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by swarnie_ 2116 days ago
The app is probably the only reason Reddit has any commercial value.

The website version is almost unusable without old.reddit.com and a reformatting/feature adding plug-in called RES. I have to assume there is a huge crossover between people who will seek out plugins and people who run ad blocks or VPNs. I'd love to see a breakdown of just how little Reddit make per user on ads on the web based site.

This is before we begin to discuss the major functional problems with Reddit...

- Any community over 5k-10k users dips in quality extremely quickly.

- Any unprepared sub which gets randomly hurled on to the top of /r/all will have issues for weeks if not months after.

- Geo related subs reflect the actual locations so poorly its an embarrassment to the city/country.

- The voting system which along with subscriber growth only helps speed up the hivemind effect.

- Finally powermods who seem to treat reddit as a second job, manipulating a large amount of the content based on their own personal feelings.
2 comments
dageshi 2116 days ago
"Nobody goes there any more, there's too many people..."
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swarnie_ 2116 days ago
"The people who used to go no longer turn up because the quality has dropped so far"

Take a look at /r/investing, its the same 4-5 companies and the same boring daily questions.

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dageshi 2116 days ago
Well yes, that's the nature of reddit and has been since subreddits were introduced. There's always been a tension between newbies coming in and making identical posts asking identical questions and the people who've been there longer who're bored of seeing the same questions asked day after day.

Usually there's some attempt to ban the newbie posts to make the sub more interesting for the more experienced participants, but this cuts off the supply of new posters and the sub begins to decline. Alternatively more knowledgable people get bored and drift away.

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rayalez 2116 days ago
Do you have any ideas on how you would change reddit to fix all these issues?

Specifically the community moderation and voting system?

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swarnie_ 2116 days ago
Finish selling it to China and start again?

I think a lot of the flaws I've listed are pretty fundamental to how the platform works, it was broken from the whiteboard stage.

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