My most recent experience at the Reddit site

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

I don’t understand the Reddit site very well and I’d like to tell you of my most recent experience there and ask your opinions. I hope it is OK for me to tell you of this experience and ask for your opinions.

www.reddit.com

I visited that site today and the top item was the following question: “What is the most evil thing to do to a blind man?”

There were five comments following this question and most all of them appeared to be jokes about people who are blind.

My first reaction was that I must have done something wrong or wound up at the wrong site somehow. I couldn’t imagine that Reddit would allow their members to make fun of blind people because Reddit is normally a very reliable and useful site.

I did some checking and went to Ask.com and asked “How many people in the US are blind?” The answer was approx 3 percent.

I hope it is OK for me to ask you all the following:

Did I do something wrong and did I somehow wind up at the wrong site?

Is this sort of thing allowed on Reddit?

It seems to me that no matter how many people are blind, it must be a mistake to laugh at blind people and attempt to use them as a source of humor. After all, any number of us can become blind at any time and there is nothing funny about being blind.

I don’t know enough about Reddit to post a link to that page so as to prove to you that it does exist. If anyone is able to do that I sure would appreciate it.

I have sorted my Reddit site by “hot” items. I hope that will help you to find it.

Maybe this is a valid link?

I’m guessing that some of you may say that it’s improper for me to post questions or opinions about the Reddit site in this forum. I just hope it is OK for me to do that.

#2

Short version: That’s the way the Internet is. Ignore it, learn to better filter your Reddit feed, and move on.

Long version: Not sure how you got that as a “Hot” item because it only has 2 upvotes and 3 downvotes, unless you just got extraordinarily lucky (unlucky?) and saw it when it had 1 or 2 upvotes and no downvotes. Most “hot” items have thousands have votes.

Reddit is not usually a curated site. Its reliability is purely dependent on user activity (submissions, upvotes, comments), and very many of those are often wrong. If you think it’s a shining example of reliability and maturity on the Internet… I’m afraid you’re very, very wrong. It’s mostly juvenile crap with the occasional diamond in the rough shining through. Demographically it’s mostly 18-35, not exactly the age where people are eager to share life’s wisdoms instead of life’s silliness.

Reddit is also a site for adults, so things in bad taste are perfectly allowable. There are entire sections filled with porn, gore, WTF entries and the such.

Reddit is best used with extensive customization, meaning you choose only the subreddits that interest you (and the AskReddit subreddit probably shouldn’t be one of those, because it’s their equivalent to MPSIMS or IMHO here).

#3

What Reply said. Also, /r/AskReddit has really gone to shit lately.

#4

To make the best use of reddit, make an account, choose only the subreddits that interest you, filter your feed and/or your comments by “Top” or “Best” (best=top with bonus scoring for newer items so they don’t get lost in the crowd), and learn to read the top few comments of any thread as soon as you open it, because they will usually point out if the submission itself was wrong or misleading somehow.

Fact-check the important articles and ignore the douchebags and trolls, and reddit will be that much more enjoyable.

…must…stop…refreshing…

#5

Their science subreddit is often very high quality. Many other sun forums are total junk.

#6

That’s indeed shocking. I would have expected the first five comments to be jokes about turtles.

#7

Reddit is no better or worse than anything else on the Internet. As Reply said, pick your subreddits and ignore the rest. And even in your chosen subreddit you will find things that offend you. Ignore them or hide them.

#8

Thank you all very much.

Reply, your post was most informative. I think I begin to understand how Redit works although I have no idea how to cast an upvote or a downvote.

I do have an account but have never been able to figure out how to use it.

One of the moderators here was kind enough to tell me there is a Help section at the bottom of the page and so I don’t feel it would be appropriate for me to ask any questions about Reddit until I have first gone through that Help section.

But thank you very much for your post.

#9

Sure, you’re welcome.

To cast an up or downvote on a thread or comment, just click the up or down arrows to the left of it (above or below its current vote rating). Some subreddits replace the arrows with other fancy icons (AskScience uses a lightbulb for upvotes and a ??? for downvotes, for example). If you don’t like that extra “flair”, you can turn it off in account preferences.

To modify the subreddits you’re subscribed to, login and go to the “my subreddits page” (direct link here) – this was annoying hard for me to find at first too. Their navigation is difficult and reminiscent of late-90s style web design (read: designed by engineers for geeks), so it’s not entirely your fault it doesn’t come naturally.

#10

I suggest you unsubscribe from most of the default subreddits. Consider r/askhistorians, r/askscience, and possible r/science, although from the glimpses of the r/science I have seen, the top posts are usually links to news articles, which are usually of low quality.

#11

Sweet! Thanks for askhistorians.

#12

I think Reddit is so huge that you can’t really think of it as a single site. Just think of the subreddits you like. Like you only follow people you want on Twitter.

There are some things I don’t get though:
On subs for sharing pictures, do they expect you to open each topic to see a single picture?
Can anyone create a subreddit?

#13

Reddit Enhancement Suite for computers will let you load all the pictures inline or Reddit in Pictures for Android will let you swipe through them. There are probably similar apps for iOS and OSX. If using Windows 8 metro, continue weeping. Edit: There actually are Metro apps for reddit picture browsing, but they’re not as useful IMO as RES or the Android apps.

Yes. There’s a big “Create your own subreddit” link on the home page.

#14

My husband and I are both scientists and have found some really interesting articles and discussions on r/science, not everything, but enough to make it worth spending some time there.

#15

You could say this about most things that are used as humour. It’s not always disrespectful to make jokes about things like this. Context is everything.

Also, if you’re looking for serious answers to questions, look for threads that have been tagged serious.

#16

I have nothing against the silly stuff on Reddit, but have the subreddits you recommended open in another tab currently. I’ve subscribed. Thanks for improving my surfing experience, and helping me waste still more time :slight_smile:

#17

If a few off-colour jokes about blind people are the worst thing you can find to complain about on the internet, then I would suggest you’re not browsing hard enough. :wink:

#18

Nah. It’d be turtles all the way down.

#19

A good subreddit that aims to collect the best content from Reddit is r/depthhub. There are a few other subreddits that have similar aims, such as r/bestof and r/truereddit, but those seem to have a much higher rate of false positives. I recently unsubscribed from truereddit because “This subreddit is run by the community. (The moderators just remove spam.)” I do not believe that Reddit’s structure will allow this to work; there has been much discussion on r/theoryofreddit about how Reddit’s voting system does not usually bring the ‘best’ and most in-depth content to the top.

I think that there is, or at least was, enough misleading submission titles for laymen to be careful; people should definitely read the articles and the comments for the submissions, as often for the popular submissions experts will comment and clarify things, explain things further, or point out false information in the submission.