<story><title>How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’s unstoppable force</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/01/reddit_how_the_site_went_from_a_second_tier_aggregator_to_the_web_s_unstoppable_force_.single.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&quot;In many ways, Reddit is a more accessible, less vulgar version of 4Chan, the meme-spewing online redoubt of the Web’s most vicious trolls.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This sort of sums up Reddit for me. 4chan is an example of what some Usenet groups were years ago, a community of like minded individuals debating their world views which are fundamentally similar and who share a common background/mindset. I suspect there is a relationship between the commonality of the participants and the vibrancy of the community.&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that when you take a set of self selected folks and give them a wide ranging area to discuss, their discussions about most topics are energetic and self-reenforcing. This makes for a very strong community experience.&lt;p&gt;I first noticed it hanging out with &apos;air force&apos; kids (which is to say early in my life everyone I hung out with, their parents, like mine, were serving in the air force). That shared experience, moving from base to base, base housing which was always nearly the same, stores with the same goods, etc, we (the kids) seemed to have remarkably similar views about things. I noticed it again when I went to college, the bulk of the folks who entered engineering were all there for similar reasons and that created a community with a common set of interests and values. For many folks college was the first place they had experienced the &apos;community effect&apos; that arises when there is a &apos;kind of people&apos; selection criteria affecting the overall group.&lt;p&gt;I am glad for the successes of Reddit. Staying vibrant and alive will be a challenge, it is for any community, but they have a good start.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’s unstoppable force</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/01/reddit_how_the_site_went_from_a_second_tier_aggregator_to_the_web_s_unstoppable_force_.single.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kamaal</author><text>This is probably an Indication of one thing. Some people go in the search of elusive perfection. Which never seems to be achievable. No pure perfection exists.&lt;p&gt;So please don&apos;t deny the good for the perfect.&lt;p&gt;Reddit, has been ridiculed enough for being bad for X reasons. But hey, that&apos;s the only thing existing out there. And it works well for vast majority of the people. People who are out there just for chat or a serious discussion on a sub reddit.&lt;p&gt;I have seen that this thing works in many cases. If you have some good idea that can solve problems. Work on it and get an implementation out. Even if for the moment the working quality of that thing or the implementation quality of that thing isn&apos;t upto the mark.&lt;p&gt;This can be seen manifest in things like programming languages too! People criticize Php/Perl for all sort of reasons. But hey, remember they are so much useful and practical in the real world the elusive perfect that is supposed to replace never comes into existence. Because the elusive perfect is always in never ending path of ideation and implementation, in form of some abstract concept.&lt;p&gt;People call bash scripts and solutions hacked together using sed/bash/Unix text processing utilities crud, non readable, not elegant or whatever. But remember they often serve as the fastest way to solve some very difficult problems in seconds/minutes. While an equivalent verbose elegant language would take hours of effort writing and testing the program.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes an existing ugly solution survives in the real world, it wins and persists and nothing really replaces it. For many reasons, it was first to arrive. It convinces people that it can be useful to them. It is practical, it can survive and maintain the niche for a long time.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile the elusive perfection, never arrives.&lt;p&gt;Reddit works and wins on the same principles.</text></comment>