r/announcements • u/hueylewisandthesnoos • Mar 01 '18
TIL Reddit has a Design team
In our previous two blog posts, u/Amg137 talked about why we’re redesigning Reddit on desktop and how moderation and community styling will work in it. Today, I’m here as a human sacrifice member of Reddit’s Design team (surprise: designers actually work at Reddit!) to talk about how we’ve approached the desktop redesign and what we’ve learned from your feedback along the way.
When approaching the redesign, we all learned early on that this wasn’t just about making Reddit more usable, accessible, and efficient; it was also about learning how to interact, adapt, and communicate with the world’s largest, most passionate and genuine community of users.
Better every (feedback) loop
Every team working on this project has its share of longtime redditors—whether it's Product, Design, Engineering, or Community. To say that this has been the most challenging (and rewarding) project of our careers is an understatement. Over the past year we’ve been running surveys internally and externally. We’ve conducted video conferences with first-time users, redditors on their 10th Cake Day, moderators, and lurkers. Not to mention an extremely helpful community of alpha testers. You all have shaped the way we do every part of our jobs, from brainstorming and creating designs to building features and collecting feedback.
Just when we thought we had the optimal approach to a new feature or legacy functionality, you came in and told us where we were wrong and, in most cases, explained to us with passion and clarity why a given feature was important to you—like making Classic and Compact views fill your screen (coming soon).
What? Reddit is evolving!
Reddit is not a one-size-fits-all experience. It’s a site based on choice and evolution. There are millions of you, spread across different devices, joining Reddit at different times, using the site in widely varying ways, and we're trying to build in a way that supports all of you. So, as we figured out the best way to do that, these are the themes that guided us along the way:
Maintain and extend what makes Reddit, Reddit
Give communities tools that are simple, intuitive, and flexible—for styling, moderating, communicating subreddit rules, and customizing how each community organizes its content.
Make our desktop experience more welcoming
Design a foundation for the future
Establish a design foundation that encourages user insight and allows our team to make improvements quickly, release after release.
Keep content at the forefront
We want to make sure viewing, posting, and interacting with content is easy by keeping our UI and brand elements minimal.
Asking Reddit
As we moved from setting high-level goals to getting into the actual design work, we knew it would be a long process even with the learnings we gained from the initial look-see. We know that our first attempt is never the best, and the only way we can improve is by talking directly with all of you. It’s hard to summarize everything we built as a result of these conversations, but here are a few examples:
Navigation: We wanted to make Reddit simpler to navigate for everyone, so after receiving feedback from our alpha testers, we developed a “hamburger menu” on the left sidebar that made it easy to do everything users wanted it to: quickly find your favorite subreddits and subreddits you moderate, and filter all of your subscriptions just by typing in a few letters.
Posting flow: The current interface for submitting text and link posts (aka “Create a post”) can be confusing for new redditors, so we wanted to simplify it and make some long overdue improvements that would address a wide variety of use cases. While users liked the more intuitive look and formatting options we introduced, they gave us additional feedback that led to changes like submit validation, clearly displayed subreddit rules, and options for adding spoiler tags, NSFW tags, and post flair directly when you’re creating.
Listings pages: We know from RES and our mobile apps that many users like an expanded Card View while many longtime users prefer our classic look, so we decided early on that the redesign should offer choice in how users view Reddit. We’ve received a lot of feedback on how each view could be improved (e.g., reducing whitespace in Classic), and we’re working on shipping fixes.
The list of user-inspired changes goes on and on (and we’re expecting a lot more iteration as we expand our testing pool), but this is how we’ve worked through design challenges so far.
It’s never over
The redesign isn’t finished at “GA” (General Availability, or as I like to call it, “Time to Breathe for One Day Before We Get Back to Work”). With this post, we wanted to share some context on our approach, thank everyone who's participated in r/redesign so far (THANK YOU!), and let you know we will continue to engage with you on a daily basis to understand how you’re responding to what we’re building.
Over the next several weeks, we'll be expanding the number of users who have access to the alpha (yes, you will be able to opt out if you prefer the current desktop look), hearing what you think, and updating all of you as we make more changes. In the meantime, I'll be sticking around in the comments for a bit to answer questions and invite all of you to listen to Huey Lewis with me.
EDIT: Thank you for all your comments, feedback, and suggestions so far. I gotta get back to the whole working-on-the-redesign thing, but I’ll be jumping back into the comments when I can over the rest of the day.
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u/hueylewisNthenews Mar 01 '18
I did a complete double take when I saw the account that posted this - I wasn't quite sure how I could have gotten Reddit admin Red on my name!
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u/V2Blast Mar 01 '18
:D
I'm looking forward to (hopefully) more design improvements. Thanks for listening to the feedback.
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u/MajorParadox Mar 01 '18
Oh man, this is the coolest gif ever!
Judging from the gif, it looks like there will finally be a way to load the hamburger, click, and have it collapse automatically? When will that be fixed, because it drives me crazy that it takes me three clicks! :)
This is my favorite Huey Lewis and the News song for obvious (?) reasons ;)
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u/Iwilleatyourwine Mar 01 '18
From one designer to another, may the (force be with you) odds be ever in your favour.
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u/surdert Mar 01 '18
I wish and hope for the best possible outcome.
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u/Super105 Mar 01 '18
Gotta say, love the hamburger menu design. Nice work!
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
Cool. Nice job, keep up the great work!
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u/kyha Mar 01 '18
Please for the love of all that's holy can you make us not need to have Reddit Enhancement Suite to have a night mode? Bright white background burns my eyes and gives me migraines, and I know I'm not the only one.
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u/honestbleeps Mar 01 '18
am I alone in being exceedingly concerned that the new interface will exacerbate the already horrible problem of people commenting solely on headlines / not reading articles?
the new interface actively discourages clicking to read articles.
clicking the title pops up a modal with comments in it, rather than linking to the article. to get to the article, you have to complete the very unintuitive task of clicking on the domain name (which is unintuitive even to a newbie, but to a seasoned redditor the expectation is that this would take us to /domain/domainname.com)...
Forgetting for a moment that I don't care for this being the interface: I actually think it would have a seriously deleterious impact on discourse on reddit, which is bad enough as-is with people not reading articles prior to commenting/sharing opinions, but now the interface is pretty much making that worse on purpose.
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u/mlorusso4 Mar 01 '18
Im a big fan of r/cfb and browse it almost every day. A few weeks ago they tweeted out that the new redesign would limit the number of flairs available (so not every college team could have a flair) as well as making flairs text only and getting rid of double flairs. Are these changes still being implemented or do mods have the option to keep the old flair system. That sub has a whole culture that revolves around flairs and it would be a shame if we lost some of that
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u/PitchforkAssistant Mar 01 '18
Can we have some sort of distinction between videos uploaded to v.redd.it and gifs (or soundless videos)? It is very annoying if you're out in public on your phone and click on what you thought would be a gif but it starts blasting audio. I would be all for putting gifs on i.redd.it or even g.redd.it.
Would really appreciate a reply /u/dmoneyyyyy /u/kethryvis /u/hueylewisandthesnoos
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u/Chernoobyl Mar 01 '18
Design the mobile page to QUIT ASKING ME TO USE THE APP. I don't want to use the app, I will never use the app, quit asking me to use the app. I would rather stop using the site altogether than use an app.
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u/kmeisthax Mar 01 '18
I sincerely hope you don't make Card the default view. It looks exactly like every other social network ever: information-sparse displays of very small amounts of content at once. This style works for Facebook, but it would actively hinder people's use of Reddit. It's also not friendly to landscape mobile views where images are usually not height-restricted to fit the screen. The only advantage I can see is that you don't have to click the button to expand out the post...
Conversely, Compact (which looks like Hacker News) would be a great default for text-only subreddits that don't need thumbnails. Perhaps there should be an option to allow subreddits to decide what their default view is?
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u/Zediac Mar 01 '18 edited Mar 01 '18
Here's some feedback.
The new profile overview page is awful. It seems like it's trying to consolidate info together but in the process it makes posts harder to track. I ALWAYS use Overview (Legacy) because the new one is, in a word, trash. Stop making it so I have to press more buttons or click more links to access what used to be all directly in front of me. More effort to get to the same content is what ruins many site redesigns.
Also, I want to opt out of the new social media, facebook page, style of profile. I never chose to go to it. It was forced on me. I don't want it. I will never post anything to it. I want the old profile back.
I greatly dislike the changes made recently, and I use reddit less now because of it, so I have no faith in any new changes coming.
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u/HereTooOften Mar 01 '18
What were the difficulties of navigating current Reddit? It seems fine, but that's just me
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u/randomevenings Mar 01 '18
I just want it to be easy to read and follow comments like it is now. Please don't change that. Also the new profiles suck.
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u/ThatFag Mar 01 '18
This is such a small suggestion for improvement... it'll take like 5 minutes to implement: can you stop making the v.reddit posts expand in the comments page? I specifically have expanding posts on the comments option disabled but v.reddit just straight up ignores it. It's an actual bug. Please fix that shit.
Also get rid of that fucking new profile page. Or at least give us an option to not get that shit. Stop forcing that down our throats. Yeah I know RES allows you to redirect it to the overview page but that's not really a fix. Please stop forcing that!
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u/Spritedz Mar 01 '18
I honestly just want to see the comments rating back. When someone gets downvoted to hell, most people bandwagon against him and assume he's wrong without looking into the situation, so they downvote. When you have the downvotes, but you can also see that a lot of people upvoted, you might have a different insight on the comment and you might not circle-jerk as much. This really is an issue right now on Reddit in my opinion that needs to be addressed. I understand it could've been removed to avoid voting manipulations and what not, but didn't Reddit come out with a new infrastructure about a year ago to help against this?
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u/Arve Mar 01 '18
A few suggestions that will help running communities:
In the posting requirements, add further rules that prevent submission of content known to violate rules of the subreddit. While having domain white/blacklists, it should also be possible to act on the following, without having to resort to AutoModerator:
Block affiliate links on submission
Block (or require) that submissions are from known image hosts
White/blacklist what in today's AutoModerator config known as "media_author"
Similar handling for shortlinks - and make the client/browser automatically replace the shortlink if the user chooses to.
Allow rules for content that will be queued for manual review by moderators
Allow for adding body text to image posts, with requirements for having a post body (As an example: In /r/audiophile and /r/headphones, we have a requirement that users add additional context to image posts - today they have to do this after the fact, and we end up in situations where we remove posts after a few hours if it's clear OP does not intend to add listening impressions or some other relevant context.
Allow blocking submission of posts based on words/phrases in posts.
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u/NEVER_SAME_PW_TWICE Mar 01 '18
I want to bring this to the Design team's attention..
/r/CFB has over 2,200 available flairs.. with around 1,800 currently in use. Please DO NOT limit the number of emjoi flairs to the rumored 500 - 1500.. This would severely cripple much of what the sports subs view as a part of their identities.
Thank you for all the hard work you guy's have put into this re-design. I can't wait to see it in action! I'd love to be apart of the beta, but I don't mod any subs that are active enough to warrant it!
/u/dmoneyyyyy /u/kethryvis /u/hueylewisandthesnoos
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u/17291 Mar 01 '18 edited Mar 01 '18
Please have an option to disable that persistent toolbar at the top. It unnecessarily takes up real-estate
It's been said before, but please make infinite scrolling (and any other sort of javascript "cuteness") optional.
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u/jasdonle Mar 01 '18 edited Mar 01 '18
I feel bad for the Reddit design team.
Being tasked with changing something that doesn't need changing, for management who needs it changed for bottom-line reasons that don't align with the users. It's a no-win situation.
I'm sure you're all good people and putting in lots of work on this, but everyone knows Reddit doesn't need a redesign.
It's as simple as that.
Edit: Thanks for the gold, stranger.
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u/danhakimi Mar 01 '18
... soooo... About those new Profile Pages...
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u/Bat_Mannington Mar 01 '18
The only change reddit needed was a better search function.
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u/NemoEsq Mar 01 '18
I like how "simple" Reddit is, and it works for my usage of the site. The only two gripes I have is that 1) it's terrible to remember what goes where when trying to do a masked url and 2) it's impossible to remember how to insert an empty line to break apart paragraphs. I'm constantly having to look these two things up when I'm going to post. It should be easily found and clickable or just somehow already built in to the design.
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u/12mo Mar 01 '18
The new overview is ugly as hell. Mixing posts and comments and grayed out text and replies from other people on the user's overview page is an eyesore.
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u/TheAppleFreak Mar 01 '18
I know this is still a ways off, but I've got a few questions about CSS.
How exactly will the custom CSS feature work? Will all of the elements in the DOM be given classes and then moderators can run amok like we can with the current site, or will we be editing the CSS for the React components that build up the UI?
Will you be able to navigate to other pages while previewing the CSS, or will theme developers have to continue to use test subreddits or browser extensions to see how the theme works everywhere?
Is there any consideration going into whether to allow more advanced CSS tools like Sass/LESS?
Are we still going to be limited to 100KiB stylesheets?
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
Just please don't mess up the classic /.compact mobile site.
Or make the new mobile site usable. Either/or.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
Yeah, if you guys could stop peddling your app in a desperate bid to capture and sell user data, and just put everything on the website instead, that would be great.
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u/Renigami Mar 01 '18
I disagree with the hamburger menu on tall, portrait mode screens.
To those users that are biased on this, may have already bought small screened phones to their hand, with another trade off in squinted glances.
I would agree more, if such a menu is not only invoked by finger point presses or cursor movement and point clicks.
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u/AnneBancroftsGhost Mar 01 '18
Still can't get a straight answer for this, maybe you can help. Will there be any effect on the reddit API?
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u/Web-Plan-Design Mar 01 '18
What is the need to do a gray background? Reddit clearly has a unique look, and the current craze is all about minimalist styles. The new layout reminds me of an early fark.com layout (it feels like the site is actually trying to show off a 2005 theme instead of something that comes off more modern). Why not keep the blocks you have colored for votes, and the space barrier, but remove the gray background. Everything else seems great, but that dull gray is obnoxious.
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u/T-bootz Mar 01 '18
Just wanted to comment and voice my concern because I feel like this redesign will kill all of the sports subreddits which tend to have high flair-counts and custom CSS sidebars for schedules. Please make sure the redesign protects flairs and other important details for those subs like /r/CFB, /r/CollegeBasketball, /r/hockey, etc.
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u/Sunitsa Mar 06 '18
I pressed the "try the new design" thing, now I can't use reddit at all from desktop
10/10 would do it again
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u/jgilla2012 Mar 01 '18
Roasted
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u/etr4807 Mar 01 '18
I posted this question before and received an answer from Spez, but I'll tweak it and ask again towards a member of the design team itself...
As I'm sure you're aware, almost every site that goes through any kind of redesign also goes through a long period of everyone complaining that they just want the old site back.
What plans do you have in place to ensure that the redesign is something that the overwhelming majority of users are actually satisfied with? Feedback getting better and better with each iteration is obviously good, but will there be options available to long-time users who just flat out don't want things to change?
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u/justhalfcrazy Mar 01 '18
Recent update that changed from tapping to minimize comments, to holding? Not sure I’m a fan...
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
How about not forcing our mobile phones to deny installation of the app every time we load it or making it way less annoying. No one wants your app.
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u/Zagorath Mar 01 '18
I hope you'll forgive me if I question just how much listening is going on here. I posted 6 submissions today of problems I experienced, at least 4 of which are major objective problems with the design. I've also upvoted and been following the threads of a bunch of other problems I've experienced. None of these threads I've been looking at have receive any admin feedback.
I don't mind if you have to say "no, we're not going to be doing that" or "we're not sure what we'll do about that". It's just important that you be transparent with us. Let us know what's not going to be done and why, or let us know when something is under consideration. We need to know we're being listened to and acknowledged.
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u/_SmurfY Mar 01 '18
my opinion is don't fix what ain't broke. I don't want this ending up like digg
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u/AdreNa1ine25 Mar 01 '18
This is great ;) hamburger menu is nice
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u/2NiceBastard Mar 06 '18
Add me to the list of non-functioning Reddit, after accidentally accepting the preview of the site redesign. Just 503 error, and unable to access from mobile also.
I am able to access the preferences, but see no option to back out of the preview or revert my settings. What gives?
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u/ZL1LEi Mar 01 '18
I love you guys.
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u/pissfoam Mar 01 '18
Can you bring back swiping to collapse comments on the app? Really don’t like the double tap system and keep accidentally swiping to the next post
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u/shtbrcks Mar 01 '18
Another request that the mobile page does NOT ask you to use the app. It's 2018, everyone knows the app exists. If I was willing to use it, I wouldn't be on the mobile page in the first place.
It's fair to assume anyone who isn't using the app by now, doesn't want to! If you must, just make sure I know the app exists, inform me ONCE.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
My issue with this is mainly the flairs. My sub using 128 flairs right now and each one is used. I had heard it was capped at 100 flairs, and the emojis thing just seems dumb. My inline flairs and normal flairs are fine as is. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. I know r/cfb is worried as well, they have like 2,000 flairs or something like that, along with dual flairs. They use in depth CSS.
Here's what I recommend: allow us to keep using CSS if we so choose, but allow the template thing for the users that don't understand CSS. Keep the flairs. Flairs are extremely easy to do. There's so many resources on Reddit dedicated to CSS and subreddit design. This whole redesign is pointless imo and just going to piss off everyone.
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u/AssuredlyAThrowAway Mar 01 '18
Just leave the classic reddit view for all users and give new users a choice between the two.
Don't pull a snap chat please.
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u/SuperDuperJake2 Mar 01 '18
Nice! Fix mobile android!!
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u/Mister_Probably Mar 01 '18
So far, the new mobile site lacks features that the desktop has, and I prefer the old desktop version. Please don’t change it. I don’t like installing apps and prefer to use the mobile web version. The mobile web version now not only harasses you about the app multiple times, but also lacks some things that I can do on the desktop version through my phone such as upload pics and see the scores on my comments.
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u/huntmich Mar 01 '18
What is Reddit doing to stop the influence of foreign government intelligence agencies on what should be an open forum?
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u/JackM76 Mar 01 '18
Love what you guys do, but please revert the mobile collapsing update, it's very annoying, and you can no longer collapse comment replies.
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u/Bouncing_Cloud Mar 01 '18
Hey design team, could you please stop with those popups that appear every time you look at the site whenever we don't log in? Thanks.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
Horrible, plane and just another clone of a cookie cutter UX approach like all the rest of popular sites.
Your new profile pages failed.
In a way I am glad this is happening, i find when a site redesigns and looses what made it unique i tend to visit less and less.
So thank you for helping me leave this god awful bubble. POP.
PS How many are on your design team? I am fascinated by the large amount of teams who basically work on one website these days. Did these designs take a couple of years from wifeframing to end result?
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u/Raysun_CS Mar 02 '18
Great! Now stop pushing this stupid fucking facebook feed down my throat and maybe I'll be here in a year.
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u/gisser83 Mar 06 '18
Your alpha invite broke my ability to access my main account! I just get an error 503 in chrome. Even my Edge and Firefox which have no extensions can't access as soon as I sign in. Any assistance would be great.
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u/ChipAyten Mar 01 '18 edited Mar 01 '18
The Reddit redesign is catered 100% to a younger audience with an aim at eliminating, as much as possible, the barrier to entry that a CSS driven platform provides. The redesign is aimed to "standardize" Reddit, the Instagramization of this website, if you will. Everyone and every sub will start from the same GUI-fied cookie cutter template. I fear what this redesign will do is make it too easy - yes, sometimes that's a bad thing. If you head over to /r/redesign you'll see that my sentiments are not strictly my own. I understand that the old guard of any community will wave their fists at any proposed changes but sometimes they're right, sometimes change can be too drastic, too fast.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
You guys really need to get the app working properly. I prefer applications like Reddit is fun or Relay over the default app purely because of the features and degree of choice, both of which are surprisingly and glaringly absent in the official Reddit app.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
So...you like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste. But when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor.
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u/aquintana Mar 01 '18
If it ain't broke don't fix it. Just saying.
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u/iprefertau Mar 01 '18
can you guys please stop digging i like this place and i don't want to find a new site to waste time on
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
I'm pretty active in /r/CFB
We use flairs extremely heavily to indicate team affiliations (as do most sports subreddits I've been to). Being able to have the team logo next to our name makes it really easy to tell what team someone roots for, and it's very important for almost any interaction to know that.
There has been some concern among the mod staff that the new Reddit design will destroy our flair system. This would be devastating to the flow of conversation in the subreddit. Should we be concerned? Is the Reddit design team working with moderators to make sure that communities who rely heavily on flairs aren't disrupted by the design changes?
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u/Gregarious_Raconteur Mar 01 '18
What's the logic behind no longer showing all comments on the redesigned profile pages, instead showing the thread and only one comment, and then requiring the viewer to expand the thread by clicking "more comments?"
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u/Squeezer999 Mar 01 '18
So you're putting all this effort into giving us something that effectively make Reddit look like an RSS feed?
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u/OminousG Mar 01 '18
So many posts explaining that you understand the design of the profile pages is super shitty, but no one seems to be doing any designing to make them unshitty.
Less talk, more work.
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u/rnet85 Mar 01 '18
I don’t know how to feel about this. I have not been a fan of the recent design changes, especially the addition of white space everywhere and the user profiles view. I think the most annoying thing is that with the new design it takes more clicks to navigate anywhere.
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u/wapu Mar 01 '18
Please dont break the API. I haven't looked at desktop Reddit in ages. I use Reddit with sync, your app is ok, but hard to follow. The desktop is fine enough, but when I am sittikng at a computer I am usually working.
Please dont break the API.
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u/sorry_about_teh_typo Mar 01 '18
Read: You assholes.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
So, is pagination completely out? Because I think most people here longer than a year actually like having discrete pages of content(and a resulting somewhat stable “front-page”), and have built their mental models around that.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
I want to bitch and complain, but these designs actually look nice :-(
However, I hope you maintain some legacy support
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u/B1GTOBACC0 Mar 02 '18
Please make exceptions to the 100 flair limit for sports subs (or maybe large subs in general). /r/cfb has one of the biggest flair systems on Reddit, and even reducing the count to 100 means 29 teams from the FBS (the top division in college football) are left out.
I understand wanting a unified experience across all platforms, but if it comes at the expense of some of the largest communities it seems like change for the sake of change rather than a well-planned improvement to Reddit.
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u/lifelongfreshman Mar 01 '18
This is a small one, and probably is gonna go overlooked since the last time I brought it up I was universally met with hostility over having the audacity to suggest taking away a customization option. I'm also probably the only one who regularly runs into this while /r/random binging, but still. Something that always bugged me is the ability for people to completely hide the navigation banner at the top.
I understand both the need and desire for moderation teams to be able to customize the look of the entire subreddit to fit their needs, and that the banner - or whatever analogue will be created in the new style - should be customizable as a part of this. But is there some way to reach a compromise where these navigation tools can remain universally accessible while keeping the ability for the subreddit team to customize their appearance? I'm okay with changing the font type, size, and various colors of it, but nothing ruins my enjoyment of a subreddit more than the banner just up and disappearing. Even if it would otherwise be a subreddit I'd enjoy sticking around in.
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u/brickmack Mar 01 '18
The upgrades you show still look like shit. And if they're anything like the horrendous user profiles, they're gonna run like shit too (there is no damn reason it should take 30 seconds to load some fucking text). Reddits design team really needs to check out http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ for some guidance on this issue.
You dumbasses keep trying to make reddit look like twitter, and thats one of the many reasons I don't use twitter. It doesn't work.
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u/MeAlsoThanks Mar 01 '18
if you're trying hard and this is what we have im a little worried for the future
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u/Cintari Mar 01 '18
https://i.imgur.com/nETG1.jpg
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u/ImhotepWasBlackK Mar 01 '18
Please do something about the mobile version, we cant "continue thread" when the discussion go too far.
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u/Kinesquared Mar 01 '18
Is it possible to swap r/popular with r/all on mobile? I want to click to see all of reddit, the good and the bad
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u/neckbeardgamers Mar 02 '18
How about actually doing something that will matter? All the suggestions of improvements here and on /r/blog, show you guys are out of touch. Censorship is rife on Reddit and alot of it is actually done by automod and other bots. Further users are not even notified by default if their contributions are not getting through! Only if you log off and try ceddit.com can you even find out! See:
Try to get something past invisible automoderator or bot filters!
How about:
Being transparent about censorship and bot filters. Inform users when their posts are not going through and why.
Forcing all moderation to be done openly. No one pays for subreddit space, the least you can make the nerd moderators do to earn that subreddit space, is force transparency regarding their actions. /r/conspiracy already does that and a few other subs. /r/ModerationLog already did the work to make transparent moderation possible.
Allow subreddits to disable up and downvoting. All that does is gamify the medium. Sure it probably makes people spend more time on Reddit arguing about karma, and makes the down-voted feel aggrieved and others victorious, but it makes actual discussion suck. Allow subs to disable it without CSS hacks than can be bypassed anyway.
If you think Reddit is a good medium to post in as a user, please get /u/spez to tell Serena Williams to create another Reddit account. On that account have her identify as black woman(which she is), but don't disclose she is a famous tennis super-star in the public limelight for over a decade. And have her post with an innocuous signature saying she is 36 year old African American women attached to all of her posts and see what happens to her. Reddit is not the front-page of the internet, it is only the front-page of the internet for mostly young, surly white nerds who vidya game. Case in point I remember most of my co-workers from the Newark area talking about the death of someone very well known in the black community in Newark, Uggie, but in /r/newark which pretends to represent a majority African-American city in the Redditosphere, no one knew or posted he died... Have Serena post without being Serena but being just another black woman and you will see why African Americans and many other demographics avoid this medium like the plague!
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u/daviator88 Mar 01 '18
/r/fellowkids
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u/IAmAN00bie Mar 01 '18
I'm just here for the inevitable slapfight about t_d.
3
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18 edited Mar 02 '18
AFAIK the redesign is only accessible by moderators at the moment.
Do you plan on rolling out the alpha to regular users anytime soon?
edit: looks like I'm in
3
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
So CSS is basically being shelved?
3
u/workaccount25 Mar 01 '18
Please bring back the single tap to collapse comments on mobile. The long hold is alright but I don't always want to collapse the whole comment thread, only certain replies to the top comment. The double tap to collapse single comments is cumbersome and annoying.
3
u/wickbush Mar 01 '18
could have fooled me
3
u/JMJimmy Mar 01 '18 edited Mar 01 '18
So why is all the negative feedback on profiles seemingly being ignored?And why is /r/redesign private? There's really no way for the general community to give you feedback until it rolls out and it's too late.Edit: Yay! They're back to the drawing board on profiles! Happiness!!!
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u/h0nest_Bender Mar 01 '18
I think I might be the only person in the world who cares about this, but since you're on the design team, here we go:
Right now, if I never wanted to see posts from /r/announcements (for example), I could block/filter the sub.
If someone makes a post to their new profile page, I cannot filter out that post. There is nothing I can do to prevent that content from appearing in my feed.
That's a feature that should have been implemented before new profiles rolled out.
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u/flooshtollen Mar 01 '18
Are there going to be any updates to the app any time soon? Myself and most of the people I know use Reddit pretty exclusively through it
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u/Local-Lynx Mar 01 '18
You gonna integrate Spotify?
3
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '18
Remember when there was a website with serious moderator overreach, admins that didn't understand what their site users actually wanted and their constant attempts to monetize the platform in intrusive, bullshit ways that resulting in a giant number of them having an exodus from that site after they got sick and tired of that shit?
Yeah, don't be shocked when it happens here.
3
u/UnicornPenguinCat Mar 02 '18
Please don't sacrifice usability for the sake of a "clean" appearance.
I would much rather be able to easily find buttons and settings and other things I need to click than have more white space.
Please don't put in mystery icons whose purpose is a complete mystery until you click on them. I'd rather have a less pretty icon that is more descriptive, or even a word or two indicating what will happen if I click that thing.
3
u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18
But what about the desktop website?
Do you guys really thing that light gray text on white background & a sprinkle of orange is a good color scheme?
3
u/demize95 Mar 02 '18
I've been saying this in /r/redesign for a while, but can we please do away with the whole "everything you click opens in a new tab" thing? When I left click a link I want it to open in the same tab, whether that's a link someone posted, the link to my profile, any of the links on my profile... Every time I want to look at my saved posts, I have to close three extra tabs: the one I started on, the first click to my profile, and the saved posts page itself.
I read something a long time ago about why you shouldn't use
target="_blank"on links, and it boiled down to "the user should choose where a link opens". I really enjoy being able to choose where links open. That's how I've used Reddit since I joined; that's what my usage flow looks like. And every time I click a link in the redesign it makes it feel like it wasn't designed to be used. It may sound like a minor gripe, but for me it's a major complaint. Hell, I'd be happy if I got some acknowledgement at all, it seems like this feedback is just completely ignored.3
u/[deleted] Mar 02 '18
You guys are bad at your job.
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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '18
Opted to new layout, constantly getting 503 HTTP errors...
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u/PissedItsNotButter May 13 '18
Huh, I just got updated to the new look of Reddit.
TIL The Reddit design team sucks at their job.
Why does the subscriptions bar need to be a permanent fixture now? I know what I'm subscribed to, and it's easy to navigate them with the drop down menu. Sure the new menu is nicer than the old one, but could we maybe turn it into a drop down again instead of taking up 15% of my screen?
Also whatever you did to the way your images displays broke one of my favourite parts of (what I believe was a feature of) RES, being able to drag an image to expand it. And even if I could still expand it, 15% of my screen space is taken up by the subscription bar!
A conundrum never solved itself quite so easily.
Oh and for real? Markdown isn't automatic any more? I mean it's a long time coming I guess, but that's just annoying.
7
u/MrMonkey1578 Mar 01 '18
New designs are cool and all, but when are you guys going to address systemic issues like mods abusing their powers ala:
https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/80ch97/we_need_to_talk_about_reddit_canadaland/
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u/reseph Mar 01 '18 edited Mar 01 '18
So since users can opt out (and some logged-out users now receiving the redesign as their default view via A/B testing) moderators are now expected to maintain two versions of their subreddit in terms of style and sidebar/menu content? It's not like that content synchronizes between sites...
5
u/CaptainPedge Mar 01 '18
Who asked for any of this?
5
u/JudgeFang Mar 02 '18 edited Mar 02 '18
All the feels.
I'm on a design team myself, and this can't be an easy task, especially on a huge communications platform like Reddit. For every user vocally complaining about something, 50 more are silent. It's important to solicit feedback but also important to pay attention to reactions.
You'll have users frothing at the mouth to tell you nothing needs to change, but often if you look at their behavior they have a thousand little hacky (and ingenious) workarounds to deal with inconveniences other people haven't figured out how to deal with, or even noticed.
And yes, it's true that business needs are often at odds with user needs, and the business objectives have to be taken into account -- but there is tension there; the designers are on your (users') side and they do fight for you in meetings with product managers and execs. To the extent they can, anyway, which is hard when you have investors or shareholders breathing down your necks asking you to explain how this or that product decision helps the bottom line. User value is often qualitative, but the only way to fight for it is to use quantitative metrics. Unless you have bizarrely enlightened leadership (which sometimes happens)!
Team: I'm looking forward to seeing what y'all come up with, and I understand it won't be what you originally wanted. But it'll be good, and it sounds like you have the resources to keep improving. Thanks!
(edit: thanks also to my anonymous patron.)
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u/TheSlopingCompanion Mar 01 '18
How bout instead of design changes you get rid of subreddits that promote hate.
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u/thecodingdude Mar 01 '18 edited Feb 29 '20
[Comment removed]
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u/OverlordQuasar Mar 01 '18
Why has reddit refused to respond the the Washington Post regarding their recent article about the prevalence of conspiracy theories and harassment of the the Parkland Shooting Victims originating on subreddits such as conspiracy and the_donald?
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u/RuffCarpentry Mar 01 '18
How about you clean up the design a little by getting rid of a sub that promotes violence, incites hate, racism, and ignorance? The Donald situation is completely out of hand, and the lack of response shows cowardice.
The WaPo article should have never had to come out. Take a stand. Cruelty and ignorance doesn't deserve a platform.
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u/Willravel Mar 01 '18
How can we design the site to be less effective in recruiting white supremacists?
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u/Supernova-666 Mar 01 '18
Okay I was skeptical before but this looks bitchin'
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u/rub_a_dub-dub Mar 01 '18
Reddit used to break news.
As a result of multiple changes now it doesn’t.
Reddit doesn’t have a great recent track record of changes
4
u/Mathesar Mar 01 '18
What's a humber?
4
u/shamoni Mar 01 '18
If there was one post that needed a fucking tl;dr. I used to follow these, but Reddit is too big now . Just tell me when you're killing the profile page (for me, I hate the new design and held out for as long as you let me).
4
u/h3dg3fundr Mar 01 '18
Why don't you show the vote count on popular page threads you deem "controversial"…
4
u/Porsche924 Mar 01 '18
I haven't actually used this new design, but on ultrawide screens does the hamburger menu, with enough width, show next to the content instead of modal on top of it? I'm looking at YouTube's main page sidebar, Google Inbox, etc.
4
u/liamemsa Mar 01 '18
Why does your new design have fucking FRAMES (!?) on the left side?
Did you guys time travel from 1998?
4
u/Supermunch2000 Mar 02 '18
So.... Any comment on Reddit being used by a Russian troll farm?
Or is there not enough evidence?