Tuesday, August 28, 2007

pics or it didn't happen

As most of you know, Chris (KeyserSosa) Slowe got married this past weekend.

A few of you remain skeptical. To prove that not only did Chris say "I mod up," but that all 4 of us were in fact there, I've been asked to provide a photo.

OK, a photo can't really prove he said "I mod up" (it was a Greek Orthodox ceremony after all, so he could have said anything) but he is on a honeymoon right now with Kristen, so it's safe to say he answered in the affirmative. Anyway, here's the pic.

photo credit: Liz

You'll notice we're even standing in the proper left-to-right order of our alien manifestations in the above logo.

Oh, and before the bride and groom's first dance we did in fact hear the opening of the Star Wars theme. It was pretty fantastic.

As a service to you all who couldn't make it, here's the MIDI to help you experience the wonderful event like we did.

Now just click play, close your eyes, and imagine you're stuffing your face with beer and cake.

reddit downtime

Much to the dismay of my sleep schedule, reddit suffered some downtime this morning.

There were some heat/power issues at the datacenter that caused a number of our machines to die. We'll continue following up with our datacenter to mitigate this type of problem in the future.

Among the servers that we lost was the recommendation server, so we will be without recommendations for a couple of hours while they recompute.

We apologize for the downtime, and hope you all had a productive morning without reddit.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

just married

Congratulations Chris and Kristen!

It seems like just yesterday that we were congratulating Chris on his PhD. Today he's getting married.

(We're just sorry it's not a Star Wars themed wedding.)


All of team reddit is in attendance, so please don't break the site. We wouldn't want to make a big scene ducking out to fetch our laptops.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

it's slow... it's unstable... it's... beta!

We've exposed what's going to be the new version of reddit this morning for you all to play with. We converted about a week's worth of data, and all your accounts.

For the most part, it should appear as though nothing has changed. Don't fret! Since this is built on an entirely new system (front-end and back-end), we wanted to test what we have and are familiar with for a little before tossing in a bunch of new things.

Mostly what we're looking for are performance issues and major bugs ('reddit broke' messages, XSS issues, etc.). We've created a subreddit for bugs where you can submit bugs that you find.

Once things are tested, we'll begin transitioning to the new system and start adding on the new features.

Some things you should know:
  • Search is better, but not quite where we'd like it.
  • Some old features don't exist at the moment: friends, stats, recommendations, sharing, comment pagination. They're not gone for good, we just haven't put them back together yet.
  • Tagging is built-in, though we haven't exposed it through the UI yet.
  • Comments are improved, try them out.


UPDATE: Thank you, raldi, you're a bug-finding machine.

Monday, August 20, 2007

the things you learn...

We've gotten back some of the early results from our survey (that's right, you too can tell us about yourself!)

We thought you'd be interested in seeing these...

Q3. When do you believe Reddit jumped the shark?
  • nyeh, i dont much worry about that.
  • not sure
  • Some time this year.
  • The day Digg started censoring users over the HD DVD key
  • stupid question. Why can't reddit just be evolving into a new paradigm?
  • Has it?
  • Jun-07
  • February 14th, 2007 at 11:14am
  • Uh, leading question? Not sure it has, just yet. I guess the overall quality of posts had declined since early '07.
  • the shark had it coming
  • ?
  • sharks? where? SHARKS??? SHAAAARRRKKKKSSS!!!! (chomp)
  • Lipstick
  • During the Digg AACS key riot, the tenor of the site changed noticably.
  • When it adds a reddit.reddit.com section. Then it will have jumped the shark.
  • wtf does that mean?
  • No real specific time. It's slowly been getting more like digg (with spikes here and there) as the userbase grows without having the ability to section reddit off into groups of similarly interested people. We need the new version!
  • When Digg got caught censoring stories... well, probably a few months prior but that was when it became apparent.
  • When it was purchased by Wired
  • When it became an almost-entirely U.S.-politics-driven site. I'm very interested in politics, but very not-interested in re-re-re-re-re-posted variations of the same uni-dimensional political shrieking...
  • When Digg deleted all those HD-DVD keys
  • When the digg kids surged in.
  • Yesterday.
  • I don't know
  • it hasn't yet
  • When politics, America-sucks, and cops-suck took over the front page
  • I don't understand the question. Now?
  • It hasn't yet.... has it?
  • Never!!
  • when the digg users flooded in
  • what?
  • never
  • don't know what you mean
  • Paul Graham's breakfast.
  • Probably a while ago; i would have to say, unfortunately, as soon as it became popular. Funny how that works...
  • I'm not sure it has. But if I had to pick a time when it was closest, it was when I started getting 20 political articles out of 25 instead of the nice mix of several genres I used to get.
  • Never. Reddit is a great resource.
  • May 2007 -- When Digg users migrated en masse and the front page became extremely politics-centric.
  • It was gradual. For once, I think it's fair to blame Bush: the Impeachment Day (in February, I think) was awful, and reddit never got better.
  • Within the past six months.
  • When they went to the West Coast
  • If the "new" version never comes out, yes otherwise no.
  • the time i sat next to alexis at a dinner and he was a totally self-centered, sarcastic, holier-than-thou, oh-i-am-so-cool asshole.
  • Shark, what shark?
  • I don't think it has jumped the shark, maybe it happened before I joined. I mostly stick to programming.reddit, which for the most part seems to be great.
  • Ron Paul
  • I don't think Reddit has jumped the shark yet. Asking this question is proof of that. I still have faith.
  • There has been no shark jump yet.
  • I don't think it has yet.
  • Almost when there was the Digg fiasco over the magic DRM number, but seems to have recovered.
  • I'm new here. I like post-shark reddit :)
  • i think it never even reached the shark.
  • It never really got up on to its waterskis for me. Just... it never settled in to my routine of reading; I suppose that the crowded design and not-quite-close-enough-to-useful bubble-up meant it wasn't for me.
  • After all the political crap and pictures showed up.
  • Well, you guys are still doing alright, but the quality of the front page really took a dive starting somewhere around November last year I think. Probably can't be helped though. The masses like their lolcats.
  • I don't think it has, really.
  • While I don't know real numbers, would say after it was bought by CondeNasty. Just hold up a Wired from 2000 to one from today an you'll see what I mean. But I still tell people about Reddit everyday.
  • It didnt
  • Did it?
  • Reddit jumped the shark when subreddits moved everything except politics off the front page.
  • What a pointed question! Hard to quantify with a specific time frame, but the main page started sucking since at least a few months ago. Well, noticeably at least. There were always the lingering, repetitious LOLcats and their ilk, but eventually that's ALL that the main page was. So I jumped ship to programming.reddit.com. The whole site hasn't "jumped the shark", just that the main page is rather uninteresting these days (blame it on the Digg users! Haha).
  • Hah. Funny that you just assume that your users are dissatisfied. It was a gradual thing, of course. I remember all these great articles that used to be on the top all-time. Stuff about the Socratic Method, why so many numbers begin with 1, extreme learning, etc. And Paul Graham's essays, although I guess that's mainly because he was writing a lot then. Now it's mainly political stuff, and since I've personally decided that reading about politics is a waste of time, I try to stay off the site. But I get bored a lot.
  • When Ron Paul became the ad hoc candidate of interest
  • What?
  • When DIDN'T it jump the shark? Reddit jumps the shark almost hourly.
  • I believe that reddit started taking a dive a month or two before the buyout announcement. I don't think this was the fault of Reddit, but instead, the influx of new users. The programming subreddit (the only one I read daily), is still fairly decent.
  • when you sold out
  • September 2006, give or take a few months. I still hope it will recover.
  • Last summer.
  • I don't have enough information to say.
  • 4-6 months ago, give or take.
  • Needed the money.
  • I don't think it did.
  • After Digg's HDDVD rebellion
  • When the digg users came.
  • 2005
  • Not yet

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

surveying and hiring

About a year ago, we ran a survey of our users on behalf of Federated Media. They wanted demographic data and we were kinda curious to learn about our users. Our new employers need an updated look at who users are and we're still kinda curious. And we think you might be, too.

We worked with them to keep the survey short and we're going to share the more interesting results with you. If you're interested, here's the survey.

If not, maybe you need a new job.

A little while back, we took applications for a programmer position and got a number of great resumes. Trouble was, we had a clog in the HR process and weren't able to hire anyone. The clog is gone, but we're still looking for a well-rounded Python hacker -- preferably someone proficient in BZFlag.

If you're interested in getting paid to read reddit (and work on it, too) email us
redditjobs gmail.com

Sunday, August 05, 2007

politics reddit

We turned on a reddit for politics today. Since I'm the one typically arguing against a reddit for politics, I feel as though I owe an explanation. But, since I'm the one writing the blog post, you aren't going to get one.

Ha. I'm just kidding.

The demand for a politics reddit has been great, and the political news has been bountiful, so here you go. We hope that a politics reddit will allow our politically inclined users to focus their submissions on a more targeted audience.

In other news...

The new version of reddit is inches away from getting online. We had hoped to get it online last week for you all to test and to play with, but things always seem to be more complicated in practice. We'll keep crunching and get things cruising as soon as we can.

Take it easy, redditors.