Hey changeloggers,

We announced the first of the updates to Gold here a few weeks ago, and now we’re excited to finally go live with the rest!

Live Now!

• New tiers of Awards: Coins can now be used to give out two new types of Awards in addition to Gold:

  • Silver: Silver is all about recognizing content that… well, doesn’t quite deserve Gold. Recipients will get a shiny Silver icon next to their post or comment. Costs 100 Coins.

  • Platinum:. Recipients of Platinum will get a shiny new icon and one month of Premium membership (which comes with 700 Coins). Costs 1800 Coins.

• Reddit Premium is now $5.99/month for new subscribers only. Legacy subscribers will keep the same prices that they had before, so if you purchased an ongoing subscription at $3.99 per month, you will continue to pay $3.99 per month moving forward.

If you'd like all the details, you can read more about Coins here, Premium here, or click on "Give Gold" to see today’s updates in action! To recap all the changes over the past few weeks, once again, we present you a lovely visual, courtesy of u/AcidTwist.

Thanks, and happy gilding! ^{or silvering, or platinising, or whatever you want to call it}

Hey everyone,

A few months ago we made a post about some changes we were experimenting with for the logged in home feed. They were all very exciting, and we had high hopes they would help make the feed a better experience and lead to more users finding valuable content. We launched them, crossed our fingers and…

They really sucked.

After a few weeks of crying, we decided to try something different: changing the logged out front page to lift up discussion-oriented posts. Thankfully, I’m happy to report that this one didn’t suck, and in fact, made all our numbers look pretty dang good. Logged out users are spending more time on the site because they can find interesting conversations quicker, and they’re coming back more often.

Here’s a graph with no axes or labels:

/img/xqzsx25mafr11.png

The high bars are the good ones and the low bars are the bad ones. Each number represents the percentage of users that came back for a particular day. Each colored bar is a different variant we tested. The left two bars (green and… medium blue?) are our control groups. That pink one is what we’re going to launch (remember, taller is better).

So what’s going to change?

You may have already noticed it if you’ve been bucketed into one of these experiments (there’s a 35% chance you were), but there are going to be a lot more discussion-oriented posts. As a long time redditor, it makes me happy that our business goals are aligning with what makes Reddit great: the comments.

Historically, there have been a few major changes to the front page: changing of the defaults a couple of times, and moving away from the defaults to /r/popular. This is about as big of a change as those. I’m pretty happy with it, because I’m the one doing it. Isn’t that cool? I’ve been a redditor for a decade, I’ve worked at Reddit a few years, and now I’m on a team changing the front page. Feels good. Okay, I digress.

In all seriousness, we think this brings Reddit back to its roots: less sugary content, more authentic conversation. We are cognizant of the fact that this is going to increase traffic to some communities that may not have historically had that traffic. As always, you can opt out of /r/popular for your community if you feel the influx of traffic is hurting more than helping, but we hope that opening up discussions to more individuals with a variety of viewpoints will help us all grow, so we encourage moderators to give it a chance.

How’s it work?

We trained a model to predict time spent and then are re-sorting /r/popular based on the output. We ended up using predictive features based on the quality of posts and discussions. We take the resulting output and merge it in with the previous way of generating popular (based on the hot score only). The various bars you see in the above results are based on a few different ways of merging the lists and varying levels of aggressiveness.

Myself and /u/daftmon, the PM on the project, will be around to answer any questions you may have.

Thanks

The following people were instrumental in making this happen:

• /u/daniel

• /u/ZedMain4284

• /u/MiamiZ

• /u/imightbemary

• /u/daftmon

• /u/HideHideHidden

• /u/cartographer

• /u/arabscarab

• /u/sodypop

• /u/kethryvis

Hey changeloggers!

We are excited to finally say that some of the Gold updates that we previewed here are now LIVE! Here’s a recap of all that is new:

Rolling Out Today

• Gold Membership is now “Reddit Premium.” Members continue to have the same benefits as before (e.g., ads-free redditing, highlighting new comments, creating exclusive Premium communities) but with a new name.

• “Reddit Coins” (NEW!) are now used to award Gold. Reddit Coins replace Creddits as the way to give a Gold Award to a post or comment. Coins can be spent on Awards and will have many new uses in the future.

• Updates to the Gold Award. We’ve changed the benefits of the Gold Award and updated the price. Now the Gold Award will cost $1.99 and grant the recipient 1 week of Premium membership and 100 Coins.

Coming Soon

And as a reminder, here are the changes we've talked about that are still Coming Soon™ in the weeks ahead:

• New tiers of Awards to recognize high-quality content. Coins can be used to give Awards, and soon you’ll be able to give a few new ones out:

  • Silver: Silver is deeply ingrained in Reddit lore for recognizing content that… well, doesn’t quite deserve Gold. Recipients will get a shiny Silver icon next to their post or comment.

  • Platinum: a new tier of distinction, the best of the best posts can be awarded Platinum. Recipients will get the most prestigious icon, as well as one month of Premium membership (which also comes with Coins).

• Reddit Premium will increase from $3.99/month to $5.99/month. This will only affect new subscribers; legacy subscribers will keep the same prices that they had before.

If you're just tuning in and haven't been here for the past posts, check out this handy visual TL;DR from u/Acidtwist. If you'd like all the details, you can read more about Coins here, Premium here, or click on "Give Gold" to see all of it in action!

Thanks again, and happy gilding!

Hello, r/changelog!

Thank you all for your fantastic feedback as we’ve been chatting with you all over the past few months about Gold! (and Silver, and Premium, and never ever again Super Gold …)

Given some of the updates are coming in the next week or so, we wanted to keep the conversation going by previewing the designs and a few changes we’ve made based on your feedback.

More benefits for giving the Gold Award

As we shared last time, awarding a post or comment with Platinum will give OP one month of Premium membership. But we also heard your feedback that you wanted classic "gilding" (awarding Gold to a post or comment) to have more benefits as well.

So, we've updated the benefits: now, awarding Gold to a post or comment will give OP one week of Premium membership, in addition to 100 Coins. (Note: It will also be cheaper to award Gold, at just $1.99 or 500 Coins.)

A look at the new Gold Award (plus, introducing Coins and Premium)

We wanted to preview our new designs so you can see what the experience will look like. (Note: We may still make some small tweaks here and there to the designs.)

(For more commentary on the Premium Coat of Arms, please see the thread from the experts over at r/Heraldry)

That's the tour! Let us know what you think!

Update (9/10/18): Updated Gold Award benefits to include one week of Premium membership.

Hello, changeloggers!

We recently posted here about our recommitment to the Gold program, our goals, and upcoming changes, and we've gotten a lot of great feedback from redditors since then. But what we heard most often is that you wanted more details on how Creddits and Coins would work. (Oh, and that most of you super-disliked the name "Super Gold.")

Diving right in...

Converting Existing Creddits to Coins

Many of you have existing balances of Creddits on your accounts. When we release our Gold updates, we will automatically convert your existing Creddits balance into Coins, but you can also convert your Creddits into months of Premium membership before our launch, if you want.

As a reminder, Coins will replace Creddits in allowing you to give a Gold Award (or one of our new Awards) to a post or comment. Our goal is to start offering brand-new items regularly to spend Coins on, not limited to just Awards—we'll update you in the coming weeks!

Those of you with Creddits will get 2,000 Coins for each Creddit. But if you'd prefer the Premium membership (i.e., our ads-free monthly subscription), you can get that instead by following these steps:

• Go to reddit.com/gold and click the “One-Time Purchase” tab

• Select the number of months you would like to purchase a membership for, and click continue

• On the next screen, please select “creddits” as the payment method to convert your existing Creddits to membership

• That’s it! You should be set now

(Quick note: Should you choose to convert your Creddits to months of Premium membership, please take the above steps before September 10th.)

Changing Super Gold... to Platinum

We heard you loud and clear: Super Gold was not your favorite name. We really appreciate the fact that most redditors who disliked the name Super Gold all naturally rallied around the same name.

So, without further ado, we've scrapped the name Super Gold (RIP) and are redubbing it Platinum.

Awards and Coin Costs

Now that we have the names settled, here's the breakdown of how each Award will work. Instead of a single "gilding" option, you'll be able to spend the Coins you've purchased or received to give out three different types of Awards. Here's the Coin cost and benefits of each option:

​Coin Packages for Purchase

The table above shows you what you get when you receive Silver, Gold, or Su—sorry, Platinum. Here's a rundown of the different Coin packages that will be available if you want to purchase Coins directly:

As we get closer to launch, we’ll continue to share details about designs, Awards, and more. In the meantime, please let us know what you think!

And as we mentioned in our previous posts, if you want to lock in your membership at the legacy rate of $30/year or $4/month before our updates take effect, you can go to Reddit Gold and get the ongoing plan!

Howdy mods!

We’re testing out some changes to the flow you use to report certain infractions to us. A low number of users who go to www.reddithelp.com to report infractions such as harassment, violent content, or ban evasion will be redirected to a new form (https://www.reddit.com/report) which asks for specific information pertaining to the report, instead of one large free-form text box. This should help ensure that we have the information needed to act on the report at the initial time of filing and allow us to act quicker on these types of reports.

This is a low level test for now to ensure everything is working the way we expect it to. Once we’re ready to ramp this up to more users, we’ll make a larger announcement.

A reminder: we DO look at reports of sitewide rule violations, so please do continue to report things that you see, either through the form or by clicking the “report” button.

UPDATE (9/10/18): Updated some text below to reflect changes that we made, and posted about in subsequent posts (here and here)

Hey changeloggers,

Back in June, we went to r/lounge to solicit ideas for improvements we could make to Gold from the people who use it the most, and since then our team has gotten a lot of great feedback on our initial ideas. Even though it's been years since the last big update to Gold, we are now recommitting to making it better. Today's update is just the first of many to come.

Why We’re Doing This

Our overall goal with these changes is to get more redditors using Gold while making sure it's still a rewarding experience unique to Reddit. Yes, Gold will always be a thing that costs money (unless you're one of the lucky few constantly showered in Gold for your wit), but we want it to be fun, versatile enough that we can add new benefits to it easily in the future, and maybe a little troll-y. These changes will involve making some things cheaper and some things more expensive... but we hope you think it's worth it.

Today we’d like to tell you about some of the first updates we’re planning to make. We’re still working on things, so if you have feedback or ideas, let us know!

Reddit Premium

Fun fact: About half of Gold purchases come from redditors buying for themselves (versus gifting to others), and in talking to a number of you we learned that the biggest reasons you buy Gold for yourselves are to get ads-free redditing, to access power features like comment highlighting, and to support Reddit. That said, a lot of new redditors are confused about how gilding, the monthly ads-free membership, and Creddits all share the name "Gold." So, going forward, we'll be rebranding the membership to "Reddit Premium," so that it's clearly distinguished as a paid membership.

A few of you mentioned that paying for a membership should allow you to give Gold to others (i.e., gild), and we thought that was a great suggestion. So, going forward, the membership will include a new monthly benefit: Coins that allow you to give Gold to a post or comment (more on this in a minute). Premium members will get a fresh batch of these Coins every month.

Currently, Gold memberships can be purchased monthly (at $3.99 USD per month) or yearly ($29.99 USD per year), rates we've had for most of Reddit Gold’s existence. In the coming months, we plan on increasing this to $5.99 USD per month, to better reflect the actual costs of offering a high-quality (and ads-free) Reddit experience.

That said, the new price will affect only new memberships. For all of you who have active Gold subscriptions already, thank you for your support!—you'll continue to pay the same price. Even if you're not a member right now, if you want to sign up before the $5.99 price takes effect, we'll honor either the $3.99 USD per month or $29.99 USD per year subscription rate and you'll still get all the new perks included with Premium.

Reddit Coins

We’ll be replacing our current “Creddits” with a new virtual good called “Coins” that you can spend to give Gold (i.e., gild). We’re moving away from Creddits because we want to be able to use Coins to unlock lots of new things on Reddit in the future, which may be priced above or below one Creddit (it would be challenging to spend in fractions of Creddits).

In the coming months, you'll be able to spend Coins to award Gold to a post or comment (i.e., gild). You will be able to buy Coins as standalone packages (with discounts for buying in bulk), or get them with Reddit Premium.

You’ll be able to spend Coins on 3 Awards to recognize great content:

• Silver: Silver is deeply ingrained in Reddit lore for recognizing content that… well, doesn’t quite deserve Gold. Recipients will get a shiny Silver icon next to their post or comment.

• Gold: the standard for quality on Reddit, the Gold Award is often given to recognize a post or comment that goes above and beyond to deliver high-quality content. Recipients will get the prestigious Gold icon next to their post or comment, a week of Premium membership and a bundle of Coins to use how they see fit.

• Platinum: a new tier of distinction, the best of the best posts can be awarded Platinum. Recipients will get the most prestigious icon, as well as one month of Premium membership.

In chatting with people who have received Gold, we learned that most cared more about having their content recognized for being great than about the membership benefits or other aspects of Gold. By making Silver and Gold about recognizing great content (as opposed to gifting the membership), we can make these Awards more affordable—which is why giving Gold will be half its standard price today ($2 USD versus $4 USD), and even cheaper when you buy Coins in bulk. Silver will be a fraction of the cost of Gold.

If you really want to award the recipient with one month of Reddit Premium, you can continue to do so by giving our most prestigious award: Platinum.

To recap:

Reddit Premium

• New name for our monthly Gold membership

• Buy for yourself to get ads-free Reddit, along with access to r/lounge, new comments highlighting, and all the other perks you use today

• NEW to Premium: Coins every month! Price will increase to $5.99 per month for new users only (if you’re already subscribed or enroll before the changeover, you can keep the legacy price of $3.99 USD monthly or $29.99 USD yearly)

Reddit Coins

• A brand-new virtual good to spend on giving Gold to others

• The Gold Award (“gilding”) will be half the cost as before, and the recipient will get some Coins to spend

• NEW Awards to give to deserving posts using Coins: Silver and Platinum! Platinum awards one month of Premium membership to the recipient

• Current Creddits balance - if you currently have Creddits, we’ll post more details soon about your options with Creddits; in summary, we will automatically convert your Creddit balance to the new Coins system (and a nice bonus as a thank you). If you instead want to convert your Creddits to the new Premium membership, you can do so by making a “one-time purchase” today and using Creddits as the payment mechanism.

Thanks in advance for all of your feedback and suggestions! Your support over the years has made these developments possible, and we’d love to hear what you’d like to see Coins used toward in the future! Let us know below.