This post is interesting, but he should have just read the code:<p><a href="https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/normalized_hot.py" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/norma...</a><p>This is an effect of the normalization algorithm, which biases towards trying to have a post from as may different subreddits as possible on the front page.<p>Edit: At least we're consistent! Ketralnis said the same thing about an hour ago. :) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568021" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568021</a>
This is a gorgeous post and I shiver at the thought of how much work went into this! Thoughtful, detailed and chock full of great visualizations of the data. I'd be interested in a similar analysis of HN, as I'm interested in the editorial intent thus revealed.<p>On tangential note, though, I was a bit surprised by the hypothesis. 'Meritocracy' to begin with is a dubious fiction, but especially so when mapped on to the vote distribution of a given post in a semi-decentralized human-moderated environment that is constantly being gamed. "Merit" just seems like a big value judgement over such a noisy channel.
One thing I'm interested in knowing is whether Reddit manipulates the votes on its own submissions. See, for example, r/blog: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/new/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/new/</a><p><i>Every</i> submission made there went to the frontpage. What are the chances? I mean, it's hard to believe that mainstream Redditors at this point are so interested in Reddit news that they keep sending every Reddit announcement to the top. What's more likely, to me at least, is that Reddit is either leveraging its knowledge of how things work to get to the top in a surefire way, or it's plain messing with the upvote numbers. I would love to see data on these submissions, if possible. Of course, there's good reason for them to actually do this -- they need to advertise the Reddit marketplace stuff and so on, it's how they make money.
>Much to my surprise, I found out that reddit's front pages are not a pure "meritocracy" based on votes, but that rankings depend heavily on subreddits.<p>Is this really a surprise? If just went by upvotes alone, a sub with 1M subscribers will always dominate a sub with 500k. You need to factor in the that context.
IANAQ* , but could not the effects shown in this article occur from content-neutral rules, combined with some clustering in the popularity of various subreddits?<p>For example, assume there is a rule that a given subreddit can have no more than N posts in the top 50 at a given time. It seems like this alone would explain the clustering shown in the article. Super-popular subreddits like /r/funny would rarely have posts on page 2, simply because they usually already have N posts on page 1. Thus they drop off sharply in likelihood to appear in the 40s, then shoot back up after #50 when the limiting stops.<p>Meanwhile clusters 2 and 3 appear to be the subreddits which rarely and often (respectively) reach the top 50, but only due to the limiting rule. Cluster 2 is the least popular in the unlimited spots past #50, so it makes sense that it usually reaches the lowest of the limited spots, while cluster 3 (apparently medium in overall popularity) takes the middle region.<p>Naturally I'm just squinting at it, but it looks like the article's findings could easily occur without Reddit treating some subreddits differently from others (as I take the author to imply it might, given the title). Am I missing something?<p>* I am not a quant :P
I'd like to see this kind of analysis done on /r/all, since it seems to more closely operate like the author anticipated. The default front page is meant to weight the subreddit like they discovered, but IIRC /r/all is strictly based on score and time, as if everything was submitted under the same subreddit.
Dumb question but what is the reddit front page? Isn't it customized for everyone depending on what you're subscribed to? Or are there a ton of users that never log in?<p>It seems like you wouldn't get much value out of reddit if you just view the front page without logging in?
This is an interesting study into how Reddit works, but I have to say that I'm fine with the fact that Reddit is neither a meritocracy or democracy when it comes to how posts make it to the front page. I'd rather not see any more funny or aww posts on the front page than are already there (I can go to their subreddits directly when I want to).<p>In fact, I'd rather see a variety of posts from subreddits I don't usually go to or usually follow. I want to see thing I don't already follow. Most posts I end up liking are ones I find in the subreddits I visit. I'd like my front page to give me posts from other unsubscribed subreddits so that I may end up expanding which subreddits I'm subscribed to.
Relatedly, the Hacker News front page is not a meritocracy either. That's why counterbalance tools like flagging exist. Additionally, dang is implementing algorithms to identify articles that slip through: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157698" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157698</a><p>EDIT: I misread the article's argument; there's a lot of luck on HN, but I cannot confirm there's a <i>systemic bias</i> toward people/topic.
One thing that immediately jumped to my head when I saw the falloff towards 50 and then the jump right after 50 was simply visual prominence. I would guess that people naturally pay more attention to posts that appear at the top of the page, whether it's page 1, 2, or 3. There's also a blip of attention at the very bottom, since that post is also visually and conceptually distinct - everyone looks directly at it because it's the last one, so it gets more eyeballs and potentially quite a few people giving it a charity vote to "save" it from dropping to the next page. Meanwhile people scan more quickly over posts in the middle, perhaps (as I do) merely skimming over a couple words and the score, to see whether it merits moving my eyes over the whole line (because my time is <i>that</i> valuable).
Many years ago I had an article on my personal blog about web design climb it's way to the front page of Digg (I'm dating myself here) and Reddit. Despite my server buckling rather quickly, I still saw at least ~250K visits over a couple days (Digg then was slightly more popular) and to this day (5+ years later) that one first page post continues to deliver tens of thousands of visits a year thanks to a rather healthy Google rank and a huge network of incoming links from related tech blogs.<p>Reddit exposes you to a huge audience, who then in turn comment, link to, and debate your post. Reddit's memory is short however, and within hours your post will be gone. However the reverberating effects benefit you in many ways and almost guarantee traffic for years if the topic is "evergreen".
Very cool. Although, maybe another possible explanation is that people get "tired" at reading a whole page and skip to the next page, resulting in a top of the page bias.<p>Also, love the use of R. R is beautiful.
Popularity isn't exactly a meritocracy either.<p>That is, while popularity is correlated with quality, the two are rarely considered identical, and one is often a poor heuristic for the other.
Beautiful post very interesting data.<p>The balance trying to be achieved can most simply be described as known good content vs. discovery. I wouldn't call it uneven it's more like; this is interesting vs we might think you'll find this interesting but we're taking a gamble because it has low visibility. I'm betting subreddits can move from cluster to cluster over time as well fairly frequently. Maybe an interesting thing to try to track over the next month or 2?
Just a though: It looks like things toward the bottom of a page drop off in popularity. Perhaps users are more engaged when looking at the top of the page, clicking all the links, and perhaps less engaged towards the bottom, skipping remaining links and just going to the next page. I imagine this would only be seen by users who use the actual page rather than RES.
Reddit is internet power - I cant recall a day in the last 5 years when I haven't checke reddit. When people ask me what websites do I read I can't recall any other than reddit. So funny. And I grew up with slashdot. People dont even know what slashdot is anymore. Reddit is the internet explorer button for me.
There's no such thing as a meritocracy, unless you include ability to game the system in your measure of merit. Either that, or every system is a meritocracy, and you're just not trying hard enough to win.
"I found out that reddit's front pages are not a pure meritocracy based on votes, but that rankings depend heavily on subreddits"<p>(meritocracy was between commas). Clearly votes are not what people think when you speak about merits, but let it be.
Good time for me to do my annual bitching about how much I hate HN comments. So who made the most agreeable comment on this thread? I don't know...
and again this why you should use <a href="http://www.sagebump.com/?info&view=technocrat" rel="nofollow">http://www.sagebump.com/?info&view=technocrat</a> to manage your social aggregator news
I feel the same, about reddit, I only go to r/linux and r/android, I don't go to r/news or r/technology anymore, let alone the front page, is all liberal biaz, and I like impartial news.
No shit Sherlock. It's no secret that the front page is heavily weighted. It's also subject to personalization, so basically no two redditors have the same front page.<p>The default front page is just the landing page for newcomers to get a first impression and a starting point for personalization.<p>An analysis of and comparison with /r/all would have been way more interesting.
I left reddit years ago (and found HN) because although I agree with mostly liberal views it became too much of an echo-chamber for liberal views the frontpage is the extreme example of that.<p>There are many great sub-reddits of course but it's not a place for politicial discussions (in fact I am still looking for a good place to have political discussions)<p>Edit: Why does my personal experience get downvoted?