reddit is a social news website, owned by Conde Nast Digital, on which user
s can post links to content on the Internet. Other users may then vote the
posted links "up" or "down", causing them to become more or less prominent
on the reddit home page. In addition, users can comment on the posted links
. Furthermore, one does not need to submit an outside source as an article
but can rather post a "self" post that contains original text from the subm
itter that can be anything. OVERVIEW The site has discussion areas in which
users may discuss the posted links and vote for or against others' comment
s. When there are enough votes against a given comment, it will not be disp
layed by default, although a reader can display it through a link or prefer
ence. Users who submit articles which other users like and subsequently "vo
te up" receive "karma" points as a reward for submitting articles those oth
er users consider interesting. Reddit also includes topical sections called
"reddits" (colloquially called "subreddits"), which focus on specific topi
cs, such as politics, atheism, programming, "not safe for work", or science
. There are hundreds of reddits. Users can create reddits. The Reddit logo
changes for various holidays and often for no reason, paying homage to Star
Wars, classic video games, and geek culture in general. It often changes i
n response to major discussion subjects within the site or major news stori
es. HISTORY Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005,
both 22-year-old graduates of the University of Virginia. It received its
initial funding from Y Combinator. The team expanded to include Christopher
Slowe and Aaron Swartz in 2005. Aaron Swartz joined in late January 2006 a
s part of the company's merger with Swartz's Infogami. The combined company
was known as "not a bug." Condé Nast Publications, owner of Wired, acquire
d "not a bug" on October 31, 2006. On June 18, 2008, Reddit became an open
source project. With the exception of the anti-spam/cheating portions, all
of the code and libraries written for Reddit became freely available on ano
ther website dubbed "Fixxit." Reddit was named by Ohanian while browsing th
e University of Virginia's Alderman Library. It is pronounced, "[have you]
read it." In January 2010, Reddit users raised over $134,000 for the victim
s of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. TECHNOLOGY Reddit was originally written in
Common Lisp but was rewritten in Python in 2005. The reasons given for the
switch were faster performance, wider access to code libraries, and greate
r development flexibility. The Python web framework that former reddit empl
oyee Aaron Swartz developed to run the site, web.py, is now available as an
open-source project. Reddit currently uses Pylons as its web framework. Th
e site was hosted on several Linux servers running lighttpd, HaProxy, and p
aster; however, as of November of 2009, Reddit has decommissioned their phy
sical servers and migrated to Amazon Web Services. In early 2009, Reddit st
arted using jQuery. On February 18, 2009, Reddit released an iPhone Applica
tion for $1.99, which allows users to more easily navigate the site while u
sing the iPhone. There were also several other reddit iPhone Applications m
ade available, prior to the official application's release date. The first
application was named "Satellite", which was released in November of 2008.
It originally cost $4.99 but its price was later reduced to just $.99 after
the release of the official Reddit application. The second application, re
leased in December of 2008 was called "Open Source Reddit", differing from
Satellite by being free of charge. Reddiquette is an informal expression of
reddit's community values, written by the reddit community itself. It's no
t meant to be a list of commandments, but really more of a collection of gu
idelines. (In other words, be flexible!) Please don't: * Plead for votes
in the title of your submission. ("Vote This Up to Spread the Word!", "For
every upvote, I'll give this starving child one grain of rice," etc.) * C
onduct polls using the title of your submission. Instead of "Vote up if you
're male, down if you're female", say, "Are you male or female? (Vote in th
e comments)" and then post two comments, "Vote for this if you're (male/fem
ale)" * Send out IMs, tweets, or any other sort of message asking people
to vote for your submission -- or comply when other people ask you. A link
should get points for being good, not because the submitter is part of a vo
ting clique. * Mass-downvote someone else's posts. If it really is the co
ntent you have a problem with (as opposed to the person), by all means vote
it down when you come upon it. But don't go out of your way to seek out an
enemy's posts. * Downvote opinions just because you disagree with them.
The down arrow is for comments that add nothing to the discussion. * Anno
unce your votes to the world. Comments like "dumb link" or "lol, upvoted!"
are not terribly informative. Just click the arrows. * Linkjack stories:
linking to stories via blog posts that add nothing extra. * Post hoaxes.
If snopes.com has already declared something false, you probably shouldn't
be submitting it to Reddit. * Flood reddit with a lot of stories in a sho
rt span of time. By doing this you monopolize a shared resource - the new q
ueue. * Complain about too many stories on a particular topic. * Compla
in about a story being old. Reddit is about interesting stuff, not new stuf
f only. Just hide the story. * Complain when a duplicate story finds more
success than the original. Posting a link to the original is okay, since e
arlier comments may be of interest. * Complain about downvotes on your su
bmission. Every story and comment gets at least a few downvotes. * Modera
te a story based on your opinion of its source. Quality of content, not loc
ation, is what matters. * Write titles in ALL CAPS. * Editorialize in t
he headlines or be overly-sensational. * Link with tinyurl or similar ser
vice. There are few reasons to hide what you're linking to, and most of the
m are sneaky. * Be rude when someone doesn't follow Reddiquette: Just poi
nt them here politely. And keep in mind that these are just guidelines. *
Create mass downvote or upvote campaigns. This includes attacking a user's
profile history when they say something bad and participating in karma par
ty threads. * Reply to comments when you are really trying to address a s
ub-section of Reddit. Get a blog or start a new post, don't hijack other pe
ople's comment threads to make your point if it's unrelated to the comment.
* Create an alternate account just to be rude/offensive. If you're up to
saying it, say it under your name, and accept the negative karma. * Take
upon moderation positions in a subreddit where your profession or place of
employment could pose a direct conflict of interest to the neutral and use
r-driven nature of Reddit. Please do: * Keep your submission titles fact
ual and opinion-free. If it is an outrageous topic, share your outrage in t
he comment section. * Moderate based on quality, not opinion. Well-writte
n and interesting content can be worthwhile, even if you disagree with it.
* Look for the original source of content, and submit that. Often, a blog
will reference another blog, which references another, and on down with ev
eryone adding ads along the way. Dig through those references and submit a
link to the creator, who actually deserves the traffic. * Post to the mos