New Default Subreddits? omgomgomg

It’s that time again — time to update the default subreddits! For those of you who don’t know, this is the set of subreddits logged-out users and new users see as their front page before they customize their subscriptions. It's been quite a while since we’ve made major changes to that list of subreddits (though we recently added /r/news to fill a gap that was missing), and we figured that it was high time to shake things up a bit on the front page. This is just the first small step in a much longer process for updating the front page, so we hope you all enjoy the new content!

The new list we’ve come up with was based off of a few key factors: traffic to the subreddits, rate of subscriber increase, average number of users online, and number of submissions/comments being posted. We’ve tried our best to make sure that the new additions are fairly “general,” and a few of the new additions are also there to help cover some areas that have never had a home on the front page. With these updates, we hope there will be an appropriate default for many of the most popular topics.

Without further ado, here's the new list, excluding the official defaults of /r/announcements and /r/blog (new additions in bold):

1. /r/adviceanimals
2. /r/AskReddit
3. /r/aww
4. /r/bestof
5. /r/books
6. /r/earthporn
7. /r/explainlikeimfive
8. /r/funny
9. /r/gaming
10. /r/gifs
11. /r/IAmA
12. /r/movies
13. /r/music
14. /r/news
15. /r/pics
16. /r/science
17. /r/technology
18. /r/television
19. /r/todayilearned
20. /r/videos
21. /r/worldnews
22. /r/wtf

We know many of you will wonder what happened to /r/politics and /r/atheism and why they were removed from the default set. We could give you a canned corporate answer or a diplomatic answer that is carefully crafted for the situation. But since this is reddit, we’re going to try things a bit differently and give you the real answer: they just weren't up to snuff. Now, don't get us wrong, there still ARE good parts about them. Overall, they just haven't continued to grow and evolve like the other subreddits we've decided to add.
This change will largely affect logged-out users and new accounts, so if you already have an account and you've ever subscribed to or unsubscribed from any subreddit you won’t notice any difference from these changes. To update your personal subscription list, just visit the "my subreddits" page at http://www.reddit.com/subreddits/mine

This is just the first step in a larger process, so keep your eyes peeled for some other updates to the default set in the future and be sure to check out our multireddits beta and leave some feedback!