Switched to Reddit

[Lemur]

Okay, so I clung to Digg for as long as I could. Longer than any sane man would have done. Thing is, I like having at least one social news feed.

So I switched. Any hardened redditors here? I'm finding the interface a bit confusing. How do I train it to push stories of interest to me to the top, as with Google News? Or is that not a feature? I've played with the subscriptions a bit, but anyway.

A primer on Reddit if you please.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I have been on Reddit for 2.5 years now. There's a lot to cover.

A. First things first, to get the most out of reddit, you should probably download the "Reddit Enhancement Suite" extension here: http://redditenhancementsuite.com/

What does this extension do? Well...
1. Lets you filter out inane titles that pop up commonly like "This." or "Does anyone else like sports?" Stupid circlejerk kind of threads. After a month or two you will know what you don't like. Also you can filter by website, so nothing from huffingtonpost or drudge report will appear on your list.
2. Same filter applies for comments as well, you can filter out entire troll accounts from being able to be seen as well.
3. Never Ending Reddit, basically an automatic page loader so you don't have to click the next page button ever (just scroll to bottom of page and more stuff will load).
4. Tons of more functionalities, that would take too long to explain. If you spend a day reading them and tinkering, you will get the hang of it easily, since they are all straightforward.

B. What are the differences between Reddit and Digg?
1. If you only stick to the main large "subreddits" (AKA r/gaming, r/atheism, r/funny, r/pics) you will not learn anything. Nada. It's all overrun by stupid younglings who post youtube level comments and regurgitate the same memes over and over again.
2. If you do your research about the smaller subreddits, you will learn much more than you can on digg. The discussion that comes along in the comments is streets ahead of digg as well. See the thing that reddit used to be about was intelligent discussion about tech and programming articles (r/programming was the largest subreddit until about 3 years in). You might notice that reddit looks terrible. That was done on purpose. They didn't want the kind of people that based their decision on how much glossy crap was on the screen. Unfortunately after digg v4, many digg users switched over to reddit and the quality became crap anyway (although there is data that suggests quality went down before diggv4, yes people do research on that kind of stuff on reddit).

If you want to search for good subreddits that have good content updates, search here: http://subredditfinder.com/ and click on the button that says "most subscribed subreddits" that will list everything by size in an nice list instead of the crappy jumble of words.

Generally good subreddits have >10,000 subscribers so that fresh content will occur more than once a day. However subreddits >100,000 start to hit severe "Eternal september" and the quality is generally declining fast. Most of the good ones are around 40,000-80,000.

What is all this "meta this" or "true that"? Well the beauty of subreddits is that anyone can make one. And when subreddits have gotten to big (r/gaming, r/politics) and crappy (quality wise), the people who generally care about learning and not regurgitating crap or memes will make their own subreddit for quality content again (r/games, r/truereddit). They usually call it meta-x or true-x to distinguish it. It's just a reddit thing.

If you really want to use reddit as a place for information I suggest unsubscribing from all the featured subreddits (except for r/askscience because only comments from registered masters/doctorates or experienced personnel is allowed).

Some of the subreddits I browse are thus:

r/askreddit (with heavy filtering)
r/askscience
r/books
r/games
r/gamernews
r/news
r/worldnews
r/truereddit
r/bestof (this is a subreddit whose submissions are well crafted and informative comments)

One other thing, subreddits generally like to view themselves as communities. As such, whenever anybody does something people don't like, there is a lot of drama. Some of it is justified like r/trees (the pot smoking subreddit having their moderator scam everyone out of money by directing money to a fake pro pot non-profit org)but 99% of the time it is dumb.

Karma is worthless but it has essentially degraded content because people spam puns and other populist comments to gain lots of karma. All it is is a measure of how much someone likes to post/comment.

Lastly, self posts are posts that have no link. They are usually posts meant to be a "discussion section" or a question on behalf of the creator (AKA all of r/askreddit). They generate no link karma for the creator.

This should cover most of what I wanted to talk about. If you have anymore questions I can answer them.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I've started browsing several months ago. My only piece of advice is that the atheism subreddit is to atheism as the folsom street fair is to homosexual people. Oh, so I hope for the sake of atheists in general.

CR

[Lemur]

Wow, that's really comprehensive, thank you ACIN. I've downloaded the suggested addon, and the next time I have several hours to play, I will experiment with reddit.

CR, don't forget that most people are more obnoxious and in-your-face online than in person. Hence the inexplicable glory of the Org.

[Hooahguy]

Im really bored here in Israel, since we can only leave the school on Tuesday nights and for the Sabbath, plus Saturday night. So my friends and I did a lot of Reddit and Stumbleupon. Unfortunately, both are now blocked because god forbid we "waste" our time on the internet. Oh yeah, no flash player on these computers and laptops are not allowed.

[Moros]

Im really bored here in Israel, since we can only leave the school on Tuesday nights and for the Sabbath, plus Saturday night. So my friends and I did a lot of Reddit and Stumbleupon. Unfortunately, both are now blocked because god forbid we "waste" our time on the internet. Oh yeah, no flash player on these computers and laptops are not allowed.

So why are you there then?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I echo a lot of what ACIN said. I have my own set of subreddits I browse when on my account, and when I've read through those I'll log out and see the default subreddits (to make sure I get all the major frontpage injokes of the day).

Here's a few I follow:

r/Technology - a default and so it has a lot of subscribers, but it's one of two defaults I'm still subscribed to
r/AskScience - ditto, it's probably the best default subreddit due to its restrictive post rules and fascist moderation
r/Programming - arguing about programming languages, but I'm hoping to get some value out of it through osmosis. There are some gems every once in a while.
r/History - a general but not default subreddit. Some "hey did anyone know Hitler died in 1945?" obvious posts but a good ratio of interesting links/discussions to crap
r/Buildapc - questions (and answers) about building PCs, of course! Lots of great low-budget suggestions
r/subredditoftheday - VERY good. Every day they showcase a different subreddit, usually of a niche with an active community. While most days you probably won't see a new subreddit to subscribe to, I've found a half dozen cool subs through it
r/talesfromtechsupport - I'm biased because I'm currently doing PC tech support, but it's what it says on the tin. It's also completely no-nonsense, in the sense that there is virtually none of the frontpage meme-ification. Lots of laughs and shared pain.
r/alternativeart - Pictures of one thing done in another thing's style. Fancy some noir Pokemon or anime British monarchy? It's probably in there.

EDIT: ALmost forgot, r/wicked_edge. A subreddit dedicated to classic shaving, like with old-school safety and straight razors. After following them for several months I've taken the plunge and ordered a safety (double edge) razor and accompanying kit. Waiting for it in the mail now. One of the mods published a pretty neat little book on the subject. Lots of knowledgeable people.

[Hooahguy]

So why are you there then?

Parents made me go. Had no choice, and I couldnt join the US Army right after graduation because I didnt meet the physical requirement, something I am working on here.

[Strike For The South]

/rtrees
/rcats
/rfood
/rsoccer