Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be the case. They haven't been hiding that they're gearing up for a major redesign.
From what I've seen so far, I'm not at all excited for it. They launched user profiles recently, and it's an uninspired blocky design with way too much unnecessary whitespace for a desktop site. Also, even on desktop there is noticeable Javascript induced lag and content pop in. Although the rest of the profile page tries to look like a standard reddit page, it's actually entirely done with react and the subreddit/notification bar at the top has the same lag and content pop in. They're also hiring mainly for React frontend/Node.js backend, so I'm worried the entire redesign is going to be low density and slow.
If so, there are a number of other intentionally lightweight virtual dom frontend frameworks. Mithril, Riot, Preact, virtual-dom all come to mind, and there are a probably a few more.
That has been shown to not hold in actual benchmarks. The real DOM is plenty fast if you do it right.
Here's Facebook's Dan Abramov (of Redux fame): "Myth: React is “faster than DOM”. Reality: it helps create maintainable applications, and is fast enough for most use cases."
https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/842329893044146176?la...
https://objectpartners.com/2015/11/19/comparing-react-js-per...
tl;dr Don't blame tools but their usage
I understand the point of frontend frameworks for SPA, not so much for Reddit profile pages which are literally single, static, pages.
Even today I prefer to use the desktop version of Reddit on my phone, because I can just go through content threads a lot faster than compared to their mobile site.
https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_red...
Situations like this are extremely difficult to predict accurately. It could become a big problem. But it has a decent chance of blowing over.
The main issue is to harness the energy that the moderators currently put into their subreddit. They're not sad that CSS is going away. They're sad their toys are being taken away from them. That's not to trivialize it, not at all -- people like to tinker, and playing with your subreddit and putting your markings on it is a toy for adults. It's a game. It's necessary to replace that with something that feels equally deep and immersive.
Or, you know, just don't mess with the status quo. But if you're going to do it, I think that's why people are rebelling. Not because the functionality is gone, but because they're losing a creative outlet.
What's worse is that their new mobile site and their profile pages use more whitespace. A sign of things to come probably.
Making it beautiful with nice animations should come second and the mobile version still crash a few times a day for me.
Recently they added a useless interstitial.
It's interesting to me they say the app is faster; presumably they're artificially slowing the mobile site just to push app installs.
Reddit has a setting to disable custom CSS on subreddits, so it doesn't make sense why you'd force the subreddits not to have it.
Availability hueristic and personal bias. There are others.
CSS is a tool. Often, but not always misused.
Kuro5hin did achieve some of the most amazing content, however.
It still hasn't been added.
The first x minutes of a post are _heavily_ influential in the success of the post, editing after allows you to hijack successful titles for gain (spam)
For large subs, posts only hit the top of /new for x minutes (for small x), editing after is basically useless if it's not successful in that time
Mods patrol the /new queue as posts come in, allowing editing will complicate moderation which is already a difficult job
Yes it could be misused, but go on any forum where you can edit titles or post content and look at how often such a feature actually does get abused.
It pretty much never happens. Most people (like 99.99% of them) either use the functionality how it was intended or don't bother editing at all.
I don't see the point of limiting a feature because about 0.1% of the userbase might theoretically abuse it in a certain situation. It's basically the social media/forum equivalent of the trolley problem and automated cars. Something that's going to happen very rarely at the most but draws a lot of discussion about 'what ifs'.
Its quite possible many features simply would raise their costs by .X% and therefore were impossible for that reason.
This starts approaching a blogging or CMS system, but then, Reddit is already damned close to that, though with a larger community than most same.
Under this model:
* An item would be submitted.
* If approvals / edit / drafting is set, it goes to a submission or edit queue.
* A set of mods/editors would provide feedback and/or make edits (which of these apply depending on the sub).
* The item is then submitted.
This would allow for adjusting titles, self-text, formatting, etc. I'm not claiming this is something all subs would want, but some would (and I've a few specific ones in mind).
For now, the fix is to delete the submission entirely and submit it anew. I've certainly done that within my own sub(s).
I'm hoping that, like some of Reddit's other weird ideas, it kind of just gets abandoned and left to die.
1. Reddit's internecine subreddit wars required constant admin intervention and mediation. Reddit only has so many hands on deck, so more of than not, they pulled engineers in to help moderate.[1]
2. Reddit is unprofitable, so they have trouble affording top talent. [2]
3. Finally, Reddit's vision for the future has been hazy for the last decade. If the navigators can't chart a course, all the rowing in the world won't move the ship in the right direction. I suspect the overdone April Fools experiments are a result of engineering not being given technically compelling, or perhaps meaningful features to labor over.
Sources:
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/58zaho/the_...
[2]http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/04/02/reddit-sets-eyes-prof...
2. They've had plenty of money from investments though, their dev team is reasonably sized.
3. This one seems pretty accurate.
There's only so much moderation a single person can handle in a day. The NY Times moderation team posted some stats a ways back, it worked out to about 800 items/person/day. Which, in an 8-hour day works out to an item every 35 seconds. Sustained. Throughout the entire day.
Techs can leverage patterns, even if it means a lot of ad hoc code.
Building training systems is even better.
Considering what Reddit's been through in the past couple of years by way of direct information attacks (even not counting any systems-level attacks), involving coloured tablets and giant orange peaches, I don't find the story that dev time has been accounted for particularly unreasonable.
2. I'm having trouble finding their burn rate; the linked article at least hints that they'll use this money to attract talent.
2. Come on, it's Reddit. I feel like many many developers would be interested on brand alone. I was, for a time.
3. Possible. But there's a difference between adding random directionless features (which they haven't really done), and not doing anything at all (which they have).
2. From what I hear, Reddit wants the best, but the best are aware that Reddit's brand conceals well-documented dysfunction:
https://www.recode.net/2015/7/13/11614676/reddit-chief-engin....
https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_r...
The links go on.
3. I worked recently at a startup where the product was a shambling, swelling mass of features, implicitly designed to obscure its missing core value proposition to both investors and to the founders. There is definitely a difference in the process; perhaps not a meaningful difference in the outcome, which for those invested in the company is impotence, toxicity, despair, etc.
Previous large-scale changes have been presented to their community and generally have been panned by the community, and often unreasonably so.
Additionally, from the various threads on reddit that I've seen people post about the company. They've done a lot of work on the background to reduce spam, which isn't something that is super obvious to someone not specifically looking to spam the site.
I read through the front page of each of the top 5,000 subreddits (by subscribers) over the last few weeks, and a lot of the subreddits are adding hundreds or thousands of new subscribers per week. They seem to have gone into hypergrowth recently without anyone really noticing.
The other interesting thing of note is that of the 125,000ish posts I read through, there are only a few dozen submissions from independent blogs on the front page of all of these subreddits put together at any given time.
I get the impression that Reddit has a lot of technical debt that makes developing new features difficult, and would take some major effort to refactor themselves out of
Having said that, not all features would be _that_ intensive on systems.
Creative outlets that you can share with others are also rewarding.
If a company can get a 10X rate of return on an April Fool creation, why wouldn't it?
Also, they expose their data via an API that developers have used to make all sorts of features, giving them the luxury of being able to basically test features without actually implementing them.
I'd really like to hear from a reddit volunteer moderator, a group who essentially keeps the site running for free and who have voiced their concerns over lack of tooling for... again a decade.
Finally we're only a year or two out from major PR issues at the company. I would not be surprised if it alienated engineering talent (that and presumably a smaller budget for compensation due to the revenue, profitability, time since last raise, etc.).
For most companies it is. But sites like reddit get people to do it for free. Basic A/B testing takes a not insignificant amount of resources, usually consisting of at least a marketing/analytics person, a developer, a designer, qa resources and a project manager.
Personally I prefer it far, far more than the constant changes some startups seem to feel is necessary to justify their existence.
That said, I believe they are heavily recruiting at all levels so if you want to work for Reddit, apply now.
Found out it was Steve Huffman.
(Just a note, your profile's upvotes appear to be public. This is a toggle available in options)
Could you be more specific?