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Comment by lziz | Hacker News Reader

Have you thought about making the "trending" feature more prominent/content-rich? I've found a bunch of new subs I've come to love through it.

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I got excited when I saw that feature. It's a shame it's riding the meme of another platform, but people instantly "get it," at least.

The core problem is people don't even understand how the site works (subscribe to communities you like). That's something the team is still working on improving in a non-annoying way. Mobile is going to be a big part of it, I think.

I've always thought the user flow that a lot of newsfeed apps use would work well for reddit. (ex: show a list/grid of communities/topics, check the ones that interest you, maybe show some recent posts from them as a preview).

Given that new signups are plopped right back to the home page after registration I can see how they don't immediately get it. Hell, even redirect to /subreddits (which, I suppose IS what I described above, but less guided/interactive) after signup could help people get into the curation part more.

I most often discover new subreddits by clicking "Other discussions" on links that I particularly like. That's how I discovered /r/artisanvideos.

I'd love to see those related subreddit threads (possibly sorted by activity) be surfaced more visually when I visit a comments page to find our more about it. Just an anecdote but I feel like you guys have a lot of data to play with.

A simple video link when you make a new account works.

Since I cannot Pm you here:

1) Thanks a ton for the site, I have enjoyed many hours on it and find that it has made my world better.

2)As with any growth, things will fall to the human norm. It's fine, but thank you for fighting the good fight, I know it's not said much, but thank you.

3)Best on the new round of funding, yall worked hard and you deserve it.

4)I came to HN to escape reddit, actually. Yes, I'm in a ton of subs and it helps, but I also like seeing what other people are talking about. I find the content here better, though it is falling behind too. It helps me escape my 'filter bubble'. I've no idea how to keep the rice and throw the husk, but keep working on it, I believe in you guys.

5)Quick note, everytime I try to post in a sub I like, I get autobanned for not reading some obscure rule I can't see in my browser. It is very discouraging and leads me to firmly stay in the lurker category. Please give the mods better stuff to manage with. Also, having to read for 10 minutes to post a EE or CompSci question is tough, i just go to StackOverflow then, it turns me off.

6) Advice: Your lurkers and your posters are very different populations. Make sure to reach out to the lurkers too, as I can guess the posters are the ones that you interact with most of the time.

7) Idea: Maybe limit the group size you are in. Read the IP and tag it into 1 group or another. Put visitors in different groups automatically. I'm not saying people in cleaveland are in one group. I mean limit the size of a group of frontpages. I remember hearing that people can't remember the names of more than 150 people close to them. My idea is based on that. Force people into smaller groups where they interact. And yes, lurkers would be a problem here. It makes a big site small.

Stack Overflow isn't much better.

"What should I use to do this?" - That question isn't inline with our format

"How do I do this?" - This question is a duplicate of <question asked 4 years ago with a few similar keywords>

"How do I do this exact thing with this version of this software?" - No response, because no one on SO uses that software with that version, which you would have known if you could have asked the "What should I use" question.

Don't get me wrong, I love stack exchange/overflow, but it can be quite frustrating.

Well, at least I can ask a question there. On reddit, your post just gets thrown away by a bot for not conforming to the rules that are buried somewhere. It's frustrating. On SO, even though it is likely that my ? won't be seen or read or answered, at least there is a chance as it is not auto-banned. Also, real quick: shadowbanning?! I mean, talk about terrible. You don't even know you are talking to no-one. Yes, yes, trolls, but still, it's just crazy what they have come up with to deal with them.

Just a heads up, we do that here too. Here it's a 'hellban'. You can see their posts if you go into your profile and set the showdead flag. You may already know that, but it's a very similar thing.

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