

Reddit Adds Ability to Create your own Reddits - hwork
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/22/reddit-adds-ability-to-create-your-own-reddits/

======
mixmax
I think the problem with Reddit (and Digg, and almost every other popular
social news site) is algorithmic. The pattern is the same every time one of
these sites becomes popular - it starts out with a small group of insightful
people that submit and vote on content that they find interesting. The reason
it works is that they have similar taste. Kind of like hacker news at the
moment. Once the site grows, however, the initial group gets diluted and the
site is swarmed with content that is not necessarily core content for the
original group. And the new arrivals vote up the material that is submitted by
the other new arrivals, thus diluting the site to the lowest common
denominator. This is why Reddit is now filled with Ron Paul, conspiracy
theories, LOLcats, and all sorts of other crap.

It is possible, and in my opinion not all that hard, to solve this
algorithmically.

One way would be to make mod points weighted, so that members that have signed
up early, have high karma, have the same taste (based on their upmods and
submissions) as the core group have mod points that count for more than new
arrivals that have yet to build any credibility.

Another way would be to not let new arrivals submit stories until they reached
a certain karma. This would mean that submitted stories would stay more true
to the original idea.

Another way would be to only let users have a certain amount of mod points
that would be renewed after x days, spurring users to use them more sparingly,
and stopping users that up/downmod everything that is not in their particular
interest.

Yet another way would be to let the system learn from the users submissions
and votes, and show stories based on this calculated using datamining. Maybe
as a "my {site}"

There are numerous other ways of doing it, these are just off the top of my
head - and yes there are probably pitfalls in some or all of these ideas.

The point I want to make though is that the social news sites are pursuing the
wrong goals once they start to gain traction. Instead of working on and
constantly tweaking their algorithms they seem to focus more on new features,
design, marketing or whatever.

There is an excellent business opportunity in creating back-end software to
drive these sites and solve the algorithmic problems that, for some reason
that is unclear to me, are so hard for these sites to do properly.

~~~
apgwoz
But, you're changing the way that the site _can_ be used. Not saying the that
recommendation engine works well, but it won't work at all if I can't rate
things because I have no karma left. It also won't help me, if I use reddit in
place of sites like del.icio.us or other social bookmarking sites.

Personally, I think the private subreddit thing is going to be a huge win,
because it now becomes a better del.icio.us. In del.icio.us you can share
links, but you can't easily discuss things about them. Now, in order for this
to be really good, reddit will have to provide a "copy this to my private
subreddit" and make it more blatantly apparent that you can actually become
"friends" with others. It wouldn't hurt reddit if they made it super super
easy to add and update the people allowed in the subreddit (I'm thinking API
even).

~~~
mixmax
I said it was just off the top of my head :-)

Anyway, the argument about a site not being useful at all if you can't rate
things because you have no karma left is easily countered if you head over to
Slashdot and see how their system works. <http://slashdot.org/faq/com-
mod.shtml> I absolutely agree though that it cannot be used as a del.icio.us
or the like.

But it will be interesting to see how it plays out over at Reddit. I'm not
holding my breath though...

~~~
apgwoz
I'm not attacking you by any means, just the common misconception that any one
of these 5 things will solve reddit's problems.

I'm quite familiar with Slashdot, thanks. My point about not being able to
rate things without karma is more about links than comments though.

~~~
mixmax
I didn't see it as such, more as an interesting conversation :-)

But won't you have the problem that Reddit seems to suffer from, namely that
some users will downmod all other rising stories than their own? Maybe even
bother to create multiple accounts for doing so?

And I agree, the above alone won't solve Reddits problems. But if someone with
a bit of algorithmic sense had the dataset to look at I think that it should
be possible to come up with a pretty good solution. Probably one using a
multitude of technologies, of which the above may be some.

~~~
apgwoz
> ... namely that some users will downmod all other rising stories than their
> own?

Reddit's new "create your own subreddit" can have moderators that can ban
users, or make it private with invites. Maybe what you'll get is something
similar to flickr groups. "You contribute great stories and provide insightful
comments, please come join us in our private subreddit."

This probably leads to other problems...

> Probably one using a multitude of technologies, of which the above may be
> some.

While I agree that stopping spammers from hitting the front page would be a
great addition to any social news sites, I'd hate to see the other, not so
popular uses, of these sites suffer as a result of combative strategies.

------
kn0thing
Rumor has it, when a user-generated reddit gets popular enough, it'll get its
own custom alien...

~~~
davidw
How 'bout letting news.yc folks in on the beta testing?:-)

~~~
kn0thing
Just email feedback@reddit with "omg me please" as the subject and I'll see if
I can sneak you onto the list...

------
jakewolf
About @#%@ing time. So will Dave Winer still bother with his version?
[http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/11/26/theNextStepInDig...](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/11/26/theNextStepInDiggClones.html)

~~~
pius
Ironic question in light of:
[http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/01/19/noOneAskedThisQu...](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/01/19/noOneAskedThisQuestion.html)

------
ivankirigin
Predictions: 1\. Some private reddits will be awesome 2\. This will help
accelerate the nose-dive in quality on the front page of the main reddit

I don't really believe in the "#1 top story on the intertubes evar" anyway, so
personal #1's are the way to go.

------
Alex3917
I've always thought this would be a really good feature for conferences or big
lecture classes to have so that people could ask and vote on questions in real
time.

------
ALee
Finally. A list-serv, I.ve been on will definitely use this.

------
wallflower
Is Reddit supposed to be democratic? I would say its more like a republic
(with the representatives elected via Reddit karma points, the powerful
getting more powerful) Not that there's anything wrong with that - Seth Godin
says the #1 in most categories dominates - Vanilla ice outsells all other ice
cream flavors combined. People like leadership, whether its ways to amuse away
a little of the day (lolcats, conspiracy theories) or MSM

~~~
byrneseyeview
"I would say its more like a republic (with the representatives elected via
Reddit karma points, the powerful getting more powerful) "

What do you mean by this? As far as I know, karma doesn't have an effect on
'power', besides ridding you of CAPTCHAs.

------
mortutay
I can't help but notice that 90% of the ads I see on reddit are for Wired
magazine. Is the company having any success financially?

------
hwork
Is anyone in the loop and testing this feature out?

------
kirubakaran
PG, Are there any plans to do a similar thing with YC News?

~~~
mojuba
What's the point? Subycnews for subhackers?

~~~
hwork
maybe something like sub yc's for applications questions, one for jobs, one
for bay area, one for boston, etc.

~~~
randallsquared
There aren't really enough submissions per day to justify that, in my opinion.

