
Ready For a Reddit Replacement? - thenewgreen
http://www.dailydot.com/business/hubski-reddit-mark-katakowski/
======
naner
All these news discussion sites (Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, HN, hell even 4chan)
started out very good when the communities were small and then they grew to
massive size and lost their personalities, got more generalized, were gamed
more frequently, succumbed to group think, and had a bazillion other problems
related to their popularity and size.

Reddit can somewhat mitigate this with subreddits and MeFi can slow the
process by charging a fee. Perhaps their downfall is still inevitable.

His comments about reddit's recent mood swings, however, don't mean much. That
type of thing has been happening every few weeks for a couple years now. The
reddit community is always in a huff about something.

Maybe this idea (Google circles for news aggregators?) will help. Or maybe we
should just abandon this discussion model all together.

~~~
morrow
I don't think abandoning the discussion model is the right answer, I think it
just needs to get better. All of these communities seem to follow a simple
principle: they grow in size until their ability to self-filter, self-
organize, and maintain community valuse is compromised by a volume of traffic
or overall size of membership larger than they are capable of handling. The
latest batch of discussion sites and tools (reddit, news.yc, digg, /., etc.)
are simply the latest and best models of a continuously growing and improving
application space.

I think the only way for a "community" to exist long term in this space is to
either continue advancing the state of it's filtering tools in order to handle
the increased load, or not, and let it naturally degrade back into a smaller
community and just exist at the level that it is capable of filtering (though
this is not as simple as a community capable of holding X users will always
have X users -- momentum and network effects are definitely important here).

------
krashidov
The reason I like reddit is because of the subreddits. There are, however,
really great communities for discussing something really niche outside of
reddit. Some of which have bigger communities with even better contributors
than reddit.

The problem is that they are using rather primitive forum systems like phpBB
and the like.

After using reddit, phpBB is like going to the stone age, imagine if hacker
news was on a simple forum system like that.

I know reddit is an aggregator site, but I think they are the strongest
competitor to forums, think about it: how hard is it get the gist of a
discussion on one of those forums, where you have to scroll through tens of
pages on a really popular topic.

my point is: why doesn't reddit create a product that will allow any site to
to have their own subreddit style page completely autonomous of reddit.com?

~~~
ek
Do they have to create a "product"? Reddit is open source, and you can
download it if you like, from <http://code.reddit.com/> . You could literally
build what you are describing on the Reddit platform right now.

~~~
redthrowaway
Apparently RedditOSS is in shambles, and very difficult to get working. They
were looking to address that with the new hires, however.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Have you checked recently? I'm familiar with the sentiments you're echoing but
I think they're beginning to address this issue. The GitHub repo is seeing
some activity at the very least.

~~~
redthrowaway
The last I knew of it, there was a post on HN. I later asked hueypriest if
their new hires would be trying to fix up redditOSS, and he said it was one of
their priorities. This was a couple months ago (if not more), so it's entirely
possible that they've done significant work on it. If that's the case, I
suspect we'll see a blog post before too long.

------
fookyong
_On Hubski, user follow one another, rather than communities, as they do on
Reddit. Instead of voting a post up and down, you simply share it. That
propagates it to your readers; the more people share it, the hotter that post
becomes._

sounds like he has created Twitter.

~~~
akkartik
But with threading, and without artificial length constraints.

------
brackin
The Sub-reddits are genius, building all these amazing sub communities. This
is a big step back, their answer to the 'supposed' decline in Reddit is let's
just make a clone, why? Because it'll have less users. Let's say it did hugely
well, it'd be a vicious circle leading to everyone moving to another clone.

~~~
raganwald
Sure it will be a vicious cycle. Same thing with fashions and popular
hangouts. It's human nature, and somehow peoe make money in those businesses
:-)

[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-
ope...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-open-door-
heal-or-die.html)

~~~
arohner
Thanks for posting this, it's been a while since I've read it. One of the best
things he's written. IMO, this is the real solution to the slashdot / digg /
reddit /HN problem.

------
ScottWhigham
I always think it's ridiculous when I hear "It's the new reddit" and then see
what basically amounts to a Wordpress blog layout. Reddit, digg, HN were all
partly successful because of their layout, not in spite of it. I don't want to
scroll past the meta of every article today just to see what you have; I want
a _list_ of what's happening that is sorted/controlled by the community. And
the less images, the better. I like reddit in that I can turn off the images
so that I can fit 17-20 article headlines on a page w/o scrolling.

Ugh.

~~~
hendzen
I would say that HN is successful _in spite_ of its layout.

~~~
Dramatize
I think it's perfect. It's easy to see if there are any new posts (and it's
clear which ones you have visited).

It's also not going to attract much attention if you have it open at work.

------
jackolas
No social platform is going to disrupt the existing systems until they
decouple content and organization. The main issue is that we assume that all
'upvotes' are equal. If a user can select who is in their filter layer (like
in Twitter), as opposed to selecting content (a subreddit), there will be a
shift away from the cycle of bread and circuses.

Hubski may be doing that but only implementing this one graph node deep and
only having one default category for information, will probably not create a
vibrant and diverse community.

~~~
da_dude4242
>If a user can select who is in their filter layer (like in Twitter), as
opposed to selecting content (a subreddit), there will be a shift away from
the cycle of bread and circuses.

Are you sure this isn't already happening to some degree? What reaches the
front page of my account is different from what reaches the front page with
cookies cleared. I suspect reddit is already using AI algorithms to filter out
what is relevant based on who I upvote, the subreddits I visit, who I interact
with, etc...

~~~
dhugiaskmak
When you're logged in the front page only shows you the content from the
reddits you're subscribed to, I believe.

------
dreamdu5t
Very cool, but he's solving an imagined problem.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
So was Twitter, and Blogger before that.

------
ChrisArchitect
reddit is almost entirely in existence due to its community/userbase. it's all
it had when digg imploded, and it's pulled them through from dark to the
traffic heights they are at now.

thing missing from reddit, despite the forum-like discussion thread part, is
that it isn't social. it doesn't promote following users or anything of that
nature or has little of those features (one thing that digg has/had)

thing is, currently, the way reddit is/is going -- there's not much that needs
to be changed. it covers alot of use cases for alot of its userbase (i.e. I
use it solely for submission and upvoting/link popularity tracking, and hardly
for anything discussion/forum related)

------
newredditor
Unlike many of you here, I am a reddit late adopter. I first joined HN (like 3
years back), there were plethora of good posts so I never explored more. I
never heard much about reddit for 1 year I think. Then there was this major
discussion about how reddit is not relevant enough these days, that put me off
reddit altogether. Then about 6 months back (I think) a good man posted a long
discussion about how subreddits are the best things about reddit. I thought I
would go and check. I made my account in March I think and randomly searched
for subreddits. That makes me perhaps the latest adopter here. And I must tell
you, I like those subreddits much better than HN now. There are many reasons
for that but first remember, to each his own okey. So no need to flame me
about my opinions and choices.

1\. Its actually more relevant. I have many interests but CS is not a
prominent one. There are some good intellectual discussions here but most of
them are about highly technical stuff I cannot understand or comment on. I am
a Electronics major so I like /r/ece and /r/electronics. They are smart people
and have great discussions. Sure I do not comment much there. But still the
comments are more valuable than the post itself (just like HN). Apart from
that there are subreddits about prowrestling which of course will never be
mentioned here. So I find subreddits are actually more relevant to my life.

2\. They are smart people. Contrary to popular beliefs, not every redditor is
abour lolcats. Most of the people I interact with on reddit are very smart.
Not only in technical subreddits but reddits like r/SquaredCircle/ and
/r/prowrestling see very interesting discussions. Pro wrestling is a technical
thing and they do justice to it even while comparing thoughts about story
lines.

3\. I like the light hearted part. I don't know about you but people here are
very focused on their work perhaps. Some light hearted comments (even if they
are witty or clever jokes) will get downvoted and fade into the background
(literally). To some extent these things are permissible in subreddits. I like
that. I am not in the mood for a fierce discussion every time. Many times
comment section can be clearly divided into two parts, relevant discussions
and witty comments. The latter will fade into the background here. Also due to
this, nobody rides high horses there. People on HN are many a times guilty of
that. Like in the recent discussions about game industry and endeavors like
facebook and 4chan where people think that intellect is wasted on such things.
Why would you judge what people want to do for there whole life? I wouldn't
and I don't like people who do.

4\. New subreddits come up when I like. I am going to join either ai-class or
ml-class (dammit I need to decide), subreddits of both are available. Isn't
that fantastic?

So this is why I like reddit more than HN now. Sorry if this hurts anyone's
feelings but that is how it is.

~~~
xtracto
> this is why I like reddit more than HN now. Sorry if this hurts anyone's
> feelings but that is how it is.

I do not think they are comparable at all. Maybe we could compare r/technology
to HN, but the idea of the subreddits is exactly to cover a wide breadth of
topics.

I also love some subreddits and almost never look at the most visited ones
(pics, lol, games, etc).

The only thing that is missing for me is a way to "weight" each subreddit so
that they higher preference to the stories in the homepage. This is because
there are subreddits that only get one or two links every day, and due to the
slow amount of subscribers, they get low votes. I'd like to be able to
prioritize these in some way so that they get at the top of my front-page. Or
better yet, let an algorithm calculate the "importance" of the thread based on
the share of upvotes to subreddit subscribers.

>2\. They are smart people. Contrary to popular beliefs, not every redditor is
abour lolcats

I think the correct way to put it is that _there are_ smart people. However,
right now the majority of them are in different subreddits.

>3\. I like the light hearted part. I don't know about you but people here are
very focused on their work perhaps. Some light hearted comments (even if they
are witty or clever jokes) will get downvoted and fade into the background
(literally).

Well, I love the serious nature of HN. In some way it is like the old time
Usenet discussions. The only thing I do not like about HN is the heavy nit-
picking. But I can live with that in exchange of the really interesting
discussion. I came here after leaving Slashdot, due to the decline in quality
(there is so much Technology Politics I can stand).

>I am going to join either ai-class or ml-class (dammit I need to decide),
subreddits of both are available. Isn't that fantastic?

Yes! this is the great value of reddit. IMO It is like a new type of Usenet.
BTW, If you have taken an AI class, I would recommend you to go for that, as I
am sure you are going to "touch" ML themes on that. Otherwise, if you are
specifically interested in ML then go for it :)

~~~
newredditor
_The only thing that is missing for me is a way to "weight" each subreddit so
that they higher preference to the stories in the homepage. This is because
there are subreddits that only get one or two links every day, and due to the
slow amount of subscribers, they get low votes. I'd like to be able to
prioritize these in some way so that they get at the top of my front-page. Or
better yet, let an algorithm calculate the "importance" of the thread based on
the share of upvotes to subreddit subscribers._

That is something someone should work on, instead of making a new social
aggregation site. The new site will be good for one or two years, then it will
hit mainstream and lolcats will ensue. I have heard many people say that if
you want to determine how popular one social site is then you just have to
calculate the number of mames per post in the public or most general stream.

 _Well, I love the serious nature of HN_

I never said subreddits are not serious. Most of the posts portray the same
quality as HN (many a times even more than HN IMHO, maybe there is a section
common between the two sites). The problem is, HN is never not serious. That
does not seem right to me. I must be able to joke about my work. We also don't
have to be judgmental about other people's work. Its one thing to criticize
someone's library because it has a badly designed API and it is quite other
thing to tell game programmers they are wasting their talent in their own
selected job.

 _I think the correct way to put it is that there are smart people. However,
right now the majority of them are in different subreddits._

The correct way to put it is, that if you cannot find smart people on reddit,
you are looking in the wrong subreddit. Of course you are not going to find
smart people on every damn reddit. After all reddit is a general purpose site
and thus many people are not what you would consider "smart". Damn, there are
people who come to reddit "just to have a good time". Fools they are. Internet
is all about having intelligent discussions dammit ;)

 _I do not think they are comparable at all. Maybe we could compare
r/technology to HN, but the idea of the subreddits is exactly to cover a wide
breadth of topics._

I posted it here because I have read many, many times that HN is much better
than reddit. That reddit is soon gonna die or something equivalent. No hard
feelings, but I despise such proclamations if not the people who make them.

------
potatolicious
Reddit is all about its community - you cannot defeat it with just features
alone.

And if you've figured out how to reliably build a community from scratch on
the internet, well, there's a few billion dollars in it for you...

~~~
dillona
Reddit is most certainly having its own Eternal September.

I can not say I like that community much at all anymore

~~~
potatolicious
IMO it's all in the moderation. Reddit's very rudimentary up/downvote system,
well, sucks. It lets the lowest common denominator rise to the top, which
oddly enough is not what most users want to see.

I'm imagining right now a Reddit with Slashdot's moderation system... but, I
continue dreaming.

~~~
haecib
> Reddit's very rudimentary up/downvote system, well, sucks. It lets the
> lowest common denominator rise to the top,

Which is why Hubski's solution is interesting. You're recognizing the quality
of the content does not really lie in a singular post or link, but with the
poster, in a general sense. There are certainly certain posters on Reddit who
I know I can always look to for good content, -makes sense to have your feed
populated by good content providers rather than up-votes from the crowd.

~~~
xtracto
>You're recognizing the quality of the content does not really lie in a
singular post or link, but with the poster, in a general sense.

Correct me if I am wrong but, isn't that how Digg used to work? I remember
there were these few prominent accounts that had a lot of posts "promoted" and
made the site worthless when they started posting crap.

------
mwill
Site needs some work, right now it feels more like HN (Similar visual style
aside), just one big spread of submissions.

As mentioned, the great part of reddit is sub-reddits, Hubski needs some sort
of greater way to sort out and separate content. The proposed following users
doesn't seem prominent enough to me yet, though maybe this will change as the
site grows.

------
pavel_lishin
Sounds just like Google+.

------
Fuzzwah
I've always wondered why these aggregation sites need up and down voting at
all. Can't we just compare the number of times the link has been displayed to
users with the number of clicks on the link?

~~~
stewbrew
This would measure the popularity of titles/headlines (and maybe domain names)
but not of content.

------
frewsxcv
I find there's nothing wrong with the open source platform, just a problem
with a few of the popular pages. There's no reason to ditch the reddit
platform altogether.

------
molecularbutter
Ready for needing glasses? This site requires superhuman vision to be able to
read size 4 font!

------
plainOldText
Hubski looks to me more like a HN clone and less like a Reddit replacement.

------
rorrr
Reddit's beauty is in sub-reddits. Don't like the front page? Just unsubscribe
from it, and subscribe to whatever you like.

[http://forhiremedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/map-of-
re...](http://forhiremedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/map-of-reddit.jpg)

~~~
repsilat
The downside is that if a particularly good post in your favourite subreddit
hits the front page the Visigoths are going to come in and leave stupid
comments one way or another. /r/AskReddit is incredible because of its
judicious moderation, but the same can't be said for /r/programming or
/r/technology, for example.

What reddit really needs is a ranking engine recommending users, submissions
and comments to you based on the users you've friended and the comments and
submissions you've upvoted. Just take a quick approximation of
PCA/SVD/eigenvalue/tachyon-polarity and let the users see if they like it.

EDIT: Another simple idea is ranking comment trees by their first few comments
instead of ranking them just by their first comment. I'm going to read the
immediate replies of the top post either way, and I'd rather get three or four
good comments than one great comment and two or three crappy replies to it.

~~~
rorrr

        What reddit really needs is a ranking engine
        recommending users, submissions and comments 
        to you based on the users you've friended and 
        the comments and submissions you've upvoted.
    

Do you realize the insane amount of calculations that would take?

For each pageview you would have to find all stories in that subreddit, find
all the authors, find all stories you ever voted on, find all the users you
are friends with, and somehow rank all this shit.

It will cost millions of dollars a month in CPU time just to run something on
the scale of reddit.

~~~
overcyn
how is it much different from the ranking engines netflix and amazon use?

~~~
rorrr
You can calculate the "weight" of the movie for a given user once. The number
of movies is very low, compared to the number of stories on reddit.

Whatever that guy is proposing is an insanely complex dynamic system.

I'm not saying it's not doable, I'm just saying it's very expensive.

~~~
a3camero
It might be less complicated then you'd expect (at least one way of doing it):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering>

The core idea is linear regression.

Here's Google's service: <http://code.google.com/apis/predict/>. Here's a
commercial API service: <http://www.directededge.com/>.

------
georgieporgie
Give users a basic IQ and personality test. Provide different content based
upon where they fall.

~~~
parfe
What does IQ have to do with content?

Steven Hawking could enjoy lolcats and your garbage man might be an ardent
reader of philosophy. Stereotyping based on IQ or profession is fairly stupid.
Smart people can like dumb things and dumb people can enjoy intellectual
pursuits. If you want to pigeon hole people into categories go back to a high
school cafeteria.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Is it even possible to have a dumb person who enjoys truly intellectual
pursuits? I'm not outright stating its impossible, but I'd like to see a
plausible scenario.

~~~
bbq
You'll have to define 'dumb' and 'truly intellectual' first. One might define
a 'dumb' person as one who is incapable of enjoying 'truly intellectual
pursuits' (whatever that means). In this case, no it's not possible but it's
also pretty meaningless.

