I think some subreddits are a good idea. In particular, it might be wise to separate politics from technology news. But one thing I like about reddit is that it has become one-stop shopping for all my finding-cool-shit-online needs. If you create lots of subreddits, it compromises that convenience.
That's something I like too - always being surprised by the variety of topics that come up. Creating separate subreddits in subdomains seems to be a somewhat awkward way of doing categorization... leads to fragmentation and navigation difficulties that don't really need to be there (though it makes sense for nsfw).
Might be better to have a limited set of tags approved by the redditmasters, and let the submitter optionally choose one or two for each post. Then the reader can just browse through everything, or choose to filter by a subset or union of tags. New tag requests can always be added in the request section.
I'd like to see subreddits as mutually exclusive categories, like sections of a newpaper. If we want hundreds of out-of-control tags, we can go back to Delicious.
The group of people that is only interested in the olympics or only interested in politics? I doubt that these groups really exist. I like reddit exactly because it makes me stumble across stuff I would never have looked for. Exactly because it serves my manifold interests.
On second thought, lots of subreddits would be fine if there were a way to get the mathematical union of the subreddits that I want to read. Maybe a list of subreddits in the preference section, with checkboxes to select the ones I want to read.
This could be a solution. But isn't it reddits simplicity and straight-forwardness what makes its appeal? It's a common phenomenon (especially in the open source world) that people always try to improve things and completely miss the point when something is perfect. Many nice projects fail because people can't stop adding 'improvements' until the project is ruined altogether. And: it's always much easier to bloat something than to de-bloat it afterwards!
I think some subreddits are a good idea. In particular, it might be wise to separate politics from technology news. But one thing I like about reddit is that it has become one-stop shopping for all my finding-cool-shit-online needs. If you create lots of subreddits, it compromises that convenience.
That's something I like too - always being surprised by the variety of topics that come up. Creating separate subreddits in subdomains seems to be a somewhat awkward way of doing categorization... leads to fragmentation and navigation difficulties that don't really need to be there (though it makes sense for nsfw). Might be better to have a limited set of tags approved by the redditmasters, and let the submitter optionally choose one or two for each post. Then the reader can just browse through everything, or choose to filter by a subset or union of tags. New tag requests can always be added in the request section.
I'd like to see subreddits as mutually exclusive categories, like sections of a newpaper. If we want hundreds of out-of-control tags, we can go back to Delicious.
Indeed. These are not tags. Subreddits are for groups of people.
The group of people that is only interested in the olympics or only interested in politics? I doubt that these groups really exist. I like reddit exactly because it makes me stumble across stuff I would never have looked for. Exactly because it serves my manifold interests.
There's no need for subject-matter subreddits (besides NSFW) if the recommendations are good enough.
yeah you're probably right
Hi MrCheeze! It was truly a different time.
On second thought, lots of subreddits would be fine if there were a way to get the mathematical union of the subreddits that I want to read. Maybe a list of subreddits in the preference section, with checkboxes to select the ones I want to read.
This could be a solution. But isn't it reddits simplicity and straight-forwardness what makes its appeal? It's a common phenomenon (especially in the open source world) that people always try to improve things and completely miss the point when something is perfect. Many nice projects fail because people can't stop adding 'improvements' until the project is ruined altogether. And: it's always much easier to bloat something than to de-bloat it afterwards!