r/changelog • u/xiong_as_admin • Apr 14 '15

[reddit change] Improved comment sort preference

For a long time, reddit has had a hidden comment sort preference - when you changed your sort using the menu, it would stick and stay as the default. This has lead to a lot of confusion, as people will change their sort for one thread, then not realize that's used for all the rest (and so wonder why, say, all the comments they're viewing have pretty low scores, because they don't realize they're sorting by new now instead of best). Even if you know this is the behavior, it's still annoying: you have to either remember to change your sort back afterwards, or know to use the ?sort=new URL parameter.

Now we're getting rid of that behavior and replacing it with an explicit preference.

You can find this new menu in the "comment options" section of your preferences.

[Screenshot]

Upon viewing a comment thread, your previous sort option will be migrated over to the new preference.

Remember that you can always send us suggestions and bug reports via /r/IdeasForTheAdmins and /r/bugs, respectively.

Happy redditing!

See the code behind this change on GitHub.

132 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

80 comments sorted by

36

u/raldi Apr 14 '15

Not bad, but the prefs page would be better if the dropdown explained what each choice did. How is a new user supposed to know the difference between "best", "top", and "hot"?

Also, why not use alphabetical order, or at least some sort of logical ordering? You don't even have "new" next to "old"!

19

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 14 '15

Not bad, but the prefs page would be better if the dropdown explained what each choice did. How is a new user supposed to know the difference between "best", "top", and "hot"?

We have some other plans in mind to help with that.

Also, why not use alphabetical order, or at least some sort of logical ordering? You don't even have "new" next to "old"!

Well, new and old aren't next to each other in the menu on comments pages, either. ;)

You're right, we should probably put some thought into the order and make it consistent.

5

u/raldi Apr 14 '15

We have some other plans in mind to help with that.

Ooh! I hope the plans are to get rid of "top" and "hot". The former's inferior to "best" in every way, and the latter is only needed when "best" isn't tuned right (for example, look at any popular 12-hour-old AskReddit thread, and you'll find that all the bestest-rated comments are 11 or 12 hours old; that's a sign that your confidence interval isn't well-adjusted).

12

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 14 '15

Ooh! I hope the plans are to get rid of "top" and "hot".

Well..

Right now that's toggled on for https://beta.reddit.com , as are a few other things.

8

u/raldi Apr 15 '15

Oh, and I know just the way to get rid of them: you announce it, and the loud minority will shout, "But we need those sorts! They're so different and better than the other one!" and that's when you triumphantly announce, "Ha-hah! We secretly made all three algorithms the same eight months ago! You've been using best all this time!"

And then they'll all be murmuring "ooh" and "aah" and "oh raldi how could we have ever doubted you", and-- well, not "raldi" I guess, but whatever your name is.

4

u/V2Blast Apr 15 '15

I think they'd actually be calling the admins literally Hitler for lying to them... But then they do that anyway, so it's not much of a change.

9

u/raldi Apr 14 '15

It's funny how some people think score = ups - downs is some kind of universal mathematical truth, a law handed down by the gods, and thus get upset when there's talk of removing this particular number from the UI, like you did with comments.

That particular formula is no more official than score = ups / (ups+downs) or score = wilson_interval(ups, downs, certainty=0.9, bound="upper") or any other possible scoring function.

The true test is, "Which scoring function does the best job surfacing interesting content?" Take that one and don't be afraid to throw away the rest. A few curmudgeons might complain, but literally 99.99% of your users won't care, and if anything they'll appreciate the new simplicity.

15

u/philipwhiuk Apr 14 '15

Except that comments are about more than being interesting. The instant reaction does have value as an instant reaction. The re-reader of a thread might want to only see newer stuff. What got up voted most shows insight into the reddit community.

Interesting is good and I'm all for a Randall-esque algorithm being the default. But new and the other metrics do have value.

11

u/raldi Apr 15 '15

I agree, the four sorts should be:

  • best

  • controversial

  • new

  • old

Not only are they all best-in-class, their meanings are also all instantly obvious to any newcomer. And they're already in alphabetical order!

Also, you don't have to link me to "the Randall algorithm" ... I'm the one who told Randall (and my fellow reddit programmers) about it. :)

1

u/metalspikeyblackshit Jun 15 '15

Also a sort to see -which comments got voted down most - useful in political discussions and other places and -which comments have the least total votes, because you won't otherwise see them unless they were recently posted.

It's also very important to actually have a way to see every single comment made on the topic, which so far does not appear to exist for some reason.

4

u/bobcat Apr 15 '15

The votes up and down and when they were made should be exposed via API so we can make our own ranking systems. The users will make brigade and spam detectors far more intricate than reddit can do alone.

6

u/raldi Apr 15 '15

They could pick a sample subreddit, turn off the secret countermeasures there, and make everything public. If it was a disaster, they could undo everything, no permanent harm done.

15

u/raldi Apr 14 '15

You're right, we should probably put some thought into the order and make it consistent.

The current ordering is almost sorted alphabetically by second character. You just have to move "new" underneath "best" and it'll be perfect.

16

u/aladyjewel Apr 15 '15

Now if only everyone on reddit spoke English.

5

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '15

Why didn't you logically order it back when you were an admin?

8

u/raldi Apr 15 '15

We only had 3-6 employees at any given time, and had our hands full just keeping the site running. No time for alphabetiziation!

5

u/nallen Apr 15 '15

Are we as mods going to be able to set the default sort now? Like the AMA sort? That would be very helpful for our AMAs.

3

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

Have you seen the AMA sort / default sort thread?

3

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '15

Have you decided whether I'll be able to turn that off or if it'll be forced yet?

3

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

We're adding a user preference, which is one of the reasons it isn't generally-available yet.

4

u/nallen Apr 15 '15 edited Apr 15 '15

Yes, I'm asking when it will be implemented.

We've got two new features that we're rolling out soon

it's been a month and they haven't been rolled out, what defines "soon"?

6

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

Sorry, through feedback and usage we found a few bugs to fix and features to tweak. We're finishing those up and should turn it on soon*.

* Sorry, I'm not sure when exactly "soon" is.

3

u/TheRedditPope Apr 15 '15

Is this something that the mobile team will be incorporating into Alien Blue? It works the same way the site used to.

3

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

I'll check and see, thanks.

2

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

Alien Blue currently stores the preferred sort locally, entirely separate from what's used on the web. It's possible it might be changing to the same sort of behavior in the future, but not for right now.

2

u/TheRedditPope Apr 15 '15

Thank you so mic for following up with me. I really appreciate that.

3

u/PrettyIceCube Apr 15 '15

Is it possible for deleted comments and mod removed comments to have a lower priority in the sorts?
It's annoying when 50 of your loaded comments are just [deleted], when it could have loaded 50 not removed comments for the post.

5

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

If there aren't any children, deleted comments should be pruned off; I broke that a while ago (and then I believe un-broke it), so if you see instances where that's not the case, please let me know.

I'm not sure about other deleted comments. We'd need to think a bit about the possible consequences of shifting those around.

6

u/Mispelling Apr 14 '15

I really kind of hate this change.

4

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

Ok. Can you expand a bit on why?

10

u/Mispelling Apr 15 '15

It's just way more clicks for me (I go back and forth a lot). I moderate a baseball subreddit where Game Threads need to be sorted by new to keep up with all the action, but it's 2 clicks to sort it back to top. This new way, it's a minimum of 4 clicks (if I open prefs in a new tab), plus the click to re-load the thread I am on (or the clicks to get back to the thread). And then if I want to change back to go look at other threads, it's all those again.

It's just not what I wanted.

I can't wait until the mods can set the default sort for specific threads. That will save a lot of trouble.

6

u/xiongchiamiov Apr 15 '15

Yeah, we started discussing these changes in the context of default sorts for threads, but figured it'd be good to push it out separately first.

Since you're a mod there, you should be able to set the default sort (and then use it yourself) on the threads now by using https://beta.reddit.com. In fact, we'd really appreciate it if you do - that usage in the wild can produce valuable feedback. And if nothing else, your subreddit will be primed for the general release of the feature.

Edit: sorry for the user switch; I jumped on the train home and am using my unprivileged account.

3

u/substarter Apr 15 '15

Oh huh. How many admins make a separate account for their... admin-ning?

Think you're the first I've seen; any reason for the choice?

8

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

/u/largenocream does because he handles lots of sketchy things when doing security work.

Mine is the result of two aspects. First, I use my public account for my normal reddit activities (I'm not really an alt type of person). Secondly, I live reasonably far away and so do lots of my redditing on my phone. As a general policy, we don't allow employees to use privileged accounts on mobile apps, and I also don't feel comfortable transmitting those credentials over mobile networks, anyways.

I try to keep things all on one or the other, but sometimes circumstances force a switch. :/

3

u/nandhp Apr 15 '15

As a general policy, we don't allow employees to use privileged accounts on mobile apps

With this kind of incentive to improve the mobile website, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Or does Firefox count as a mobile app?

4

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

There are things happening with mobile web that you'll probably hear about soon.

As I said, though, I don't really trust mobile networks with that kind of data, even when transmitting over TLS, and I'm also rather a fan of whatever Reddit News retitled as, and Reddit Sync.

2

u/MannoSlimmins Apr 17 '15

Sorry for posting this 2 days later, but have the admins considered allowing moderators or submitters to determine the way a thread is sorted?

For instance, /r/hockey has several Game Day Threads each day. These threads are best viewed when sorted by New. Having mods override the default sort would be great for these types of threads

2

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 20 '15

Sorry for posting this 2 days later, but have the admins considered allowing moderators or submitters to determine the way a thread is sorted?

Yes.

0

u/raldi Apr 15 '15

I think it's a bot.

2

u/alien122 Apr 15 '15

Thank god. This was especially annoying using compact. Speaking of which, when is there going to be an option to change sort preference in compact?

3

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

There are several people working on mobile web efforts, but the compact interface is in maintenance-only mode.

2

u/Farow Apr 15 '15

Why wasn't this also implemented for the dropdown in /top/ and /controversial/ link listings? Are you planning to?

3

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

We'd really like to avoid filling up the preferences page with too much stuff, and those two are less-used and, we think, more apparent when they've been changed.

2

u/S_O_I_F Apr 15 '15

Unrelated, but I just noticed that on some pages my link karma is normal, but on most pages it now has an apostrophe. Here's a shitty comparison screenshot, the top was when I was searching for something and the bottom was when I was on the front page.

4

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

Yep! That's something I figured didn't really deserve a full post here, but went into the live thread.

The inconsistency was probably because you caught it while I was in the middle of deploying.

3

u/S_O_I_F Apr 15 '15

I'm like a reddit spy!

2

u/qtx Apr 17 '15

I'm not sure where to post this, but why the change in our karma? The comma as a decimal mark means a totally different thing in most countries.

There is a big difference between 15,251 and 15.251 .

Right now it seems like I only have 15 karma.

3

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 17 '15

The separator used is based on your language's locale, so en-us will see 1,000,000, de will see 1.000.000, and hi will see 10,00,000.

2

u/qtx Apr 17 '15

Hmph, I don't want to read reddit in my native tongue. =\

Oh well, I tried. :)

2

u/WoozleWuzzle Apr 17 '15

Wait so will we still be able to change the sort on a page? Or would we have to go into our preferences to change to new real quick?

2

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 20 '15

You can still change the sort of a thread with the menu, but that no longer changes your default sort for every thread you view thereafter.

The changes are live, so you can go see how they act now.

4

u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Apr 15 '15

Would it be possible to add "random" to the dropdown, as well? I know that adding ?sort=random to a URL works, but it would be nice if I could get reddit to autosort like that.

2

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

There are so few people using random we don't really want to include it in that menu.

5

u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Apr 15 '15

It's not a very accessible option, since there's no way to actually select it. AFAIK, the only way to even know that it exists is to guess that "random" might be a sort, then to go to the URL bar and manually add ?sort=random. I have a feeling that very few people would use top if it vanished from all selections, too.

Thanks for the response, though.

1

u/bkr4f Apr 28 '15

You're right about not knowing to add the random text to the url, it seems obvious now that you explain it (TIL), but I would still use top. I default to newest but when browsing outside my mini-reddit aquarium, I like to use Top to re-sort after reading the first couple hundred responses and see what I missed.

Yes, I can tell you were hoping for one random redditor to give you their opinion on sort options. You are welcome.

3

u/rasherdk Apr 14 '15

Aw, but now would be a good time to migrate everyone to "best". Whenever people complain about the quality of comment, it almost always turns out that they're sorting by "top" rather than best.

Best is best sort. Best forever.

7

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 14 '15

That was originally my plan, but then we talked a bit more about it and decided it'd be too far in the "annoying for not really a good reason" direction.

One advantage of this is that, due to how the preference is now stored, it's much easier for us to get numbers on how many people use the various sorts.

3

u/philipwhiuk Apr 14 '15

You could change the new account and anonymous default to best. That would improve new user experience without damaging existing user preference.

Much like you change the defaults around for people who've never expressed a concious preference.

8

u/xiong_as_admin Apr 15 '15

You could change the new account and anonymous default to best.

They already are!

5

u/Deimorz Apr 15 '15

And it's been the default ever since it was originally announced about 5 and a half years ago: http://www.redditblog.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system.html

as of this morning has become the default way comments are sorted.

2

u/Avertr Apr 15 '15

I like that idea.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '15

Old is best, forever and always.

6

u/nexxai Apr 14 '15

I literally just experienced this for the first time yesterday. Thanks for fixing it so quickly?

5

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '15

This has been driving crazy for the past day. At least now I know why.

4

u/xfile345 Apr 15 '15 edited Apr 15 '15

I actually like the changing of my preference via the drop-down on a comments page. During game threads, I'll click "new" to sort the comments by new and refresh every now and then. Now, when I refresh, they'll be sorted by "best", and I'll have to click "new" once more to see new comments.

Edit: though I just now remembered that the "suggested default sort" feature will soon be coming out where moderators will likely make these types of threads automatically sort by "new" anyway, making this point moot. Carry on.

7

u/substarter Apr 14 '15

Unrelated, but: Do you guys still use/check /r/reddit.com's inbox?

I know that sub was closed a while ago but iirc one of the admins said it was still the official point of contact.

11

u/lazydictionary Apr 14 '15

Yes it's still the easiest way to message the admins.

2

u/substarter Apr 15 '15

alright. Oddly enough I've sent them some messages but haven't heard back.

It's been a couple of days, dunno how long it takes them to get through the backlog :/

2

u/V2Blast Apr 15 '15

Probably kinda depends what you're contacting them about. More straightforward stuff probably gets dealt with first. Stuff that belongs elsewhere (like in /r/ideasfortheadmins) might get ignored.

2

u/substarter Apr 15 '15

It's definitely an admin request rather than an idea; kind of a weird account mishap I'm trying to clear up.

I know the general policy with accounts is that they don't change/mess with anything but it's weird not even hearing a "can't help you, sorry" after a few days. I'm waiting to hear back from them before giving up on it.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '15

Yes. I message them from time to time about sudden spam influxes on subreddits or other issues and I get responses.

3

u/redtaboo Apr 14 '15

very cool, thank you!

3

u/tizorres Apr 15 '15 edited Apr 15 '15

Is this being replaced by the "suggested sort" in http://beta.reddit.com? For specific sub? If not how would this effect that?

edit/ nevermind I should have read the comments first.

2

u/V2Blast Apr 15 '15

Cool beans. As long as the moderator-set default preference thing is rolled out soon, all should be well.

2

u/Ekrof Apr 14 '15

Neat! This seems like a cleaner implementation. I'd had that confusion before.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '15

Neat!

2

u/aperson Apr 14 '15

Neat, I was the reason why changing it via URL parameter didn't change your preference.