Reddit learns about the importance of editors the hard way
I’m all for democracy. Freedom of speech? Count me in. Everyone is equal? Great.
However, if I’m at a soccer game and someone from the crowd yells: KILL THIS GUY, he roots for the other team!, I’d rather have someone who can protect me from the mob.
Who would have thought such comparisons would come to mind when talking about the importance of editors on a website? But mob mentality is exactly what happens on social content websites such as Reddit and Digg lately. Digg is trying to solve this problem by implementing a complex, oblique set of algorithms (or maybe they just hire monkeys to do it manually) which stop this kind of behaviour. Reddit, on the other hand, has been more lax with such issues, leaving the crowd to decide what they want to read. Sure, they give you the tools to fix it for yourself - you can just use the “hide” button - but not many users do that. And it leaves them with a front page with one story repeating over and over again.
A couple of months ago, I would have been on the other side of the desk as far as this argument is concerned. I would have been all for complete lack of editorial meddling and total democracy in the way users submit and vote on stories.
But then, politics came into play. It seems that politics is a topic that people care about so much they’re ready to go all “Lord of the Flies” on each other and ruin the otherwise perfect system, their tropical paradise island of user-submitted news. It took a while for this to happen, but in the recent months it is impossible not to notice. Both Digg and Reddit are swarmed with leftist, rightist, anti-Islam, pro-Islam, anti-Bush and similar stories. Digg is cleaning up the mess, but at what expense?
Reddit, on the other hand, has let the crowd do pretty much what they want, and that’s why today this usually wonderful and fun site has almost no good stories on the front page. And, so we go back to the argument that was pretty vivid a couple of months ago: should social content/news sites have editors?
Netscape has editors. It’s not doing quite as well as Reddit and Digg, but this is also due to its shoddy design and many other factors. It sure as hell doesn’t have the angry-mob-takes-over-front-page syndrome. Should Reddit or Digg go the same route? In a way, they already have. If you have to invent complex measures and countermeasures to prevent some stories to go to the front page, you’re editing. The fact that it’s (probably) not done by humans doesn’t really matter.
Personally, as an avid user of both Digg, Reddit and Netscape, and as much as I love the concept of social content, I’d much prefer to have an editor who would, at the very least, kill the duplicates from the front page, than having to look at what’s happening on Reddit today: chaos.
March 9th, 2007 at 7:37 am
So you feel that politics is not a relevant topic for a news aggregator then?
Why is that?
And how can you make blanket comparisons between Digg and Reddit without any type of evidence?
Look do some statistical analysis of the stories. Cite that. Don’t just make stuff up. In this day and age blanket pronouncements from anonymous “Editors” just makes you look juvenile.
March 9th, 2007 at 8:16 am
@anonymous: I don’t think that politics is especially good or bad a topic for a social content or a social news site. But based on my observations - and I have cited a source which shows that on the day this article was written, Reddit was overrun by stories about the possible impeachment of US president - people react strongly to political issues and are more likely to act like a mob, mass-burying or mass-voting on everything in sight.
Exact statistical analysis is very hard to do for Digg, since their data is not public. I can turn on Digg spy and look at it all day and write the data down but according to Kevin Rose this data is neither correct nor complete. The best I can do is observe.
When Reddit is concerned, I think that 14 out of first 15 articles on the front page being on one subject requires no further analysis - and it is the basis for this article.
March 10th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
I had to bear this in mind when I planned Trendirama.com, and I talk about it in an article. Social collaboration is really great, but someone has to still be at the helm, for everyone’s good.
Anyway, I am Javier, the founder of Trendirama.com, the fastest growing community of amateur writers writing about The Future of everything, the place I was talking about. Since I am here and read your post, we would like to invite you to join us and write an article on the website, on whatever you are passionate about…
It is up to you, you choose the subject.
You would get a link back when you link to your own article, if you wish.
You can even re-use some of what you have here, in the last part of the article, “your view and comments”. That would save you time and still be interesting for readers.
And yes, I know you may not have the time. Theoretically, none of us do…;)
Failing that, if you like the project and you can help us spread the word -even if you don’t write- it would be great.
Since we are starting, any help is appreciated.
By making this valuable information available online for free, I truly believe we are helping to make the world a better place.
And you could do your bit for the world too, by sharing what you know, as we already do.
Please let us know if you link or mention us, so we can link you back too if you wish.
You can even use our valuable articles on your websites, provided that you link back. Any better offer than that?!
Look forward to hearing from you or reading your interesting article at Trendirama!
Best regards
Javier Marti
http://www.trendirama.com
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