Saturday 1 September 2012

Week 6. What is the Redditsphere?

http://www.forbes.com/

The website’s tagline quite accurately claims it to be “the front page of the internet”. The website’s main function is to share, promote and discuss everything and anything that can be found on the internet. The website's layout resembles a simple bulletin board system and operates on a very simple voting system and comment section. A post’s number of ‘upvotes’, ‘downvotes’, comments, and all around activity determines how high a post shall rank on the website’s page and the subreddit it was posted to. There are thousands of subreddits that each relates to a certain topic and area of interest. Some of the larger ones, such as r/askreddit and r/pics have over 2 million subscribers while some smaller niche ones,such as r/mysterybox and r/onetruegod have only a few thousand. The subreddits are self-governed by dedicated moderators (link) and contributors.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Reddit is the quality of its community (link). It is well noted that the quality of a social website’s community degrades as its fan base expands. The users are no longer necessarily directly interested and the sense of anonymity increases. The Reddit community however, is constantly trying to help not only its own community but that of the globe. Reddit users have saved lives, protected an orphanage, globally protested for their beliefs, and even talked with the president
. But how has Reddit’s community managed to say positive? Perhaps it’s a result of the site’s reddiquette, or is it the personality the site appeals to?


References

2 comments:

  1. Something I always find funny (and a bit sad) about Reddit and other similar sites is the sort of 'elitism food-chain' that they view eachother with. Like, 4Chan is similar in many respects to Reddit, but its users often look down on Reddit users, who then in turn look down on 9Gag and such. Reddit is the perfect example for a topic like this though, because of its open discussion of so many topics. You can find anything from deep philosophical discussion to, uh, spacedicks. Don't go on r/spacedicks...

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  2. Yeah I know exactly what you mean. The hive-mind is in full effect on Reddit. And uh r/spacedicks. You don't need to warn me of the horrors of r/spacedicks.

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