Reddit as a whole is less useful since comment sections were demoted from first class citizens to something barely usable. I think they saw imgur as a threat and wanted to better replicate that experience.
Edit: lol, I participate in a lot of contentious threads here, but this simple question where I am genuinely trying to understand something has generated the most downvotes.
It wastes too much screen estates for no reason. On my screen about half the width is wasted on the left and right blank spaces.
It breaks a lot of subs' custom theming.
The comment section navigation is horrible. It only shows comment maybe 5-6 level deep and if you expand then you will have to "go back" later. When you first go into a thread, it also doesn't show all comments, and instead requires an additional click to "View entire discussion".
Reddit is precariously close to doing a 'Digg'.
Sure, you yourself can still write a couple of solid paragraphs about a topic (the norm on Reddit until just a few years ago), but you will very look out of place among the one-line comments. With time, you feel pushed out of what used to be your own community.
I can't tell if this is organic or not. If so it might be people leaving Facebook who aren't capable of irony enough to be interesting, but I think it's mobile-optimizing karma farmers.
this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that you often have to follow a link to expand the tree, that you then have to back out of to get back to the main thread. I have 16GB of RAM and a 27" screen. I can handle expanding a tree of text inline.
I don't follow. I just opened a random comment thread, and counted comments being shown up to seven levels deep (which was the deepest comment.) Is the behavior you describe only if you're logged out or something?
Try opening your link in an incognito browser.
If I go to the link posted above [1], I first see a much narrower window (careful, don't click on the black area to the sides, or you'll go back to the subreddit, the whole thing is basically a modal dialog now). Then I see one single comment, and it itself is half cut off. Below it I see a bunch of "related" content: https://imgur.com/a/tyaheDC
If I click the button to expand, I see no comments deeper than two deep: https://imgur.com/a/HDlNYFK
To see deeper any any thread, I have to click a link which doesn't expand the comments but takes me to its own link thread. To get back I need to use the browser back button and my context is lost.
They do not want users to engage with existing comments at all. The first comment is half cut off. The rest are hard to get to. They appear to want you to consume the posted content, and maybe post your own comment if you like.
I don't think this is right, unless there's an "old new" reddit and a "new new" reddit. Old reddit doesn't have the alien avatars, or the lines indicating the thread. Also, the usernames are blue, and it looks entirely different in numerous other ways.
What I suspect you are comparing is the logged out experience and the logged in experience.
The difference is that I open the threads in a new tab, instead of just clicking on them. Also I am logged-in (so no related content below) and I have an ad blocker.
This typically happens if you google something and the answer is on reddit.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...