reddit would like to buy you a drink, new york

San Francisco was a success. We hope our homecoming in Boston tomorrow will go smoothly (Steve doesn't have a costume yet - so messages him with suggestions or he'll end up as "man in a hat"). I really ought to announce our upcoming visit to New York.

It's happening this Saturday, November 3rd from 7pm to... umm... well... last call.

The place is Hanger Bar and it's on East 3rd between Ave B and C.

RSVP if you want via MyPunchbowl, facebook, or yelp.

Bonus! We'll have a karaoke system -- not for singing, thankfully -- to do a little Q&A with team reddit. It will happen a couple hours into the drinking for maximum hilarity. If you can't make it to NY, I'm sure you'll find the highlights on YouTube.

Bonus bonus!! We did such a good job with the Valleywag-bait last time, I'm trying for some Gawker-bait. The lovely Julia Allison is not only a reddit fan, she's also been invited.

reddit would like to buy you a drink, boston

We're coming home for Halloween (keep tabs on the tour via drankkit.com).

Steve and I started reddit in a summer sublet in Medford. Sixteen months later, we weren't living much further away, but right in the center of the incomparable Davis Square. Now we shall return (really, the bar is just a short stagger from our old apartment) and we'd like you all to join us.

We still haven't gotten those ponies, so it looks like Wired is giving us another open bar on exactly the 1 year anniversary of our acquisition.

If you've finished carving your pumpkin and got some time on October 31, the open bar will run from 7pm to 9pm at The Burren. (Need a costume?) Just leave the bowl of candy outside your door with a guilt-tripping note and step out for a few drinks. I know we've given away drinks in Boston before, but this time it's beer!

Grab a nametag when you show up; you'll need one so bartenders know you're there for the reddit event and thus get free booze. It will also allow us to address one another as our usernames and avoid other formalities of normal human interaction.

You don't need to RSVP, but if you're hankering to add your name to the guest list, please use MyPunchbowl (because evite still sucks). We're also on facebook, yelp, and going -- we're that damn Web 2.0.

Think of it as another chance to interact with your fellow redditors in an ultra realistic environment known as real life. Besides, we'd like to meet you (and reunite with the rest of you) and send you all off trick-or-treating with a nice buzz.

Plus, I think I'll have completed my paper mâché reddit alien costume by then...

draw the alien, get 24hrs of quasi-fame

Inspired by a 4-year-old's drawing of the reddit alien, I'd like to let you draw this coming week's reddit logos.

I'd initially said we'd publish the first 5 we got, but then realized it'd only encourage haste and not cool design. So keep the submissions coming, the four of us on team reddit will be choosing the logos for the 22nd to the 26th. We've already gotten some pretty wild submissions.

Oh, and don't hesitate to doodle if you don't think you have the "skillz," the alien is just a bunch of ellipses anyway. Besides, a 4-year-old can do it.

Once you've got these basic requests met, send me your logo:

• 120x40px .png file
• the word "reddit" should be visible
  
• creature vaguely resembling the reddit alien
• brief description for me to post along with your personal shout-outs and/or self-promotion (this could be a good way to pimp your startup)

Happy doodling!

reddit status update, part II

With the rewrite, we were hoping to include an upgraded search, which, unlike the last version, was actually useful and helped you find what you were looking for. Unfortunately, the version we settled on didn't quite load test as nicely as we would have liked (<cough>memory leak</cough>), and has been down for most of the week. A new version should be ready in a few days.

Also, for those of you who are "load comments" anti-fans, we promise we aren't ignoring you. We're working on some upgrades and new layouts for comments that, no doubt, will make some other group of our users completely and unabashedly unhappy.

Thanks for bearing with us for the last week, and, as always, keep the bug reports and constructive criticism coming.

reddit status update

On Sunday we relaunched with our new code. As we had mentioned previously, there isn't a whole lot that is new to you. We want to get this new code nice and stable before we start adding new features to it.

The transition took much longer than expected, causing reddit.com to be frozen all day Sunday. We apologize for the downtime. We know how to avoid it in the future should something like this ever be necessary again, but hopefully that won't ever be the case.

There are still a ton of outstanding bugs that we're fixing as fast as we can. Stats and search are temporarily disabled, but will be coming back as soon as we can get them repaired.

One area that did receive new attention is the comment system. Many users dislike the "load more comments" links, and would like us to put things back to "they way they were." Let me explain the way it was, and why we changed it:

In the old system, we displayed the first 100 comments regardless of quality (not counting the "collapsed" comments). The comments beyond the first 100 could be view by clicking "next" at the bottom. The issue with this is that often the top thread of conversation pushed most of the other comments beyond the "next" link, where they would often remain unread.

The way the new system works is we show the top 100 comments from the entire thread. This means good comments that used to be displayed behind the "next" link are now in the main listing. The "load more comments" links are effectively mini "next" links. The comments behind them have a lower score than the other 100 comments currently being displayed.

The reason we didn't display more than 100 comments in the past and still don't display more than 100 now is because of bandwidth and rendering time (both ours and yours).

We haven't had much of a chance to really play with the new comment system as users ourselves. Give us some time to fix the outstanding bugs, and we'll keep evaluating the new stuff. Keep in mind, we are reddit users ourselves and want the site to work as well as possible just as you all do.

There are always two, a master and an apprentice.

Last week, Steve and Alexis were in Germany for their long-planned trip to Oktoberfest. That left Chris and I the keys to the castle, and the responsibility of updating the logo. We decided to use this chance to take Steve down a notch.

Here is Steve enjoying some of the fine Bavarian beverages. The reason he is not holding a pint glass is because I can't draw one, and because they use the metric system in Germany:

Chris and I show up to say hi:

At first, we were just going to push Steve out of the way. Then we realized that Chris had a lightsaber in his hand, so he used it. Note the detail of the chunk of reddit logo flying off:

Of course, given that Chris had just beheaded someone, that would make him a Sith. And every good Sith needs an apprentice:

Of course, Alexis could not let this injustice stand:

At this point, my Photoshop skills had been exhausted, and I can't draw, so I sent the files over to Alexis to complete the story. So far, the prospects don't look good for our hero:

How will the story end? I don't know, it's up to Alexis to finish drawing it...

Don't Tase Me Bro: the deal with new reddit

We didn't launch the new stuff last night owing to some database issues. We'll be working on the problems today, and try to get things switched over ASAP.

PS - There are a handful of people hanging out in #reddit on freenode, if you're into that sort of socializing.

reddit would like to buy you a drink, san francisco

With the one year anniversary of our acquisition approaching, the good folks at Wired wanted to buy us all ponies.

But we insisted on beer -- an open bar, in fact. And we also wanted all of you to come (except the spammers, Steve may not be strong, but he's pointy, and he will hurt you).

So if you're free next Tuesday, October 16th, and in the SF area, you should stop by Gallery Lounge and let us (read: Wired) buy you a drink (or 10, you've got 2 hours). Open bar will run from 7-9pm, then you can go back to programming with a nice buzz.

Because evite sucks, please RSVP on mypunchbowl (it's not mandatory though, I just like mypunchbowl and really loathe evite).

Think of it as a chance to interact with your fellow redditors in an ultra realistic environment known as real life. Besides, we'd like to meet you. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like our paper mâché reddit alien costume will be done in time.

Nametags will be available, so we can all address one another as our usernames and avoid other formalities of normal human interaction.

Oh, and if you can't make it to SF, we're also heading to the following cities:
Boston
NYC
Detroit (Toronto, too. Hopefully, eh.)
Chicago
LA

More details on these future gatherings to come...