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Reddit is broken redux

19 Dec

A quick follow-up.

My last post regarding reddit ran just over a thousand words. I should be able to replicate that message with just one picture, but it turns out I need two.

This is my ‘disliked’ page on reddit. These are the links that I’ve downvoted most recently:

And this is my current “recommended” page:


My voting on Ron Paul links is very regular–I’ve been downvoting them like mad as an experiment for this post. I’ve been doing this for more than two weeks now, so even if there is a lag before the engine updates that couldn’t explain this performance. I hypothesized that maybe recommendations are only made on links I vote up. But similar testing seems to shoot that down as well: I love Ruby links and vote them up like crazy, but of the 46 stories submitted in the last two weeks with Ruby in their titles, I am recommended none of them.

In fact, of the links reddit has recommended, none seem to contain words I’ve voted up, but words I vote down with regularity are prominent. Not only that, I was actually recommended a link that I’d already voted down.

I’d like to file a bug report please…

 
35 Comments

Posted in reddit

 
  • Red Dawn

    Their “new” section is also screwed up, even when setting it to sort by “new” and not “rising”.
    I just tried submitting my first story, but it is now where to be found. I searched the “new” page and even found stories created before and after mine and it is no where to be seen.
    Even the search can’t find it.
    Look for it yourself… the title is Red Dawn.

  • Anonymous

    seems like most of these links suggest inflicting harm upon ron paul. are you sure its really broken?

  • patrick

    Ron Paul 2008!

  • @Red Dawn

    seems like you’ve been censored by reddit. they do this to accounts when they don’t like the stories or comments they post. i.e., if it isn’t liberally biased or in favor of ron paul you are banned. create a new account and post away..

  • http://penix.antigamer.com PENIX

    The Reddit functionality is correct. You voted down all the Ron Paul articles. Reddit has corrected this obvious mistake.

  • Geoff

    Recalibrate your mouse! You are hitting up when you mean to hit down and when you mean to hit up nothing gets hit.

  • Joel

    I’m recommending you read more Ron Paul articles.

  • BBrian

    Who’s Ron Paul?

  • http://Not Anon

    I got your solution: digg.com

  • anon

    Go to prefs –> subreddits –> uncheck ‘politics’.

    While I dislike missing good articles, most of the articles that are submitted and upvoted under politics have been ron paul (at least, lately). I assume once he’s bounced out of the running it’ll no longer be an issue.

  • http://www.helloandroid.com zach

    reddit is def. broken, the same stories lurk on the front page alllll day

  • Anonymous

    didn’t I have another bag this morning? Why do I feel like something is missing?

  • http://www.ashhaque.com/ Ash Haque

    I don’t give a f*ck about US politics, just turn off the politics subreddit in preference like I did. :-)

  • http://keathmilligan.net Keath Milligan

    My recommended/disliked pages look almost exactly the same as yours. I’ve been down-voting Ron Paul & Bush-bashing articles for months, but yet my ‘recommended’ page is still nothing but. I’ve yet to see this ‘learning’ feature of reddit actually work.

    Also, @anon (Dec 21 11:05): are you kidding? The Ron Paul spam is only going to get worse. When he inevitably loses the Republican nomination, the next phase of the “Ron Paul Revolution” will begin and he will launch his third-party vanity campaign and it will be even more obnoxious than this primary run.

  • ppinette

    Strange. I have 17 headlines containing “Ron Paul” in the 1st page of my disliked section, and just 1 in my recommended section.

  • http://www.thinksnack.com Joel Klabo

    somebody needs to fix that. and, you need to stop downvoting all Ron Paul stories.

    http://www.thinksnack.com

  • Red Dawn

    Can someone tell me why this never appeared on the “new” page (even when sorted by new)?
    http://reddit.com/info/63ltv/comments/
    I found submissions that were submitted before and after this link.
    It also doesn’t appear when you search for the term “Red Dawn”
    The above is why I think Reddit is broken.

    It is also terribly confusing when you register and can’t create a submission because you get some error message that isn’t explained anywhere on their site. Not to mention that when I click the “new” page, I want to see the new stories, not the “rising” stories, so I have to click 2 links there. Stupid and not very user friendly… this is coming from an application analyst too.

  • Jeff

    Ron Paul 2008 baby!

  • Ryan

    Currently I have three Ron Paul related articles between the front page and the recommended page, this seems about normal for me. I occasionally upmod one if I find it interesting, though that is pretty rare. I don’t submit anything Ron Paul related. Perhaps their recommendation engine is simply screwed up.

  • http://dumpedimage.com Vic

    too bad you hate freedom.

  • Jack Alexander

    I don’t see all of the RP links…lucky me I have the greasemonkey script—and I am right there with you down-voting those links that they sneak through otherwise. The guy and his followers are all seriously ill…

  • Mark

    It works great!

    Obviously, you care a great deal about downvoting Ron Paul.

    Unlike me. I just ignore most of the Ron Paul stories, except for the interesting ones. Some of them actually are interesting, you know, at least for a glance, even if Ron Paul is a nutcase.

    So the recommendation system is working perfectly for you. It leads you to the stories that you apparently want so much to spend your precious time downvoting. More power to it, and to you. I agree, it isn’t what I would have expected either, but when you think about it, it does make sense.

  • Steve

    i would guess that’s happening just because there are so many Ron Paul supporters on Reddit. maybe you should take Reddit’s advice and read up on Ron Paul – you may like what you see. have you tried this? maybe Reddit actually knows more about what you’ll like than you think.

  • Derek W.

    I had the same problem you did. Then, I decided to try another experiment. Do not vote on the RP stories at all. Now I don’t see them in my recommended page. It seems any vote is a vote up.

  • http://joe.jaanix.com Joseph Petviashvili

    Have you tried jaanix, what are your impressions?

  • http://www.codeulate.com Ben Orenstein

    Joe P-

    I have played with jaanix a bit. My impressions?

    1) The sliders are a terrific interface idea. I think they fit the problem perfectly. These are the best part of your site.

    2) The site is ugly. I think you’re likely a talented programmer, but you desperately need someone to polish the site, visually. This might seem secondary to getting the back-end stuff right, but it’s not. Look and feel and usability are EVERYTHING.

    I think your site has a lot of potential–you’re really close to something terrific.

    Best,
    Ben

  • http://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.com/ Paul W. Homer

    So far my experiences with reddit have all been extremely frustrating. Intricate, erratic rules that just don’t work, and content that seems to be controlled by a minority. If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d suspect it was all some type of evil plot by Ron Paul to promote Haskel, or something…

    Paul.
    http://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.com

  • http://www.rubyinside.com/ Peter Cooper

    I don’t think recommendations are personal at all, no? Anyway, I don’t get why all these Ron Paul links are everywhere either.. unless the general Internet populace have turned into religious conservatives, which doesn’t seem to fit with the general profile of Reddit users you see everywhere else.

  • Misses DePoint

    Well, I guess Reddit knows you like Ron Paul that much!

  • AndrewO

    What do you mean you don’t want to see anything about Ron Paul? You’re a blogger on the internets, right?

    Kidding, of course… ;)

  • goldenpandora

    just to point out, you down voted articles supporting ron paul, and it is recommending articles bashing ron paul. that would logically make them articles you would be interested in.

  • plo

    That girl at clink was cute.

  • decasm

    Apparently the people that run reddit support Ron Paul strongly, and don’t really care what you want to read.

  • pitje

    I don’t understand the use of sites like reddit, digg, etc etc

    news == news, whether you like it or not. Only watching/reading those things that fit your interests makes you a narrowminded and uninformed individual

  • http://fiemster.name/ron-paul i am dave

    [...] all of the Ron Paul::Reddit insanity, something came into my mind more than the whole racism schism (yay [...]