Saturday, May 31, 2008

reddit's top 10 best commenters

Also known as the greatest commenters on the Internet. Chris recently ran the numbers on 10 redditors with the highest comment karma.

A warning from Chris: It's little hard to pull this one so there might be a margin of error.

Expect something like this to make it to the Stats page one of these days.

In the meantime, let us bask in their commenting glory.

tofocsend | 7607
crowed | 7409
MarshallBanana | 6880
AnteChronos | 5982
qgyh2 | 5690
NastyConde | 5664
1smartass | 5077
aGorilla | 4764
psychometry | 4737
711was_a_retail_job | 4573

Monday, May 26, 2008

reddit design changes: for real this time

We deployed the changes we've been working on in the beta site to reddit.com a few moments ago. The changes include:

  • A reworked design to make reddit more intuitive while still preserving the simple and functional interface. However, if it's not simple enough, you can enable parts of the old interface by choosing "compress link display" in your preferences.


  • Non-logged in users can set language preferences by clicking on the language in the upper-right


  • Reddits can be toggled on and off temporarily from the sidebar, and the changes can be made permanent by clicking "save"


  • By appending .json to any listing page, you can get a JSON version of the listing. We'll be updating this API over the new few weeks. If you have in mind a project that you'd like to build, but don't have the right data for, shoot an email to feedback@reddit.com and let us know how we can help.


  • There is a new mobile version of the site located at m.reddit.com. This should be more accommodating to the simple browsers.


We had a great deal of help from designer and CSS-fiend, Rich White, who got us from version 1 to version 2 of the redesign. You might remember Rich from such websites as Kiko, SlimTimer, and most recently UserVoice. If you run a website and it gets traffic, you really ought to give UserVoice a try -- it's like a features.reddit that actually works!

If you've got feedback on the redesign (and we know you do), he's asked that you submit it here for him to review.

Thanks again, Rich.

Also, thanks to the handful of users who sent me design suggestions.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

yourweek: reddit-powered television news

I've been looking forward to this announcement ever since we started talking with PBS (public broadcasting here in the USA) about YourWeek early this year. Here's the Valleywag and NewTeeVee coverage.

It's a weekly television news program powered by you (really). Material for the show will come from hot stories on the reddit front page every week. Meta discussions about that content and the show itself will all take place at yourweek.reddit, so please submit all your wittiest and smartest comments there. And don't worry, the pilot (and hopefully all the future shows) will be available online.

Whereas traditional television new stories end once the show airs, YourWeek -- like reddit -- will just be the beginning. Throughout the week you'll be able to share your thoughts on yourweek.reddit and followup with content you think was missed or corrections that should be made.

We're hoping to get some content directly from you, the reddit community in the final days of this week. We're curious to hear what you think about lab-grown meat, NFL cheerleaders in Bangalore, and your most boring job - ever. These are just a few of the reddit headlines that are being produced for the pilot.

Also, if you're musically inclined, we're partnering with JamGlue to remix the YourWeek theme song -- for prizes. The tracks of the original and all the music editing tools you'll need are all there on the site. I suspect it won't be long before we get a RickRoll remix...

We're finishing taping on the pilot this weekend and I can confirm that the reddit alien will be getting on-camera time. Oh, and we've even got a fellow redditor (hueypriest) working on the production end with us. Our antennae tingle with excitement.



And here's the press release version of what I just said:

YOUR WEEK is the beta version of a planned interactive public television and internet show from WETA Washington, D.C. and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It's hosted by Michelle Cottle and Rich Lowry and powered by reddit (yep, that's us). YOUR WEEK covers politics, arts, international, science, tech, social, sports, and pop culture. The Web feeds the show, the show feeds the Web, and anyone who wishes can get involved at any time to view, vote, rate, tag, comment, contribute, and learn. Visit us online at http://www.yourweek.org or http://yourweek.reddit.com

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

reddit design changes

As many of you have noticed, we opened up beta.reddit this morning to test out interface changes we have been working on. Keep in mind our goal is to improve the site, and the whole point of using the beta is to get your feedback.

First, thank you for the positive feedback. Despite some issues, I think this is a net-improvement. Some of the feature enhancements we've made are:


  • Non-logged-in users can set a language preference by clicking on the language in the upper right.


  • Subreddits can be toggled on and off temporarily from the sidebar, and the changes can be made permanent by clicking "save"


  • If you click an arrow when you're not logged in, the login cover that pops up takes you to the item you voted on after you log in. Although we can't actually apply the vote for security reasons, this should address the complaint of logging in and losing your place.


  • There is a new API for you to use. Although, as I write this I'm finding it broken. More details will come as we get things back online.



Much of the negative feedback we've received was anticipated, so let me address the common complaints we've seen so far:


  • If it's not broken don't fix it: it was absolutely broken. When we watch new users come to the site they are more often than not utterly confused. What the site does is not obvious. Most don't see the arrows, the points, or the comments, so we've tried to make this clearer


  • The dropdown stinks: this is a thorny issue. The problem we are trying to solve is a lack of horizontal space for navigation. Yes, for a non-logged-in user there is plenty of room for hot/new/top/controversy, but when you tack on saved/recommended and some sort options (which we really wanted to get out of the right-hand area), things get crowded. In the end we opted for consistency and use the dropdown everywhere rather than have it appear and disappear as required. If any of you have other ideas, we'd love to see them.

    One major complaint with the dropdown is it's made bouncing between "hot" and "new" more difficult. I agree. For the time being, I put a link to the "new" page outside the menu so the page will be one-click accessible. We have a pretty cool new feature that we'll be getting online after we get through these design changes that will hopefully make this issue moot.

    Because the dropdown doesn't work well on some phones, we'll created a simplified mobile interface as well.


  • The increased vertical space means less content on the front page: Yes, that's true, but it also makes things easier to parse. We'll keep tweaking and see if we can find a happy median.



If you're a professional designer looking for some contract work, now would be a good time to drop a line to jobs@reddit. We'd love help on current design issues as well as assistance on new features.

The beta site runs with its own cache, but against the main reddit database. This means some things will behave strangely. For example, although your votes are always recorded in the database, they may not appear to carry over between the two sites. Comment counts will be off, and your preferences may seem whacky as well.