It's likely the same reason website owners care about analytics, it's an engagement metric, let's you take the temperature of how your content is being received.
So you want a reddit alternative that is nothing like Reddit?
Me I just want Reddit without the censorship, political bias, and mod abuse, the way the site used to be before they went corpo, anti-user, authoritarian and whatnot. The conversations will come, people are already starting to comment more, including on link/aggregation posts. When we first got started it was about populating the site with content, any content just to get past the "empty restaurant syndrome" phase. I think we're nearing the end of that phase now. There's customers at the tables now, enough that we're starting to talk to each other more.
There's more that is needed though. Cicero needs to implement a few things (making offsite links open in a new tab (SO important), a listing of all subs on the site, auto-linking subs mentioned in comments, showing users their karma in the top bar, live preview under the comment box, adding more spacing between paragraphs so long comments don't look like walls of text, etc.) and we as users need to do our part to comment more. BTW I don't think this whole calling people "normies" thing is very productive. Reeks of tribalism and sets up an "us vs them" dynamic we could do without but hey that's just my opinion.
Anyway, we have a ton of content now that we can start conversations around. I think discoverability is an issue though. I only find new subs by viewing people's profile and realizing they've been posting in subs I've never seen on the home page or on s/all. That's a problem. No way folks are going to comment on posts they never see and can only find by backtracking through user profiles.
In any event I think one part in your greentext example highlights exactly the engagement problem you're lamenting:
>finally a nice post
>create account
>go to s/random
>click on create a post button
This person found a post that interested them, by your implication, a comment post with replies. Then, instead of adding to the conversation in that post, they immediately go to create a new post that may or may not get the same traction as the one that initially caught their eye. Why? Because making a top-level link/aggregation post is usually a whole lot easier than making a text post or a reply comment. For top level link/aggregation posts just find something you think is cool, post the link or image, make a title, hit submit... super easy. Reading through a linked article or user post and coming up with a cogent, relevant reply or coming up with a compelling top level text post often takes time and effort. I mean look at this novel I'm writing here. I've been at this for like a half an hour, it's the second draft because I originally went off on a tangent listing all the crazy fucked-up subs Reddit used to allow in it's wild west days to grow their users.
We do need more subs that encourage text posts. Subs like Reddit's r/askreddit would be helpful here. Right now most of our subs encourage aggregation posts, like few people are going to be making top level text posts in a sub like s/science or s/memes. But an s/askmainchan type sub would encourage conversation. So yeah I guess that's my recommendation, aside from us making efforts to leave more comments, we should start more subs that invite users to converse.
I think Cicero is doing some new things in the way the site is set up to handle free speech. The tagging system for users to self moderate their feeds is a very interesting idea to de-emphasize the need for overbearing moderators and I'm very interested to see if it can hold up at scale and under stress.
Also the user content monetization plan seems like a stellar idea that I want to see in action as well.
Beyond that I think this site will become what we make of it. If we keep aggregating content we find interesting, and making sure to leave substantive comments (and upvote) where we can that creates a sort of gravity to pull in new users.
A group called The Coalition for Independent Technology Research has started a campaign to try and fight the API change. Knowing Reddit nothing will come of it however if anyone cares here's their post about it: Reddit Has Cut off Historical Data Access. Help us Document the Impact.
Once, at church, when I was twelve I thought to myself, "Man, Father O'Malley's dick tastes weird."
I think the bigger question is how did he become an air nomad?
Cramer to English translation: Wall Street is shitting its pants.
It's likely the same reason website owners care about analytics, it's an engagement metric, let's you take the temperature of how your content is being received.
Only for being ugly.
So you want a reddit alternative that is nothing like Reddit?
Me I just want Reddit without the censorship, political bias, and mod abuse, the way the site used to be before they went corpo, anti-user, authoritarian and whatnot. The conversations will come, people are already starting to comment more, including on link/aggregation posts. When we first got started it was about populating the site with content, any content just to get past the "empty restaurant syndrome" phase. I think we're nearing the end of that phase now. There's customers at the tables now, enough that we're starting to talk to each other more.
There's more that is needed though. Cicero needs to implement a few things (making offsite links open in a new tab (SO important), a listing of all subs on the site, auto-linking subs mentioned in comments, showing users their karma in the top bar, live preview under the comment box, adding more spacing between paragraphs so long comments don't look like walls of text, etc.) and we as users need to do our part to comment more. BTW I don't think this whole calling people "normies" thing is very productive. Reeks of tribalism and sets up an "us vs them" dynamic we could do without but hey that's just my opinion.
Anyway, we have a ton of content now that we can start conversations around. I think discoverability is an issue though. I only find new subs by viewing people's profile and realizing they've been posting in subs I've never seen on the home page or on s/all. That's a problem. No way folks are going to comment on posts they never see and can only find by backtracking through user profiles.
In any event I think one part in your greentext example highlights exactly the engagement problem you're lamenting:
>finally a nice post
>create account
>go to s/random
>click on create a post button
This person found a post that interested them, by your implication, a comment post with replies. Then, instead of adding to the conversation in that post, they immediately go to create a new post that may or may not get the same traction as the one that initially caught their eye. Why? Because making a top-level link/aggregation post is usually a whole lot easier than making a text post or a reply comment. For top level link/aggregation posts just find something you think is cool, post the link or image, make a title, hit submit... super easy. Reading through a linked article or user post and coming up with a cogent, relevant reply or coming up with a compelling top level text post often takes time and effort. I mean look at this novel I'm writing here. I've been at this for like a half an hour, it's the second draft because I originally went off on a tangent listing all the crazy fucked-up subs Reddit used to allow in it's wild west days to grow their users.
We do need more subs that encourage text posts. Subs like Reddit's r/askreddit would be helpful here. Right now most of our subs encourage aggregation posts, like few people are going to be making top level text posts in a sub like s/science or s/memes. But an s/askmainchan type sub would encourage conversation. So yeah I guess that's my recommendation, aside from us making efforts to leave more comments, we should start more subs that invite users to converse.
I think Cicero is doing some new things in the way the site is set up to handle free speech. The tagging system for users to self moderate their feeds is a very interesting idea to de-emphasize the need for overbearing moderators and I'm very interested to see if it can hold up at scale and under stress.
Also the user content monetization plan seems like a stellar idea that I want to see in action as well.
Beyond that I think this site will become what we make of it. If we keep aggregating content we find interesting, and making sure to leave substantive comments (and upvote) where we can that creates a sort of gravity to pull in new users.
Just a matter of time and persistence.
Much aggreed.
Of these options TPB, but rarbg is the first stop if I'm using a public tracker.
A group called The Coalition for Independent Technology Research has started a campaign to try and fight the API change. Knowing Reddit nothing will come of it however if anyone cares here's their post about it: Reddit Has Cut off Historical Data Access. Help us Document the Impact.
https://mainchan.com/s/announcements/2072/Mainchan-Minor-update-Reworking-vote-calculation
Could be related.
Had it all saved on a work PC but I didn't take it with me when I lost that job. Big mistake.
Pi pie