always somebody in the comments of a front-page thread doing a good running summary of what's happened so far.

svenkatesh 13y ago
Yeah, I found Reddit's investigative journalism superb during the Boston Marathon Bombing /s
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  In fairness wasn't that a subreddit? It probably got posted and on the front page a few times, but it's very different to the live news in big front page news threads referenced. An example is the showdown there, the top live news comment was the best I saw for the events anywhere.
  - svenkatesh 13y ago
    It moved to a subreddit when the thread in /news or /worldnews got too big (I don't remember specifics). In any case, the effects of the witchhunt weren't limited to that subreddit anyway... the users started harassing Sunil's parents on Facebook and began calling LEO with their harebrained theory. There's a reason that vigilante justice isn't legal in most of the civilized world.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  One mistake ruins the entire foundation of crowdsourced information! Never trust forums for info! /S
  - svenkatesh 13y ago
    You're right, that was the only instance in which Reddit was wrong. Ever. /s
    - Gigablah 13y ago
      All journalistic entities have been wrong multiple times before, so we should only trust the official authorities. Oh wait, they're confused too.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      I do not have enough fingers to count the number of times CNN has been wrong.
- l33tbro 13y ago
  This attitude still annoys me. Yes, there were a couple of users that may have jumped to conclusions - but so what. Overall, the Boston Bombing coverage through Reddit was an amazing, breakthrough experience in the realm of how we can experience a media event. It represented the first time people could experience the combination of a) freely available police radio signal b) satellite imagery c) a mass man-hunt - which resulted in an incredible, absolutely breakthtaking and adreniline inducing media experience. The mainstream media? Hours upon hours behind what we were experiencing. Now - that is now being repeated - to a lesser degree - with flight 370. It's a shame that a few trolls have obscured this event for what it was. So please don't tarnish all Reddit users with the title of "Reddit". Isn't that just the same as talking about "all those Muslims", or, conversely, the jihadist talking about "America"?
  - bhrgunatha 13y ago
    While I agree with you, I think it's important to note that part of the difference ni the experience is that anyone can post whatever they like in a forum thread, leading to trolling and worse. Not everyone has the ability to broadcast news from a news outlet, and certainly the more reputable ones, which are hours behind, are behind because they also have habits from more traditional journalism, things like fact checking and avoiding pure speculation. > Yes, there were a couple of users that may have jumped to conclusions - but so what You cannot seriously be blind to the implications or consequences can you?
    - svenkatesh 13y ago
      >You cannot seriously be blind to the implications or consequences can you? There seems to be a serious lack of empathy on the parts of many of the users on HN who are commenting. They're forgetting that Sunil was a person, and that he had family and friends. They're forgetting that baseless accusations actually hurt others.
    - l33tbro 13y ago
      Sure - while the sense of responsibility within the fourth estate has diluted with 24/7 news cycle - I agree that the buffer to reporting news (after fact-checking) remains important. I'm simply highlighting that the last 5 years has birthed exciting new means of experiencing mass events. Re: "so what" - well ... do I get upset a few about racist/homophobic Youtube commentors? No, because I know that by engaging in this platform (and the whole interent FTM) I am going to be exposed to a raft of idiots/trolls who carelessly ruin lives. That is simply the rules of engagement on the internet, so I thicken my hide and continue on. So I'm not blind to the consequences, as you put it - I just accept that I cannot control the actions of a speculative, idiot minority that trolled that missing kid.
- samstave 13y ago
  Wold you prefer the moronic bland sound-bytes of official propaganda arms such as fox and cnn, or a bunch of people actively working to come to a far faster, more informed position, even if the immediate info and positions are wholly wrong.
  - svenkatesh 13y ago
    I would prefer that innocent people's names are not dragged through the mud and that the parents of innocent college students not be harassed over social media. I don't see how accusing Sunil was "informed." It was a baseless accusation that was made because he was brown and lived in the area.
- notatoad 13y ago
  I'm not saying read all of reddit. In any current events thread, there's usually one heavily-upvoted comment containing a comprehensive timeline of events where somebody with some background knowledge has done the hard work of filtering through all the noise in the reddit comments / twitter / etc and picked out only the actual news. Just read that comment.
fletchowns 13y ago
Yeah but with threaded comments, it's very difficult to follow a discussion as it develops. I have the same complaint about HN. I much prefer the chronological layout with the ability to quote other people.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  Reddit actually have a live updating page for subreddits now. It seems to exclude comments (although I think the sub can add a comment to its feed) so it's very different but might work better in some cases.
- trobertson 13y ago
  > with threaded comments, it's very difficult to follow a discussion as it develops I actually completely disagree with this. Threads allow for a single point of interest to spawn multiple straight-line conversations, where each thread pertains to a different facet of the original topic. Whereas a single thread conversation (like a forum) only allows for a single thread of conversation, and divergent conversations are all mixed up in the same thread. With Reddit (but not HN), the ability to collapse threads makes it even easier to only follow the particular conversations you are interested in. Collapse the ones you don't care about (like pun threads, etc.), and read the important stuff. With a single thread, you have to scan every single comment, including the junk and the stuff you don't care about. Not to mention the whole "Page 1 [2] 3 ... 389" deal that single threaded conversations get into. You mention chronological order being important, and most threaded sites (but not HN) have the ability to sort threads by chronological order, which gives the same single threaded "top level" of comments. I agree with you that HN can be a chore to read, though. I think it would be massively improved were it to have a built in thread collapsing mechanism. It definitely has the least feature of threaded conversations that I've seen.
  - fletchowns 13y ago
    Yeah but with proper moderation, you don't have to collapse the ones you don't care about. The main forum I use doesn't allow dumb shit like puns, so it's not a problem. It's just impossible on a site like HN to read a bunch of comments, come back an hour later, and read all the new comments.

Reddit is my go-to for live-feed style news of major events. there's always somebody in the comments of a front-page thread doing a good running summary of what's happened so far.

svenkatesh 13y ago

Yeah, I found Reddit's investigative journalism superb during the Boston Marathon Bombing /s

mcintyre1994 13y ago
In fairness wasn't that a subreddit? It probably got posted and on the front page a few times, but it's very different to the live news in big front page news threads referenced. An example is the showdown there, the top live news comment was the best I saw for the events anywhere.
- svenkatesh 13y ago
  It moved to a subreddit when the thread in /news or /worldnews got too big (I don't remember specifics). In any case, the effects of the witchhunt weren't limited to that subreddit anyway... the users started harassing Sunil's parents on Facebook and began calling LEO with their harebrained theory. There's a reason that vigilante justice isn't legal in most of the civilized world.
toomuchtodo 13y ago
One mistake ruins the entire foundation of crowdsourced information! Never trust forums for info! /S
- svenkatesh 13y ago
  You're right, that was the only instance in which Reddit was wrong. Ever. /s
  - Gigablah 13y ago
    All journalistic entities have been wrong multiple times before, so we should only trust the official authorities. Oh wait, they're confused too.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    I do not have enough fingers to count the number of times CNN has been wrong.
l33tbro 13y ago
This attitude still annoys me. Yes, there were a couple of users that may have jumped to conclusions - but so what. Overall, the Boston Bombing coverage through Reddit was an amazing, breakthrough experience in the realm of how we can experience a media event. It represented the first time people could experience the combination of a) freely available police radio signal b) satellite imagery c) a mass man-hunt - which resulted in an incredible, absolutely breakthtaking and adreniline inducing media experience. The mainstream media? Hours upon hours behind what we were experiencing. Now - that is now being repeated - to a lesser degree - with flight 370. It's a shame that a few trolls have obscured this event for what it was. So please don't tarnish all Reddit users with the title of "Reddit". Isn't that just the same as talking about "all those Muslims", or, conversely, the jihadist talking about "America"?
- bhrgunatha 13y ago
  While I agree with you, I think it's important to note that part of the difference ni the experience is that anyone can post whatever they like in a forum thread, leading to trolling and worse. Not everyone has the ability to broadcast news from a news outlet, and certainly the more reputable ones, which are hours behind, are behind because they also have habits from more traditional journalism, things like fact checking and avoiding pure speculation. > Yes, there were a couple of users that may have jumped to conclusions - but so what You cannot seriously be blind to the implications or consequences can you?
  - svenkatesh 13y ago
    >You cannot seriously be blind to the implications or consequences can you? There seems to be a serious lack of empathy on the parts of many of the users on HN who are commenting. They're forgetting that Sunil was a person, and that he had family and friends. They're forgetting that baseless accusations actually hurt others.
  - l33tbro 13y ago
    Sure - while the sense of responsibility within the fourth estate has diluted with 24/7 news cycle - I agree that the buffer to reporting news (after fact-checking) remains important. I'm simply highlighting that the last 5 years has birthed exciting new means of experiencing mass events. Re: "so what" - well ... do I get upset a few about racist/homophobic Youtube commentors? No, because I know that by engaging in this platform (and the whole interent FTM) I am going to be exposed to a raft of idiots/trolls who carelessly ruin lives. That is simply the rules of engagement on the internet, so I thicken my hide and continue on. So I'm not blind to the consequences, as you put it - I just accept that I cannot control the actions of a speculative, idiot minority that trolled that missing kid.
samstave 13y ago
Wold you prefer the moronic bland sound-bytes of official propaganda arms such as fox and cnn, or a bunch of people actively working to come to a far faster, more informed position, even if the immediate info and positions are wholly wrong.
- svenkatesh 13y ago
  I would prefer that innocent people's names are not dragged through the mud and that the parents of innocent college students not be harassed over social media. I don't see how accusing Sunil was "informed." It was a baseless accusation that was made because he was brown and lived in the area.
notatoad 13y ago
I'm not saying read all of reddit. In any current events thread, there's usually one heavily-upvoted comment containing a comprehensive timeline of events where somebody with some background knowledge has done the hard work of filtering through all the noise in the reddit comments / twitter / etc and picked out only the actual news. Just read that comment.

fletchowns 13y ago

Yeah but with threaded comments, it's very difficult to follow a discussion as it develops. I have the same complaint about HN. I much prefer the chronological layout with the ability to quote other people.

mcintyre1994 13y ago
Reddit actually have a live updating page for subreddits now. It seems to exclude comments (although I think the sub can add a comment to its feed) so it's very different but might work better in some cases.
trobertson 13y ago
> with threaded comments, it's very difficult to follow a discussion as it develops I actually completely disagree with this. Threads allow for a single point of interest to spawn multiple straight-line conversations, where each thread pertains to a different facet of the original topic. Whereas a single thread conversation (like a forum) only allows for a single thread of conversation, and divergent conversations are all mixed up in the same thread. With Reddit (but not HN), the ability to collapse threads makes it even easier to only follow the particular conversations you are interested in. Collapse the ones you don't care about (like pun threads, etc.), and read the important stuff. With a single thread, you have to scan every single comment, including the junk and the stuff you don't care about. Not to mention the whole "Page 1 [2] 3 ... 389" deal that single threaded conversations get into. You mention chronological order being important, and most threaded sites (but not HN) have the ability to sort threads by chronological order, which gives the same single threaded "top level" of comments. I agree with you that HN can be a chore to read, though. I think it would be massively improved were it to have a built in thread collapsing mechanism. It definitely has the least feature of threaded conversations that I've seen.
- fletchowns 13y ago
  Yeah but with proper moderation, you don't have to collapse the ones you don't care about. The main forum I use doesn't allow dumb shit like puns, so it's not a problem. It's just impossible on a site like HN to read a bunch of comments, come back an hour later, and read all the new comments.