I bought a t-shirt from kn0thing at startup school a few years ago, but I can't really see paying for reddit now. I wish them luck in finding a business model that works for them.
If I may ask, what did we do to lose you?
This is not something reddit can fix, and I fear that reddit will meet the same fate that digg has recently met. Both digg and reddit gained users at a steady pace, then skyrocketed in users and plummeted in intellectual value. On both sites users complained about how the site had changed but no one listened or cared. Eventually, as all the intellectually curious users left, the users that remained realized they are no better than 4chan and began looking for a new home as well. I believe this is an inevitable cycle for all social news websites. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years I am fleeing Hacker News for the same reason.
I'd love to hear what some of the reddit admins think about how reddit has changed over the years, seeing as you all have had a better perspective than anyone else on reddit's evolution.
Good luck monetizing reddit, I will most likely donate some to show my appreciation for all reddit has provided me for the last couple of years.
However I doubt HN will follow, because unlike digg, slashdot and reddit, PG has shown no interest in gaining traffic at the expense of quality (indeed, he has called for the front page to be splashed with Erlang links, precisely so as to get those who wouldn't fit with the site to go elsewhere).
HN seems to be very good about accurate moderation. If the site ever reached the popularity of Reddit I think it would change.
Today's reddit is pretty mainstream, and, aside from a few subreddits, the content doesn't interest me much. The subreddits that do interest me have similar content to HN, and I already find myself spending too much time reading and discussing stories here when I should be working on my product.
I don't think reddit can be "fixed" so that I would return to be a heavy user again, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
At a certain point I think you just get tired. I can't count the number of times that I've posted a straightforward technical response, then downvoted, and said that my opinion is worthless unless I provide sources and that the commenter is a highly paid consultant so he knows what he is talking about.
For example, just about a month ago it looked like someone was confused about a basic systems issue. I posted with a quick comment about the nature of optimization in the memory hierarchy which featured a well-known result in standard CS literature. You know, there are times when I don't mind digging through IPDPS or the ACM for proper citations, but a lot of the time I resent the fact that the argumenter didn't even take the time to do some basic research about the topic. As I said, I get tired.
Above here, I said that I would pay you $5 a month, and I would...but the only reason for that is that you I've talked to you on here (hacker news) before. To me the people runnign reddit are real. To me, you're a friend and I'm throwing $5 into the can that is duct-taped to your kegerator because you let me drink it for free...
...but for most people? What does reddit offer me that I can't get elsewhere? Honestly, a lot of the submissions have gone completely to shit. /r/pics? /r/askreddit? /r/iama? I'm not saying that it is your fault, but there isn't, at least to me, any value there.
Granted, and I'm sure you could look in your logs to see how much I visit your site (it's a lot), but if it went away...would I be sad? Uhhh...maybe a little bit, but not really. Personally, beyond having talked to you here, I don't feel much of a connection to you guys, and I don't feel much of a connection to the community.
Again, I'm not saying that this is exactly your guys' fault, just that it has happened.
One service that I do pay for is usenet, even though I almost never use it (my provider gives me 10 gigs a month and I think I have about a half a terrabye of available transfer hat has just rolled over for the last 5 years or so.) I pay for it because it makes me happy to see what the people at my provider (easynews) are doing. The reason that I signed up to begin with is because I saw them as a mirror on sourceforge. To me, although this is probably completely incorrect, they're fighting the good fight, and I want to support that.
But what are you guys doing to make me voluntarily buy you a beer every month? Reddit doesn't give me anything that I can't get from here, or fark, or slashdot, or my own website. Again, I'll pay you guys $5, but I'm the exception.
To me, you have to ask yourself what you guys have done to make yourselves stand out. If the donation is strictly voluntary, what motivation do I have to give it.
I'll tell you that one reason I am a totalfarker is that Drew Curtis seems like a real guy to me. Other than you, I have no idea who is behind reddit (spez and kn0thing, but I haven't talked to them in a long while).
Again, please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I love you guys, I'm addicted to your site, I love it...but am I the norm?
What? /r/iama is one of the best things that happened to reddit. Sure, most of the submissions are shit, but some are golden.
> What does reddit offer me that I can't get elsewhere
The community. Most of the value is in the comments.
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About usenet, you could try http://www.astraweb.com/
I bought the once-off 180gb plan. Text isn't even counted. It's going to last me years.
Well, and there's the problem. The SNR on most of the larger subreddits has gotten absolutely terrible lately. I went through a couple of weeks ago and unsubbed from most of the larger reddits and nearly all the self-post only reddits because I simply don't have the time or inclination to dig through 100 garbage headlines for the one golden post.
>The community. Most of the value is in the comments.
The "community" on reddit is incredibly forced in nature. It's almost entirely based around memes that have been coopted from elsewhere and feel-good circle jerking.
Oh, and let's not forget when the community decides to rage about something, jumps to conclusions, and often as not ends up being completely wrong about it, but only after a significant portion of the users have taken to harassing or otherwise disrupting some innocent person's life.
There's still value to be had on reddit, I just increasingly feel like it's being pushed out more and more to the smaller subreddits.
No submission I make gets any traction.
Any story I find interesting already has 500+ comments. If I add a comment, nobody replies or votes on it. It's just lost in the noise.
I'm not looking to be an karma superstar, I just want a place to actively engage with some other Internet folks from time to time.
Reddit got too big. Perhaps HN will one day too.
I still browse reddit all the time, I just can't use it.
Plus, the "all" frontpage is now a cesspool of the internet (IMO).
Plus, twitter has a pretty good (and addictive) information flow nowadays.