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0 pointsJSavageOne2y ago0 comments

I totally agree on the general superiority of tags vs. subreddits, and did the same for my Reddit/HN alternative https://zsync.xyz . I can see the case for private communities/forums, but I think tags make more sense for most use cases.

My main complaint with Reddit since the early ~2010s has been the crap post/comment quality. In 2008/9 when I first joined, the comment quality was very high. Then memes, puns, one-liners, and hivemind took over and ruined the site.

An ideal Reddit would be able to show you posts/comments that you're most likely to enjoy, such as via a "sort by" option tailored to you, or other sort by options like an "insightful" that actually works and doesn't just give you low effort one-liners that add nothing to your life.

High quality content in general needs to be better incentivized, and right now it's not. Anyways I have a lot of ideas around that I wrote elsewhere so will refrain from dumping then all here [1]

The challenge with developing a Reddit alternative however unfortunately is not technical, it's overcoming the chicken and egg problem where nobody cares about your site if no one else is on there.

[1] https://jsavage.xyz/2022/03/13/the-downfall-of-reddit-why-re...

0 comments

tezgon2y ago

I think something that would incentivize those longer-form interactions would be to remove the upvote/downvote system and replace it with something similar to what SA had back in the day, where you could label posts with "Insightful", "Funny", "Off-topic" and the like. I find that too many people will only say things that they know will get them karma, which leads to that hivemind that everyone hates. Having a system where you can put a numerical value on someone's "importance" to the site will only lead to users minmaxxing their responses.

JSavageOneOP2y ago

That's a good idea. I think upvoting can still work though particularly if the platform can use your upvotes to infer what kind of content you like and give you more of that.

kraftman2y ago

Something I toyed with for comment quality was having a way to only show comments by people subscribed to the subreddit your viewing, to avoid brigading from other parts of the site, and sorting comments based on reactions, to be able to filter out 'funny' replies from insightful: https://github.com/kraftman/TenTags.io/blob/bc6f3046dda4815b...

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