
Reddit Is Working on a New Front Page Algorithm - r721
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/reddit-admits-its-front-page-is-broken-is-working-on-an-entirely-new-algorithm?try=2
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ble
The discussion in the article makes it seem like they are considering an
adjustment for the fact that many users only view the front page, creating a
somewhat artifactual disparity in votes received between front page and non-
front page submissions.

Sounds like a plausible explanation, good intuition, and a good idea.

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Artistry121
I wonder if they could have an algorithm that changes based on the user -
regardless of if they're logged in.

If someone (judged by ip address or cookies) often reloaded or came back every
20 minutes or so the front page could become more variable to provide new
content.

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smcl
From what I understand getting to The Front Page of Reddit is pretty big deal
for some folks (or so I can tell from some FB friends' screenshots\comments
they've posted - it's not my thing). I suspect that changing it so everyone
(or some) people see a different front page would diminish the prestige of
that and maybe make Reddit less special for some people.

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davis_m
Everyone already sees a different front page, depending on which subreddits
they are subscribed to. People generally mean making it to the front page of
the default list of subreddits or the front page of /r/all.

~~~
jordigh
> Everyone already sees a different front page, depending on which subreddits
> they are subscribed to.

I'd wager only minority of Reddit users are logged in. This is generally true
of most websites.

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rip747
I imagine the main part of the algorithm will be:

weight = title.toLowerCase().indexOf("cat") < 0 ? 0 : 1000;

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lfowles
Isn't it written in python?

weight = 1000 if "cat" in title.lower() else 0

~~~
gipp
Too many false positives. More like if re.search('\bcat\b')

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anthrophuman
why does reddit get so much press coverage now? a whole article talking about
their front page? or is there just a lack of real news to cover

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jkoebler
Hey, I wrote this article. We cover the internet and internet culture—Reddit
is a massive, massive website that has very real impacts on the media and on
what the average internet user sees on a day to day basis. As a reddit user, I
saw dozens of threads complaining about the front page algorithm, so I decided
to look into it. I emailed Reddit and asked what the deal was, and their CEO
wanted to talk about it. We write about Reddit maybe 2-3 times a month and
this took me only a couple hours to write. Felt it was important.

Reddit has major problems with its community and racism and sexism and the
like, but it's still a hugely influential website so changes to how it works
is important

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mahranch
> Reddit has major problems with its community and racism and sexism and the
> like

Do they though? Reddit's getting 200 million unique views every single month.
That's approaching youtube/facebook levels of traffic. Reddit isn't a small
community anymore. It's a massive website that represents everyone from all
walks of life.

For example, you don't hear people claiming that facebook or youtube has a
problem with "racism and sexism". Why is that the case, even though it _does_
have a problem with those things? Because people expect it there due the sheer
size of those sites. Well, reddit isn't some small community website any more.
It's nearly the size of google/youtube and is about to overtake twitter in
traffic. I think it's time we stop treating it like some small time website
and start treating it like the behemoth it has become.

~~~
nl
_Reddit 's getting 200 million unique views every single month. That's
approaching youtube/facebook levels of traffic._

It's really not. Facebook was getting nearly 1.4 billion uniques/month in
December 2014[1]. Youtube passed 1 billion uniques/month in 2013[2] and growth
(in terms of hours of videos watched anyway) has actually accelerated since
then.

 _you don 't hear people claiming that facebook or youtube has a problem with
"racism and sexism". Why is that the case, even though it does have a problem
with those things? Because people expect it there due the sheer size of those
sites_

Facebook gets in trouble because they take down groups supporting
breastfeeding moms. Reddit resisted taking a group called _Coontown_. It's a
pretty significant difference.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Facebook_growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Facebook_growth)

[2] [http://www.cnbc.com/id/100575883](http://www.cnbc.com/id/100575883)

~~~
mahranch
> It's really not.

I'm going to have to disagree. My point wasn't that reddit is becoming
facebook or youtube, but that it is in the same ballpark as far as traffic
goes. And if you're at a quarter billion unique hits every month, you _are_
playing with the big boys. The point was one of relativity - reddit is a huge
global website and not some small community.

Since it is so huge, we shouldn't treat it as some small BBS. Just because
reddit doesn't have the exact same traffic as youtube doesn't invalidate my
point.

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billybilly1920
If they would have converted the school shooting story to a funny gif or an
image demeaning to women, I'm sure it would have trended to the top of reddit
within seconds.

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on_
Bit distasteful, no?

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billybilly1920
Go check the front page of reddit and get back to me.

~~~
on_
I think that it was actually quit nice that Nelly used the money to send kids
to college.

[0][http://urbanintellectuals.com/2015/08/28/did-you-know-
nelly-...](http://urbanintellectuals.com/2015/08/28/did-you-know-nelly-has-
sent-two-kids-to-college-every-year-for-the-past-10-years/)

