If I had to point to just one thing, it would be that you succeeded. When I joined reddit, I think there may have been more sockpuppets than real users. A great deal of what was posted there satisfied my intellectual curiosity, and when comments were finally added, they tended to be well-reasoned and insightful. The community was small, and mostly populated with people who had interests similar to mine (many came from comp.lang.lisp).
Today's reddit is pretty mainstream, and, aside from a few subreddits, the content doesn't interest me much. The subreddits that do interest me have similar content to HN, and I already find myself spending too much time reading and discussing stories here when I should be working on my product.
I don't think reddit can be "fixed" so that I would return to be a heavy user again, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I agree pretty much completely with this. I've also seen the same cycle happen over and over again: I was one of the beta testers for Digg.
At a certain point I think you just get tired. I can't count the number of times that I've posted a straightforward technical response, then downvoted, and said that my opinion is worthless unless I provide sources and that the commenter is a highly paid consultant so he knows what he is talking about.
For example, just about a month ago it looked like someone was confused about a basic systems issue. I posted with a quick comment about the nature of optimization in the memory hierarchy which featured a well-known result in standard CS literature. You know, there are times when I don't mind digging through IPDPS or the ACM for proper citations, but a lot of the time I resent the fact that the argumenter didn't even take the time to do some basic research about the topic. As I said, I get tired.
I'd love to give you the reason why I decided just the other day that I want to leave reddit pretty much for good. I have been a fairly active user for the past 2 years or so, both commenting on and submitting content to reddit. When I joined I was fleeing digg's transformation into a 4chan wannabe. Over the past 6-9 months, I've been noticing the same virus, if you will, infecting reddit. The users became more and more meme obsessed, less interested in reading stuff they don't know and more interested in repeating what they already know. I finally looked at the front page the other day and realized there wasn't one article that I viewed had any intellectual value. Yes, I know if I want something specific I can go to individual subreddits, but even most of those has been infected to the point where some users are creating their own academic hideaways on reddit in order to preserve the original reddit intellectualism that once strived (e.g. /r/depthhub).
This is not something reddit can fix, and I fear that reddit will meet the same fate that digg has recently met. Both digg and reddit gained users at a steady pace, then skyrocketed in users and plummeted in intellectual value. On both sites users complained about how the site had changed but no one listened or cared. Eventually, as all the intellectually curious users left, the users that remained realized they are no better than 4chan and began looking for a new home as well. I believe this is an inevitable cycle for all social news websites. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years I am fleeing Hacker News for the same reason.
I'd love to hear what some of the reddit admins think about how reddit has changed over the years, seeing as you all have had a better perspective than anyone else on reddit's evolution.
Good luck monetizing reddit, I will most likely donate some to show my appreciation for all reddit has provided me for the last couple of years.
I have to agree with you about the general reddit.com, but some of the subreddits are still good or even great.
However I doubt HN will follow, because unlike digg, slashdot and reddit, PG has shown no interest in gaining traffic at the expense of quality (indeed, he has called for the front page to be splashed with Erlang links, precisely so as to get those who wouldn't fit with the site to go elsewhere).
It depends, the tipping point is when currently undesirable behaviour gets rewarded, rather than downvoted as it currently does. In general I still feel hacker news as a community gets it right in which content and submissions are voted up and which down.
Great point. The tipping point for me on Slashdot was when insightful comments would get modded "overrated" just because they didn't agree with whatever pro/anti/MS/Linux/Apple/Democrat/Republican bias the moderators have. When the site gets so overrun by "average" users (whoever that is) with mod points that they can completely bury good comments and outright inaccurate comments get +5.
HN seems to be very good about accurate moderation. If the site ever reached the popularity of Reddit I think it would change.
Above here, I said that I would pay you $5 a month, and I would...but the only reason for that is that you I've talked to you on here (hacker news) before. To me the people runnign reddit are real. To me, you're a friend and I'm throwing $5 into the can that is duct-taped to your kegerator because you let me drink it for free...
...but for most people? What does reddit offer me that I can't get elsewhere? Honestly, a lot of the submissions have gone completely to shit. /r/pics? /r/askreddit? /r/iama? I'm not saying that it is your fault, but there isn't, at least to me, any value there.
Granted, and I'm sure you could look in your logs to see how much I visit your site (it's a lot), but if it went away...would I be sad? Uhhh...maybe a little bit, but not really. Personally, beyond having talked to you here, I don't feel much of a connection to you guys, and I don't feel much of a connection to the community.
Again, I'm not saying that this is exactly your guys' fault, just that it has happened.
One service that I do pay for is usenet, even though I almost never use it (my provider gives me 10 gigs a month and I think I have about a half a terrabye of available transfer hat has just rolled over for the last 5 years or so.) I pay for it because it makes me happy to see what the people at my provider (easynews) are doing. The reason that I signed up to begin with is because I saw them as a mirror on sourceforge. To me, although this is probably completely incorrect, they're fighting the good fight, and I want to support that.
But what are you guys doing to make me voluntarily buy you a beer every month? Reddit doesn't give me anything that I can't get from here, or fark, or slashdot, or my own website. Again, I'll pay you guys $5, but I'm the exception.
To me, you have to ask yourself what you guys have done to make yourselves stand out. If the donation is strictly voluntary, what motivation do I have to give it.
I'll tell you that one reason I am a totalfarker is that Drew Curtis seems like a real guy to me. Other than you, I have no idea who is behind reddit (spez and kn0thing, but I haven't talked to them in a long while).
Again, please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I love you guys, I'm addicted to your site, I love it...but am I the norm?
>What? /r/iama is one of the best things that happened to reddit. Sure, most of the submissions are shit, but some are golden.
Well, and there's the problem. The SNR on most of the larger subreddits has gotten absolutely terrible lately. I went through a couple of weeks ago and unsubbed from most of the larger reddits and nearly all the self-post only reddits because I simply don't have the time or inclination to dig through 100 garbage headlines for the one golden post.
>The community. Most of the value is in the comments.
The "community" on reddit is incredibly forced in nature. It's almost entirely based around memes that have been coopted from elsewhere and feel-good circle jerking.
Oh, and let's not forget when the community decides to rage about something, jumps to conclusions, and often as not ends up being completely wrong about it, but only after a significant portion of the users have taken to harassing or otherwise disrupting some innocent person's life.
There's still value to be had on reddit, I just increasingly feel like it's being pushed out more and more to the smaller subreddits.
Actually, I feel just the same way about HN. You have to spend a lot of time on HN to follow the development of conversations and have to get in early to accumulate karma. I'm happy with HN as a somewhat glorified newsfeed with interesting topical commentary from coders but as a place to actually engage with people the pace is too fast (i.e. like a newsfeed) and the subject matter too limited in scope, at least given my interests.
If I may ask, what did we do to lose you?