There was massive amounts of pushback. Until the moderators started deleting posts, almost half the posts in the beta-subreddit was complaining about them, asking them to be rolled back.
But did they listen to their users? No. They actively censored and silenced people who were complaining.
That tells us that this new "redesign" is not for the users. It's for someone else.
Forget the issues with design. The active censorship by both Reddit admins and power-hungry moderators is the real issue that Reddit is facing. Reddit used to be a bastion of free-flowing ideas and discussion. Now it's a hive of groupthink and curated brand-friendly content.
I still frequent Reddit because it has enough network-effect to still be worthwhile to me. But that can change on a dime, often triggered by something unrelated, like a UI re-design (e.g. like what happened Digg).
There has been a similar situation with Ubuntu and Unity: A vocal minority kept on complaining that Unity be a step back from gnome. Now that Ubuntu has dropped it, many users state to actually have liked Unity and are sad about that change.
Still, though, for platforms that might lack a good reddit app, a good mobile site is kind of important.
The app and mobile site quickly run out of memory after a page or two of gifs.
The app does not allow you to open content in other tabs. This is problematic if I want to follow a trail of links and resume where I left off in the feed or comments; I have to mash the back button repeatedly. Additionally, I can't open a new tab to look into comments or a link later.
The mobile site and app have issues with sorting by top / newest every now and then, and often will fail to load content altogether - leaving the user with a white screen. (I've reproduced this in firefox & chrome on Android, and safari and firefox on iOS)
The mobile site and app take longer to load comments and additional content - and sometimes fail to load all together. Whereas the desktop version of the site loads almost instantaneously and almost never fails.
The app does funky things with copy pasting of text.
The mobile site sometimes crops half the images, making it a pain to click through.
Downloading images / saving getting an images source URL can be a pain on the mobile site / app.
And of course, the mobile site spams you constantly to download their app.
I can't use an adblocker, privacy related plugins or browse incognito in the app.
:posted happily from MATE desktop:
True, but it doesn’t mean that the majority does like it.
Complaints do not necessarily represent the majority. But they may. And during a beta, it’s more likely as people are encouraged to submit feedback. So if there are lots of “hate it” comments and few “love it” comments that is useful.
They could release before and after usage data (in whole) that may give a better picture. Comparing the same user’s historical activity on the old and new to see changes in time spent, number of taps, taps per article, etc.
A new UX should increase usability. There should be clear usability data. And a community driven site should share this data.
I suspect that the ad revenue from the redesign is higher. And that’s why they are not sharing real data, and are squashing feedback that doesn’t like the revenue driving changes.
There's no reason it can't just be 2 vocal minorities - 1 who liked Unity and 1 who didn't, while the majority of users was indifferent, or at least indifferent enough not to make a comment.
Maybe that is because the people who complained back then dropped Unity and/or dropped Ubuntu entirely. At least I did so and I would not have known that Ubuntu dropped Unity if I didn't read your comment.
I rely on it heavily for moderation, since the mod toolbox extension has a search function over a user's history, but it only works from the old-style profile page (or at least, that was the case when I first had to turn on the redirect).
> View user profiles on desktop using legacy mode (by enabling this, you will view all user profiles in legacy mode)
Don't know how long it'll be there for, but it should save you a bit of time since there's no redirect that has to happen.
I’m honestly a bit in awe at this level of active UX hostility.
^1 … unless you enable the option causing all items to be opened in a new window. Obviously that’s also not what I want.
Isn't that the way everyone uses Reddit: open up link list, middle-click link, middle-click comments, middle-click link, middle-click comments, repeat ad infinitum, then read, comment, read, comment and so on?
Same same with HN.
Here on HN and most of the old reddit users certainly use that, but I doubt that the majority of reddit today (including the team of 20 designers making the new design) care about it "middle click to open in a new tab".
shift-click: open link in new window
Overriding the default browser behavior has no benefits.
https://twitter.com/m_eiman/status/913863382364770304
Which one is using text that is somewhat on the small side, and which one is a vast, empty vacuum of useless whitespace? :P
Uneeded changes like this was how Digg failed.