A Love Letter To Reddit

Dear Reddit:

I love you. You are my sexy internet significant other. But this madness with the subreddits has got to stop before it destroys your relevance and usability.

Subreddits became a sexy solution when Reddit became overpopulated and divided among tastes and preferences (Namely the: I hate politics/Why isn’t every post about Ruby on Rails community). But the sexiness quickly died down because subreddits became so dichotomous — where the hell are you supposed to put up content that is funny, a picture, and a WTF? You can’t cross post to three subreddits, and you’re likely to get your posted deleted if it has anything political injected into the post. A lot of content has no home on the current Reddit set-up, which is both frustrating and debilitating to someone new to the community.

Further, the subreddits have led to an oligarchy of power and moderation. If you look at the top 10 most popular subreddits, they are moderated by the same 3 or 4 individuals. What’s worse is its become common practice to ban users and domains from subreddits without any cause or communication. So, if you become the target of one uber-moderators vindictive wrath (and trust me, there are some very spiteful fucks running the show), your chances of Reddit accessibility are dismal.

So, what is the outcome? The most popular subreddit, Pics, is somehow both over-moderated and yet the biggest purveyor of crap and duplicates on Reddit. Cross-posts and repeats become common place, thus increasing the homogeneity of content across the board. Likewise, the same couple of individuals are able to dictate content and control over the majority of Reddit.

This situation reminds me of Slashdot in 2002. At the height of its popularity, it decided to reign in its community system using a surface level democratic system of moderation and karma. But what really happened was more of a virtual feudal state, where the nobles of moderation debilitated creative content and destroyed the fabric of the community, driving off users in droves. I fear Reddit is on the verge of repeating Slashdots mistakes.