Current Events > Reddit is such a bizarre website.

(+) Yeah! (+)

- Insanely more active than dead message boards such as this, yet its format does not really stimulate discussion.

- A post that says one thing could be downvoted to hell. That same post, in the exact same topic, posted at a later time, could be upvoted to high heaven. They're literally saying the exact same thing, but one gets the thumbs down arrow and one gets the thumbs up arrow. What? Why? How?

- Real actors, game developers, real people from the real world actually post on it with AMAs and shit, which is so weird to think about when internet forums were mostly for nobodies and no one famous had ever been on them ever.

So despite the fact that its thumbs up format leads to hivemind and no real way to facilitate a discussion on a topic, you actually see the actors of a tv show post on the board, like izombie reddit actually had ravi's actor on it, or greta gerwig actually made an ask her some things topic on the movie reddit board. That, to me, is pretty darn strange.

Why are so many people on it when their post will probably be buried under literally 10,000 comments. Why bother commenting at that point?
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Its a lot better than this place and provides much more useful information.
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MrBobGray posted...

Its a lot better than this place and provides much more useful information.

This.

GameFAQs is really only good for the walkthroughs and game boards right now, and even those are becoming obsolete with the advent of video guides and wikis. ...And Reddit as well.
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saspa posted...

- A post that says one thing could be downvoted to hell. That same post, in the exact same topic, posted at a later time, could be upvoted to high heaven. They're literally saying the exact same thing, but one gets the thumbs down arrow and one gets the thumbs up arrow. What? Why? How?

Different people are on at different times. Also, in some subs, certain users have negative reputations that impact all their posts
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I find myself coming here less due to reddit
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I dislike the organization of posts, so I avoid Reddit when I can.
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I generally sort comments by new by default, and the subreddits I visit aren't highly trafficked for the most part.
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The organization of the posts ties in to the whole idiotic thumbs up/down system that I am criticizing, although I always change the settings to display comments from oldest to most recent in any given topic.
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lots of good points TC. that is why I hate reddit. it's not really built for true discussion. reddit is not much better than just reading youtube comments. and the downvoting is a very stupid idea. I don't mind upvotes. they do that in other boards like on the official World of Warcraft forums. but if you also have a downvote, I think that ruins discussions. all an upvote does is say "some people really liked this" but a downvote buries the post and it's nothing more than bullying. anyone can downvote something for no reason at all.

The layout isn't that hard to grasp.

I just hate the circlejerk think tank the site produces.
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Antifar posted...

saspa posted...

- A post that says one thing could be downvoted to hell. That same post, in the exact same topic, posted at a later time, could be upvoted to high heaven. They're literally saying the exact same thing, but one gets the thumbs down arrow and one gets the thumbs up arrow. What? Why? How?

Different people are on at different times. Also, in some subs, certain users have negative reputations that impact all their posts

That's probably for the less active ones, for usernames to be recognized like that. Not familiar with them too much/haven't found ones pertaining to my interest yet. I'm mostly commenting on the more general big boards like games, movies, television, etc that can have topics either with 10,000 comments, or a topic that no one pays attention to.
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I much prefer it to here now. This type of message board format just seems really antiquated these days.

I'd argue it does facilitate discussion. It brings the post most worth reading and responding to higher up, while putting the troll posts lower so they don't clog up discussions.

Darklit_Minuet posted...

I'd argue it does facilitate discussion. It brings the post most worth reading and responding to higher up, while putting the troll posts lower so they don't clog up discussions.

that is bad logic because you are assuming the best and worst posts are honestly picked. they aren't. it's just the whims of people. for a good idea on this, there was an episode of The Orville where an entire planet runs society like it's reddit. everyone gets to vote on everything, and the masses just on a whim decide things. the episode paints it in a bad light, and the main character of the show criticizes the planet's society in one scene while talking to a native.

Reddit is way better for information, GameFAQs is WAY better for discussion.
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People who say you can't have a discussion on Reddit just don't know how to use the site.
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saspa posted...

- A post that says one thing could be downvoted to hell. That same post, in the exact same topic, posted at a later time, could be upvoted to high heaven. They're literally saying the exact same thing, but one gets the thumbs down arrow and one gets the thumbs up arrow. What? Why? How?

This is asked on a daily basis at reddit. They don't know either.
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In my experience upvoting and downvoting makes Reddit infinitely more readable because it solves the problem sites like this have where shitty baitposts are perpetually at the top of the topic list. Generally what is left behind is actually pleasant discussion rather than people fighting forever
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Zikten posted...

lots of good points TC. that is why I hate reddit. it's not really built for true discussion. reddit is not much better than just reading youtube comments. and the downvoting is a very stupid idea. I don't mind upvotes. they do that in other boards like on the official World of Warcraft forums. but if you also have a downvote, I think that ruins discussions. all an upvote does is say "some people really liked this" but a downvote buries the post and it's nothing more than bullying. anyone can downvote something for no reason at all.

It really is just the youtube comments section without an accompanying video isn't it. Too many times it seems people on there think the thumbs down option is for a comment or opinion that they disagree with, instead of actually replying to said comment and debating accordingly.
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The voting system is fine in theory but you end up with a bunch of kids on the site that upvote every le epic meme joke post to the top of every topic and downvote any differing opinions because they can't handle different opinions
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Reddit fucking sucks.

It's ok for browsing, but if you try to actually post in reddit you will find that the mods in many subreddits are huge assholes, and so at their automod bots.

Say you make a question, this will happen:

- Automod will delete your post and give you a shit message treating you as if you had posted turd pictures. It will claim you are violating some obscure rule like asking you ask all questions in a specific topic with some oddly specific format that kills the purpose of your question
- You message a moderator asking for more information and asking for help on how to post your question properly.
- moderator will reply a smug, passive-aggressive load of w**** giving you shit for not knowing a bunch of rules an insider of such subreddit would know because they've spent years there and peruse some dumb wiki for that subreddit for hours a day.
- You somehow manage to post the question again. Said moderators will then give you shit and call your question dumb, thus making every single user there reply negatively and downvote.

Antifar posted...

saspa posted...

- A post that says one thing could be downvoted to hell. That same post, in the exact same topic, posted at a later time, could be upvoted to high heaven. They're literally saying the exact same thing, but one gets the thumbs down arrow and one gets the thumbs up arrow. What? Why? How?

Different people are on at different times. Also, in some subs, certain users have negative reputations that impact all their posts

This. There's a reason back when CE was more popular that we used to make the distinction between Day and Night CE.
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BJ-blazkowics posted...

Say you make a question, this will happen:

have you tried reading the rules of the subreddit you're in?
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Reddit is a clusterfuck of peer pressure and bad ideas, part of which is just brought on by its sheer popularity and doesnt have anything to do with the format. But lol at anybody saying the most upvoted comments are the best. You dont have to be a historian to know that just because something is popular - that doesnt make it automatically good. Jerry Springer anyone?
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Zikten posted...

there was an episode of The Orville where an entire planet runs society like it's reddit. everyone gets to vote on everything, and the masses just on a whim decide things. the episode paints it in a bad light, and the main character of the show criticizes the planet's society in one scene while talking to a native.

Is that similar to that one Black Mirror episode with Bryce Dallas Howard?
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ultimate reaver posted...

In my experience upvoting and downvoting makes Reddit infinitely more readable because it solves the problem sites like this have where shitty baitposts are perpetually at the top of the topic list. Generally what is left behind is actually pleasant discussion rather than people fighting forever

how i've seen reddit fail at this:

>topic about interesting informational topic
>top voted post with most relevant information gets top spot for a little bit
>meme joke that does a meta joke about the subject eats up all the upvotes
>long chain of responses reapplying the meta-ness of the joke onto itself for 20 replies
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Tyranthraxus posted...

BJ-blazkowics posted...

Say you make a question, this will happen:

have you tried reading the rules of the subreddit you're in?

A quick skimming of the rules? Yes. A 2 hour long study of the rules and several referals to "rules wikis" to make sure I comply with a body of rules more specific than most rulesets out there? no

masticatingman posted...

Reddit is a clusterfuck of peer pressure and bad ideas, part of which is just brought on by its sheer popularity and doesnt have anything to do with the format. But lol at anybody saying the most upvoted comments are the best. You dont have to be a historian to know that just because something is popular - that doesnt make it automatically good. Jerry Springer anyone?

That's the point of subs, to filter that shit out.

If you tried to post Jerry Springer to something like r/books, for example, it would be straight up deleted. Thus if you only want to have good conversations about books, you go to r/books where the sub is frequented by other people who are enthusiastic about books and won't upvote garbage.
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myzz7 posted...

ultimate reaver posted...

In my experience upvoting and downvoting makes Reddit infinitely more readable because it solves the problem sites like this have where shitty baitposts are perpetually at the top of the topic list. Generally what is left behind is actually pleasant discussion rather than people fighting forever

how i've seen reddit fail at this:

>topic about interesting informational topic
>top voted post with most relevant information gets top spot for a little bit
>meme joke that does a meta joke about the subject eats up all the upvotes
>long chain of responses reapplying the meta-ness of the joke onto itself for 20 replies

click the top left minus sign and see the rest of the discussion.
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BJ-blazkowics posted...

It's ok for browsing, but if you try to actually post in reddit you will find that the mods in many subreddits are huge assholes, and so at their automod bots.

That's part of the beauty of reddit. Mods have complete control over their subs. If you think the mods of a sub are assholes, you make your own sub with your own rules. If it's better, people from that sub will go to your sub instead. You will grow and they will shrink.

saspa posted...

Is that similar to that one Black Mirror episode with Bryce Dallas Howard?

dont know. haven't seen Black Mirror

Reddit's posting format and voting system blows. The only reason I use Reddit at all is because there are a lot more people discussing PSVR on there than on GameFAQs.
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One of my frustrations with reddit recently is that for some reason the top comment in a lot of threads is a string of poorly thought out puns or attempts at wordplay. Even in moderately serious threads, there's usually a particular comment tree where everyone's trying to be funny and piggyback off of each other's jokes. At a certain point the effort put into posting is minimized to, essentially, "do you get this reference I'm making??"

That being said, there have been a *few* occasions where Reddit's nested comment structure actually resulted in a clever setup that ended up being funny. But, few and far between for sure.
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Topics like these about reddit are always baffling to me. They're always filled with a general lack of self awareness when comparing CE to there. It's just weird to see people saying that Reddit's system of up and down votes is poor for discussion because it makes the comments and discussion threads that people actually want to participate in more visible while hiding the trolls when comments on this site a frequently derailed by trolls and discussions never seem to last further than the 1st page. Or that the mods are overbearing over there and that the rules are hide to find when people have fled this very site in droves due to the mods and their unclear rules. It was only recently that you had to document the rules and their infractions yourself, lest you call someone a fuckboy and get modded when you had really meant to call him a jackass and your post would have been left alone.
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@A_Good_Boy, you don't seem to understand that the upvote/downvote system isn't for getting rid of trolls, it's for downvoting anything you don't like so it isn't seen.

It's like if an opposing viewpoint is posted about something (let's say democrats v republicans) it will get downvoted or told to go to the proper reddit, rather than an actual discussion. This ends up creating echo chambers (i.e. all democrat posts stay in r/democrat and all republican posts stay in r/republican) because people only agree with each other, never disagree, and when anything challenging views is posted, it is deleted because it isn't the correct echo ch- subreddit.
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Ulyanyx posted...

@A_Good_Boy, you don't seem to understand that the upvote/downvote system isn't for getting rid of trolls, it's for downvoting anything you don't like so it isn't seen.

It's like if an opposing viewpoint is posted about something (let's say democrats v republicans) it will get downvoted or told to go to the proper reddit, rather than an actual discussion. This ends up creating echo chambers (i.e. all democrat posts stay in r/democrat and all republican posts stay in r/republican) because people only agree with each other, never disagree, and when anything challenging views is posted, it is deleted because it isn't the correct echo ch- subreddit.

going into a community to tell that community that their communally held ideas are shit is what's called "being an asshole"
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Ulyanyx posted...

@A_Good_Boy, you don't seem to understand that the upvote/downvote system isn't for getting rid of trolls, it's for downvoting anything you don't like so it isn't seen.

It's like if an opposing viewpoint is posted about something (let's say democrats v republicans) it will get downvoted or told to go to the proper reddit, rather than an actual discussion. This ends up creating echo chambers (i.e. all democrat posts stay in r/democrat and all republican posts stay in r/republican) because people only agree with each other, never disagree, and when anything challenging views is posted, it is deleted because it isn't the correct echo ch- subreddit.

It might not be a perfect system but it encourages those of opposing viewpoints to be respectful of others as opposed to how it is here. I've frequently seen actual civil discussions occur on r/conservative between the locals and people that disagree simply because if they just ran in there and started insulting people then their behavior would be rendered ineffective pretty quickly.

And one of the strengths of Reddit's system is that the site won't hemorrhage users just because one ideology becomes too prevalent, like it does on this site. When people get fed up of all the liberals or whatnot plaguing a subreddit, they just create a new one. But that alone doesn't kill the discussion of opposing views, because people actually do make subreddits devoted solely to discussing opposing view points. If agreeing with your buddies gets to be too boring then you still have places to go.
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In my experience, people who use the downvote system are trolls.

I've been downvoted for things as simple as asking a question about a game, or posting a link to a game that is on sale.

People abuse the hell out of it which makes it worthless.

If people want to upvote comments that they think contain valuable information so others will see it, that's one thing. But downvoting is completely useless the way it's used now.
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You probably weren't following the subreddits rules when you made those posts. It happens.
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Are you talking to me? I definitely did not break any rules.
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Reddit really does stifle discussion. People could be circle jerking about X, and if you say "X is good and worthy of praise, but Y is so much better and I suggest trying it out" you can get downvoted to hell because fans of X don't want any kind of discussion outside of circle jerking about X, as if both can't exist and be enjoyed. How can anyone ever learn about new ideas if they get blocked immediately?

Solar_Crimson posted...

GameFAQs is really only good for the walkthroughs and game boards

hahahahahaha

oh wait, you were being serious. let me laugh harder.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Eh, it depends really heavily on the sub. For more niche topics, especially non-controversial ones, it actually works quite well because the overall Reddit userbase is much bigger than most other sites (means niche topics don't end up as dead forums) and the format is easier to use for info threads than GameFAQs for instance. Plus, most of the niche subs actually want legitimate discussion of the topic and not just circlejerks/meme spam since there aren't really a lot of other places to discuss a lot of those topics online.

I wouldn't touch the bigger/more controversial subs (popular games, politics, etc.) with a ten-foot pole though. So much shitposting/trollvoting and you can get plenty of discussion here for example.
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Out of curiosity how is the format easier to use for info threads?
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saspa posted...

Out of curiosity how is the format easier to use for info threads?

Much higher character limit and better formatting options for thread authors. Native tables and in-text links (as opposed to just URLs like here) are a big plus for informational threads. And in an info thread you usually don't give two fucks about any of the comments so that part is irrelevant.
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bover_87 posted...

saspa posted...

Out of curiosity how is the format easier to use for info threads?

Much higher character limit and better formatting options for thread authors. Native tables and in-text links (as opposed to just URLs like here) are a big plus for informational threads. And in an info thread you usually don't give two fucks about any of the comments so that part is irrelevant.

Comments is not needed, so Reddit is basically a one post gimmick?
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saspa posted...

Out of curiosity how is the format easier to use for info threads?

they're still there when you go back to look at them a week later
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bover_87 posted...

saspa posted...

Out of curiosity how is the format easier to use for info threads?

Much higher character limit and better formatting options for thread authors. Native tables and in-text links (as opposed to just URLs like here) are a big plus for informational threads. And in an info thread you usually don't give two fucks about any of the comments so that part is irrelevant.

Native tables? What does that mean? I might need to see this.
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Reddit is only good for news.
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wdlp posted...

Reddit is only good for news.

Reddit is only good for watching the moderator-of-500-subreddits oligarchs colossally fuck up time and time again, like that time /r/news deleted all mention of the boston marathon bombing because it "wasn't international news"
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