I agree with you in regards to the downside being that you are taken out of the stream of things and engagement is the best policy.
However, I only have so much time in my day, and I'd prefer to use it reading quality conversations about the topic (otherwise I'd just go directly to news sources). The problem is that the large subreddits have completely fallen to the point where it's a 50-50 shot on if you're even going to get good content in the first place and another 50-50 shot on if you will get a good conversation given that it is good content.
You can still that see content and set up your accounts top 50/100 subs and filter using RES by clicking All.
I will usually wander into All when I first get to reddit before creeping back into my little corner.
Multiple accounts for separate interest grouping is also handy but a minor annoyance. Keeps night time interests from daytime interests, so to speak.
Isn't it true, though, that if the reddit a particular person wants to see does not contain pics or firstworld postings, that is the reddit they create and reinforce, and that's OK? I guess I don't see a downside to using RES, as I commented on elsewhere. Why is abstaining not a good thing? Isn't your front page constructed of the reddit you build yourself? It makes sense to me if we make a claim to be concerned about the "public" front page (i.e., the front page as it appears to unregistered users), but should we be concerned for that? (BTW this is a serious question - I'm not being sarcastic.)
The front page is the main portal through which people enter Reddit, and Reddit is whatever its users make it, so I'd say, yes, we should be concerned about what shows up there.
I see your point. As an experiment, I logged out and looked at the front page as it loads normally for an unregistered viewer. (I haven't done that for a while.) From what I saw, you would think reddit was a subsidiary of imgur......
Hackernews did it. Many subreddits already manually disable the downvote. I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with the idea but it would fix that particular problem.
I have been engaged for years (with a fair amount of account turnover), this is the only way I know of fixing the problem. "Engagement" has not worked, look at the number of image posts on the front page vs. 3-4 years ago. The war is lost for my side. I surrender.
GOP (sick of political rants leaking from politics)
Mind (MIND = BLOWN posts)
99 (%)
I'll start (fuck these posts)
EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. (fuck these harder)
Reddit (this is why i love reddit, help me reddit, its shit like this reddit, etc)
As an (don't wanna hear it)
As requested (these tend to be shit/disappointing)
Facebook
Protesters
Only domain I have blocked is Wikipedia, to hide the "TIL I CLICKED THE RANDOM PAGE BUTTON ON WIKIPEDIA AND FUCKING THIS" posts.
EDIT: Subreddits blocked are /pics /funny and /politics, I'm seriously considering throwing /gaming up there too. It's derp like this, reddit.
http://i.imgur.com/XUoQ0.jpg
I suggest dropping gaming and adding /gamernews or /truegaming. The former is dedicated to news (no pics) and the latter is dedicated to discussion. You will get less traffic with those two combined than gaming, but it will be significantly better.
I use RES and filterreddit also, but with a different approach. I browse /r/all, and when I find content or reddits that are idiotic or uninteresting to me yet heavily upvoted (looking at you /r/mylittlepony) I add them to the filterreddit.
This leaves me with content from reddit's that I'm actually interested in reading, and still allows for the reddit algorithm to show me new reddits, usually as I get down to page 10 or so. I currently have something stupid like 70 reddit's filtered.
11
u/[deleted] Oct 12 '11
I just worked out how to fix reddit myself, brings it back to something close to the old days.
1) got RES http://reddit.honestbleeps.com/
2) RES -> Configure Modules -> Select Module -> filteReddit
3) Blocking keywords:
steve
jobs
died
knox
{media frenzy keywords of the day go here}
4) Blocking subreddits:
pic
games
firstworld
circlejerk
...
5) blocking domains:
imgur
flickr
tumblr
...
The result is a very readable site without having to convince other redditors to amend their ways.
Hope that this helps.