Redditfilter

May 28, 2011 1:02 PM

I'm seeing Reddit stuff being posted as FPPs on a daily basis. Nothing wrong with Reddit, it's awesome, but I don't get why Reddit is never given any credit. I think giving credit is one of those things that makes Metafilter a nice place and it makes it possible to follow the related Reddit discussion.

Don't want to link to any Reddit FPPs because I don't want to single out people.

posted by Foci for Analysis to Etiquette/Policy at 1:02 PM (160 comments total)

Reddit stuff like AMA, or Reddit stuff like the same links? Reddit is such a huge site that I think giving a via to everything you get from them is redundant. And I, personally, don't want to read discussion on Reddit about anything.
posted by codacorolla at 1:08 PM on May 28, 2011

Well, for starters, not everything which is posted on Reddit and is also posted here is discovered via Reddit.

Second, I think MetaFilter has pretty much stopped having the "via" link as part of the posts since... oh, I dunno... for years now.

Third: All links which I've read which actually lead to Reddit are about content ON Reddit (e.g. the Stephen Colbert IAMA).

Why don't your make sure your posts follow whatever guidelines you feel are necessary, and not assume everyone else is doing it wrong?
posted by hippybear at 1:08 PM on May 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

Maybe people found their links through other avenues than Reddit?

If I see something posted on Facebook, or run across it on a blog, maybe THAT person found it on Reddit. (Maybe they didn't.) Either way, how would I know?

Mainly you just don't see as many people crediting sources these days for anything. Seems to be an unspoken site style-shift.
posted by hermitosis at 1:08 PM on May 28, 2011

Hey, we were going for the record for most days without a MetaTalk post!
posted by Melismata at 1:09 PM on May 28, 2011 [19 favorites]

If you mean "stuff on MeFi that I already saw on reddit" well all I can say is that pretty much everything gets posted to reddit these days and interesting stuff gets voted up, so chances are that yeah, lots of front page posts were also on reddit, but I don't think there is any deliberate attempt to conceal sources as being reddit.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:09 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Here's a previous MeTa on the same topic.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 1:10 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

one of those things that makes Metafilter a nice place and it makes it possible to follow the related Reddit discussion.

Don't want to link to any Reddit FPPs because I don't want to single out people.

Another thing that makes MeFi a nice place is when in-thread comments along the lines of 'I saw this on Reddit already' or 'Most of the FPPs on MeFi come from Reddit' are deleted.

Can't link to their deleted comment so I can't single out people.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:19 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

ಠ_ಠ
posted by birdherder at 1:32 PM on May 28, 2011 [18 favorites]

Also if you're going to do a via for reddit, then it's only common courtesy to do a wayback search for 4chan 2 years ago and also link that as a via.
posted by codacorolla at 1:33 PM on May 28, 2011 [21 favorites]

Yeah, honestly mostly what needs to happen if anything is for people not to make accusatory noises in threads about presumed via failures.

Links spread all over the net by a whole lot of different vectors; different people encounter the same content via different sources as a matter of course. Noting that via is not compulsory even in those cases where it would be in any way meaningful, and failure to include one is absolutely not licence to engage in mind-reading or hectoring about the imagined victim of that omission.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:34 PM on May 28, 2011 [12 favorites]

I liked the [via] habit or yore, because I found lots of pretty/awesome/interesting/different/quirky/new blogs or sites to look at that way. I think the "via Digg" or "via reddit" went first, not because they're both huge, but also because when people get a link from a friend (who saw it on digg or facebook, or reddit) they might not have seen it on Reddit themselves.
posted by dabitch at 1:35 PM on May 28, 2011 [6 favorites]

Is Reddit the one where everybody says that all the subgroups except for their own are terrible, or the one that keeps getting gamed by libertarians and dailykos folks and shit?
posted by box at 1:37 PM on May 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

Is Reddit the one where everybody says that all the subgroups except for their own are terrible, or the one that keeps getting gamed by libertarians and dailykos folks and shit?

Thanks to the karma system, it's a little bit of both!

Imagine Something Awful's general discussion forums, but worse somehow in every way.
posted by codacorolla at 1:39 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

No, it's the other one.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:40 PM on May 28, 2011

Is this the real life?
posted by Ad hominem at 1:54 PM on May 28, 2011

No, it's the other one.
posted by box at 1:57 PM on May 28, 2011 [4 favorites]

Because the link - that is, the person who WROTE THE FUCKING CONTENT - is important, not someone who found it, even assuming that's where the MeFite sourced it.

The obsession with attribution represents, at best, a profound confusion about where value lies.
posted by rodgerd at 1:57 PM on May 28, 2011 [15 favorites]

Most of the stuff I see here also appears on Kottke around the same time it gets posted here. Sometimes I can tell that Kottke gets it first, sometimes I can tell that he/someone who told him got it from here. The internet moves so fast that other than the original post, there's no way to really tell the path it took to get from the origination point to you right now.

Personally, reddit's too big, too snarky, and too much for me to process. So if we're overlapping, that's fine, because not everyone goes to reddit to get things. Same thing with HackerNews. I'd rather get my content here.
posted by deezil at 2:01 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Goddamn it people it took reddit 26 hours to do Bohemian Rhapsody. We could have beaten them. It's shit like this MetaFilter.

Also, first Pokemon link? I'm out of here.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:03 PM on May 28, 2011 [10 favorites]

Contrary to popular belief (among redditors), reddit is not the center of high culture, interesting information, and the internet as a whole.

Neither is Metafilter, but the scotch is better here, which is really what matters for me.
posted by mrzarquon at 2:09 PM on May 28, 2011 [7 favorites]

Foci for Analysis posted "I don't get why Reddit is never given any credit."

Reddit is rarely where these things originate. If it was then the link itself points there and so that base is covered. Therefor I'm not really sure what they should be getting credit for even if the poster actually got their link from Reddit¹. "First Posting" credit isn't something we should be encouraging even in a cross site sort of way.

I'll include vias if I think the site needs awareness. Anyone who would read Reddit is already aware of it at this point I'd imagine.

I was expecting the first post back to be either a lot more angsty or really earthshaking. I would have thought that the psychic pressure of all those people watching the 72 hours come up would have prevented a re-hash from appearing. Was I the only one who clicked on the Meta post button this morning to make sure it hadn't been disabled?

1: You can see on Reddit that people get things from other places than Reddit just by observing the never ending parade of doubles on Reddit of anything that is even remotely worthy.
posted by Mitheral at 2:12 PM on May 28, 2011 [4 favorites]

I don't get why Reddit is never given any credit.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. People who see things on Reddit seem to think that people who post things here that were on Reddit MUST have seen it here and can be weirdly obnoxious about interjecting a comment making snarky implications about FTFY via links. This is not useful. People on MeFi are generally good at giving credit. We have always says that a via link is a courtesy and not an obligation.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:13 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Hey, we were going for the record for most days without a MetaTalk post!

I know, I was just noticing how long it had been and wondering if we were closing in on some sort of record. It was beautiful while it lasted.

Too bad it didn't end with a thread about illegal music downloading by Palestinian feminists or something good like that. This is a silly one.
posted by fourcheesemac at 2:17 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

I've been noticing that a lot of the FPPs around here are also on the Google.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 2:17 PM on May 28, 2011 [21 favorites]

some people on the internet are weird about attribution. the other day i posted a picture on mlkshk and then days later someone left a comment that i had "stolen" the image from another user. i had, in fact, "stolen" the image from some tumblr with 1000+ notes.

just because you saw it on reddit, or digg, or fark, or facebook, or scrawled in shit on your grandmother's wall doesn't mean everyone saw it there for the first time. honestly, when i visit reddit i'm more often struck by "huh, i wonder why this 5 year old picture/story/video is popular again."
posted by nadawi at 2:20 PM on May 28, 2011 [6 favorites]

We did this already.
posted by batmonkey at 2:23 PM on May 28, 2011

dang my lack of preview after searching. dangit it to heck!
posted by batmonkey at 2:25 PM on May 28, 2011

Reddit is a content aggregator. I pretty much have never seen anything on Reddit that wasn't elsewhere first, except for all those stupid rage comics and fake face-book and iPhone exchanges. One thing is for certain, the miniscule proportion of interesting decent content available there if you are willing to wade through all the puerile garbage is diminished by the appalling idiocy of some of the commenters. It's the Wal Mart of the Internet, filled to bursting with piles of crap available elsewhere, and populated with people who have no sense of how to conduct themselves in public.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 2:26 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Some of you are being too hard on reddit. Yeah some of it is dumb but stuff like this is worthwhile.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:33 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

I think it's so odd that this exact same point has been brought up twice on Metatalk. Not that that is much of a rarity here, but why do people think it's so crucial to make sure Reddit is credited?
posted by crunchland at 2:38 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?
posted by carsonb at 2:40 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Caught in a landslide
posted by donnagirl at 2:42 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

No escape from peurility
posted by Existential Dread at 2:48 PM on May 28, 2011

*puerility dammit
posted by Existential Dread at 2:49 PM on May 28, 2011

Just to repeat something often said about Reddit, the default subscriptions are pretty terrible. That's where 95% of the annoying, dumb shit is posted. Unsubscribe from as many default reddits as you care to. Search for some of your pet topics and subscribe to them and you'll find the quality to shoot up tremendously. I resisted doing this for a long time but found I was getting burnt out with the dumbassery. Now that I mostly just see stuff that pertains to a few specific interests I find interacting with the site much more worthwhile.
posted by BeerFilter at 2:57 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

I have been to reddit maybe twice in my life. Once a long time ago because a friend sent me a link to something, and the other when the "I'm a 100 year old grandma AMA" thing was posted to the front page.

Not long ago, I made an FPP (that was later deleted because it turns out it was linked in a previous FPP thread, oops) that apparently had been on reddit a few days prior. Someone got all pouty in the thread about my posting something that was so obviously from reddit, even though I obviously didn't get it from there.

Not everyone reads reddit, and there are ways for people to discover content online without seeing it there first. It's one thing to give credit where credit is due, but my guess is that, more often than not, reddit doesn't deserve the finder's fee of a [via] link.
posted by phunniemee at 2:59 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Do they have this conversation in reverse at Reddit? Are there never any links posted here and then posted there? Because unless the answer to both those questions is "no" I don't see what's being discussed here.
posted by Bookhouse at 3:03 PM on May 28, 2011

cortex: Links spread all over the net by a whole lot of different vectors; different people encounter the same content via different sources as a matter of course.

cReddit where cReddit isn't due.
posted by gman at 3:03 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Do they have this conversation in reverse at Reddit?

Speaking as somebody who obsessively refreshes /r/all (I am a glutton for punishment) I have never seen something here first. Not saying it doesn't happen, but reddit, even though I love it, is an inch deep and a mile wide and most things that interest MetaFilter wouldn't make it to the front page there. If links did migrate from here to there would most likely be in /r/TrueReddit, which is like the "serious" subreddit.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:20 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

I've been noticing that a lot of the FPPs around here are also on the Google.

The guys who run my local corner store always seem really stoned, but last night of them was sitting on a stool looking at an iPad, and I noticed that the only thing that was on the screen was the Google homepage. Like, with nothing even typed into the search box, just the blinking cursor. And during the entire 5 minutes I was line to pay for my beer, he just sat and stared at it like he was watching the most fascinating thing EVER.

Anyway, now I finally get what he was staring at. It's ALL RIGHT THERE, MAN!
posted by hermitosis at 3:24 PM on May 28, 2011 [9 favorites]

Google Suggest For The Soul
posted by defenestration at 3:33 PM on May 28, 2011

I just think giving credit is a nice gesture. As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well...
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:44 PM on May 28, 2011

I just think giving credit is a nice gesture.

It is, and I've given reddit credit attributed links to reddit in the past.

But I stopped when reddit got so big that it's like giving credit to twitter or something. It's a very large firehose. Most of the links you see anywhere are going to eventually appear on reddit. Usually more than once.
posted by loquacious at 3:51 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Thank you for posting this! It has been too long since the last MetaTalk thread.
(no seriously, 3 days is just crazy!!!)
posted by Chuckles at 3:52 PM on May 28, 2011

I just think giving credit is a nice gesture.

It is a nice gesture. It is not a compulsory gesture. It is in many cases not a terribly meaningful gesture.

As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well...

Well what?
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:55 PM on May 28, 2011 [6 favorites]

As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well...

?
I don't know what that means. I never read reddit but I get forwarded things by friends, or told about things over the lunch table, by people who saw them on other websites, where they might possibly have been posted by someone who reads reddit, or not. If something's on reddit it either came from somewhere else, or it will quickly be posted in a bunch of other places -- so there are a lot of explanations for why something would be posted here after being posted at reddit, and most of them don't involve nefarious credit-denying to reddit.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:56 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Let's just cut out the Reddit middle man and tag all future posts [via the internet] . Because that's where Reddit is getting all of their shit from. But in their defense, most of my favorite blogs are getting their stuff from the internet too.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 4:02 PM on May 28, 2011 [4 favorites]

"I just think giving credit is a nice gesture."


And thus begins the sub-prime "via surge" and the eventual bursting of the link bubble. Metafilter will soon be filled with little yellow foreclosure signs instead of links.

Matt has already done a short-sale on the cat-scan post.
posted by tomswift at 4:07 PM on May 28, 2011

As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well...

Everything I know about reddit comes from Metafilter. HHOS.
posted by immlass at 4:12 PM on May 28, 2011

Are there never any links posted here and then posted there?

I actually came across one fairly prominent Reddt user who had not only copied a core link from my Dune Encycloedia post without attribution, but who had also lifted text directly from my post to serve as the title of his submission.

Incidentally, I wonder why Reddit never adopted the term "creddit" instead of the generic "karma."
posted by Rhaomi at 4:27 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Everything I know about reddit comes from Metafilter. HHOS.

OMG, MetaFilter has Ho Hos?!
posted by katillathehun at 4:29 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

The obsession with attribution represents, at best, a profound confusion about where value lies.

*boggle*

Wow. Ok. Learn something new about how my fellow apes see the world every day.

To me, the inclination to attribute represents, at worst, a profound understanding that sharing cool sites is worth doing.
posted by mediareport at 4:47 PM on May 28, 2011

As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well...

This sounds like you're accusing people of lying. You're not doing that, right?
posted by rtha at 4:51 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Just because you saw a link on Reddit doesn't mean that's where it originated, and just because you saw it on Reddit doesn't mean the person who posted it to MeFi even knows Reddit exists. I see loads of links on Metafilter that I've already seen elsewhere, but I'd never assume I know how the original poster found it, because I can't read minds. Where does your certainty come from?

Why is it so important for you that people here 'give credit' to Reddit? Why Reddit in particular? I'm puzzled by the specificity of your request: if credit is so important to you, why aren't you asking people to just give credit in general?

What does "As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well..." mean? Does it mean "As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well I don't really care whether you credit those or not"? Or does it mean ""As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well I bet they do really come from Reddit?" I honestly have no idea.
posted by hot soup girl at 5:04 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

> I just think giving credit is a nice gesture. As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well...

Are you implying that said links are stolen?

Should I give a link to my friend Paul for talking to me about Cop Rock one afternoon, which lead to me googling and then this post? Or to my highschool for introducing me to Ernest Shackleton?

Are you suggesting that somehow MetaFilter doesn't offer some sort of original authorship on it's own (see the most popular posts of all time these are quite more indepth than any single thread I have ever seen over at reddit), yet somehow being the first person to post a silly video, story headline (you know, a lot of us have RSS feeds which could also be read by redditors) to reddit means that they are the sole discover's and creators of that link, and should be attritubed in some inalienable right due to their ability to copy paste?
posted by mrzarquon at 5:17 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

via ctrl-c
posted by Meatbomb at 5:20 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Personally, I have almost no idea what Reddit is (obviously I can google it now that it's under discussion-- but I'm commenting on my knowledge base here). I'm sure I could inadvertently post something that's simultaneously on that website as well without knowing it.
posted by threeants at 5:20 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

To me, the inclination to attribute represents, at worst, a profound understanding that sharing cool sites is worth doing.

The cool thing is the important bit - the bunched panties of [via] links strikes me as being analagous to people threadshitting in every music post that didn't credit the A&R scout who signed the band.
posted by rodgerd at 5:29 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ad hominem: Speaking as somebody who obsessively refreshes /r/all (I am a glutton for punishment) I have never seen something here first.

All the linked I've posted sourced from Projects were posted to Reddit only after they showed up on the front page of MeFi. =)
posted by carsonb at 5:32 PM on May 28, 2011

I don’t know which links specifically the OP is talking about so I can’t comment on them but I would like to clear something up. You guys are massively underestimating the amount of content created specifically for reddit. I am not talking link farms or SEO antics, I am talking user created content posted to Reddit and targeted at other Reddit users. You see, Reddit does not discourage self linking. Of the current front page of /r/all , over half of the posts are either user created comics ( I assume they are not misappropriated), links which mention Reddit,Karma, or Reddit birthdays(your joined on date) or “self” posts, which are simply text with no links. You just have to take a look at /r/drawing to see how much user created art there is, or /r/DAE or /r/AksReddit to see just how many posts do not contain links. These are probably not being posted to MetaFilter but I Just wanted to point out that Reddit is not simply a link aggregator.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:47 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Damnit, broke ALL the links. Thats what I get for typing comments in Word.

All the linked I've posted sourced from Projects were posted to Reddit only after they showed up on the front page of MeFi. =)

I'm sure it happens, I've just never seen it myself. I'm going to be watching and I will demand attribution to MetaFilter if I catch reddit slipping!
posted by Ad hominem at 5:51 PM on May 28, 2011

Of the current front page of /r/all , over half of the posts are either user created comics ( I assume they are not misappropriated)

I wouldn't make this assumption. I'm not sure I've ever once seen a webcomic linked on reddit that hadn't been pulled off the creator's site and reuploaded to imgur without attribution. Everyone goes out of their way to obfuscate the source and I don't understand why. It's depressing.
posted by churl at 6:01 PM on May 28, 2011

Oh, crap, I have to take that back—at least in regards to the You Are Listening To Los Angeles post. It looks like idontlikewords (xtrmntr on reddit) self-linked his project on the Trees subreddit at the same time he posted his Projects link. Ah, well.
posted by carsonb at 6:01 PM on May 28, 2011

> As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well...

Your original post just sounded kind of clueless (and was annoying because MetaTalk had been so pleasantly quiet). This sounds actively offensive. What exactly are you trying to imply? And why do you care so much about Reddit?
posted by languagehat at 6:07 PM on May 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

the bunched panties of [via] links strikes me as being analagous to people threadshitting in every music post that didn't credit the A&R scout who signed the band

The amount of sense that makes to me is zero. But ok, whatever.
posted by mediareport at 6:10 PM on May 28, 2011

I'm not sure I've ever once seen a webcomic linked on reddit that hadn't been pulled off the creator's site and reuploaded to imgur without attribution

I'm talking about rage comics like this which is currently 21 on the front page. It is marked [true story] so I trust the poster created it. I am sure people post stolen shit all the time to reddit, and they get called on it.
posted by Ad hominem at 6:10 PM on May 28, 2011

[via] is fucking stupid. This is my friend, he was one of the first people to post a link to that new awesome thing ... no, he didn't make it, he just posted a link to it on a messageboard ... yeah, but he found it ... yeah, you're right.
posted by doublehappy at 6:15 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

What none of you realize is that Foci for Analysis actually has IP trackers on every MeFite's machine so he knows where you've been and where you get all your links from. He KNOWS we're all lying about not visiting reddit. Dammit, won't someone think of the children????
posted by hippybear at 6:25 PM on May 28, 2011

Metafilter: It is marked [true story] so I trust the poster created it.
posted by mendel at 6:26 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think the days when people found "best of the web" (or "beast of the web," as I call it) links by randomly surfing around until you find something new and unknown to anyone else yet are over. Everything is "via" something. If you can find something that isn't linked from anywhere else that is also worth seeing, that would be an interesting scenario. Otherwise, the decade since Metafilter was founded has seen a massive growth of the web and the rise of many techniques for filtering, aggregating, curating, and otherwise "finding" things other people may have also "found" before you.

As Bakhtin famously put it, "the word in language is half someone else's."
posted by fourcheesemac at 6:28 PM on May 28, 2011

I don’t know which links specifically the OP is talking about so I can’t comment on them but I would like to clear something up.

The OP made a comment re: the volume of Reddit-to-MeFi posts in this FPP, which was deleted. Interestingly, of the OP's 25 own FPPs, only four have a [via].
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:36 PM on May 28, 2011

Ribbit
posted by arcticseal at 6:39 PM on May 28, 2011

Why no love for the platforms that drive our experience? A simple [via TCP/IP and HTTP] would let me know which protocols to use to learn more about the topic and recognize the hard work those protocols have done in bringing us this information.
posted by lantius at 6:57 PM on May 28, 2011 [6 favorites]

This Reddit-inspired drive to make sure that everything on the internet gets "via" credit is one of the most annoying things about the internet.

Foci for Analysis: “Nothing wrong with Reddit, it's awesome...”

I agree, if by "wrong" you mean "right," and by "awesome" you mean "an ancient and hoary force of malevolent evil which must be destroyed at all costs."
posted by koeselitz at 7:00 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

"ಠ_ಠ"

I can't upboat this comment hard enough.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:11 PM on May 28, 2011

Since this is MetaFilter it need's it's top hat and monocle.

┌─┐
┴─┴
ಠ_ರೃ
posted by Ad hominem at 7:15 PM on May 28, 2011 [13 favorites]

Actually, given the load times on Reddit during peak hours, I'm pretty happy for lack of attribution.

For all you Reddit-haters, thanks. Keep on hating! I appreciate it.
posted by The ____ of Justice at 7:21 PM on May 28, 2011

Personally, I estimate that for about ~75% of the content I see linked by both MetaFilter and Reddit I see it on Facebook first before I see it on either MetaFilter or Reddit.

My most recent FPP was a repost of a link that a friend posted on my Wall. There are also multiple Reddit threads pre-dating my FPP but that's not the via for my post.

It would never occur to me to check whether something has been posted to Reddit before I'd post it to MetaFilter. MetaFilter is my second stop on the internets after Facebook, whereas Reddit is a distant ~5th to ~10th place (varies depending on which webcomics are scheduled to publish that day) and many days I don't make it there at all because I get sidetracked into doing something productive instead.

Viral links and internet memes are like STDs: although that skanky slut Reddit may indeed be personally responsible for most of the recent outbreak of the clap at your school, your boyfriend MetaFilter's case of gonorrhea is not proof that he must have slept with her.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:32 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Well this is how we gonna' do this:
Fuck Reddit,
Fuck Hacker News,
Fuck Y Combinator as a staff, record label, and as a mother fucking crew.
And if you want to be down with Y Combinator,
Then fuck you too.
posted by chunking express at 7:57 PM on May 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

Also, I think this is at least the third Metatalk thread about via links and Reddit. Is there something about that site in particular that makes people travel the web to spread the good word?
posted by chunking express at 8:00 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

people threadshitting in every music post that didn't credit the A&R scout who signed the band

Does anybody else remember Don Kirshner's Rock Concert?

"And now, thanks to Jerry Aldini of InstaPrune Records and Fred Schmulker at RCA, here's Three Dog Night!"
posted by benito.strauss at 8:08 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

To me, a [via] is a bonus link to an interesting site about the same topic of the post that people might not be aware of. I don't think there is any risk of mefites not knowing reddit, and if they read reddit, they already know where it came from.
posted by empath at 8:10 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure I've ever once seen a webcomic linked on reddit that hadn't been pulled off the creator's site and reuploaded to imgur without attribution.

Examples please, because I think this is unmitigated horse shit.
posted by empath at 8:12 PM on May 28, 2011

"Is there something about that site in particular that makes people travel the web to spread the good word?"

Reddit is similar enough in function to MetaFilter to attract an overlapping user base, but Reddit is much, much bigger than MetaFilter. So you're more likely to see a Reddit loyalist posting on MetaFilter than vice versa just because there's so many more of "them" than there are of "us."

Also, a migration of the typical MeFite to Reddit would raise the quality of discussion there whereas the migration of a typical Redditor to MetaFilter would degrade the quality of discussion here (and I'd estimate that ~10% of the comments I've read on Reddit would get deleted by our mods and possibly get the commenter banned here). So there's really not much incentive for MeFites to proselytize over there. :D
posted by Jacqueline at 8:17 PM on May 28, 2011

I think this raises an important question: What, exactly, is mitigated horse shit?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:21 PM on May 28, 2011 [10 favorites]

Also, a migration of the typical MeFite to Reddit would raise the quality of discussion

hahaha My most upvoted comment on reddit was pointing out that Bulbasaur is not a frog with an onion on his back, but a frog with a bulb on his back. C'mon, the word "bulb" is in his goddamn name, how could it be an onion.

As an aside, I ran into a Reddit meetup at a bar, once we yukked it up over my saying "the narwhal bacons at midnight" I told them I was also on MetaFilter and they stopped speaking to me. One of them said "That is a weird site to be on".
posted by Ad hominem at 8:49 PM on May 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

It's not just Reddit. Half the articles posted to thebrowser.com get posted here the next day as well.
posted by joannemullen at 8:54 PM on May 28, 2011

Mitigated Shit?
My guess? This (someone put it on the food purposely, therefore, mitigated).

My position remains the same (via is good, via is virtuous, ought to be lauded; but one who does not via is not bad [as I noted, far bigger fish, acting not for love of sharing, but rather, profit, feel none such compunction]).
The song remains the same.
Also, yeah, I am also more curious why is it uniquely "reddit" that incites people to be Via-vangelists (Veeyavangelists)? Or maybe it isn't, perhaps it just jumps first to someones mind...

Sobaka, Chewies Russian canine uncle. The heart of the Dog.

Render unto reddit said credit, CC and copy; Web,
Do or die games on brinks, built of links and bricks.
kahn, you sunk my battle-man ship.

The Web, as they say, so say we all, the vile villains, vials of vital organs,
toothpick bridges. Shaky, temporary, viscerally impermanent
Back thou impertinent unwashed tenant, tennis nets, aren't tenets.

Don't look too closely, BBC big dogs digg no better, pissed on rugs.
On the web we are all dogs now 'til further notice.
Yet day to day, the faceless and feckless do as does Eddie Vedder.
Vader, father of the Uke.
Jump, wail, junk, dive, juke. Froth, lather, repeat.
Reddit Army. Retreat. I recant, retracted tracts, dragnet;
Just the Facts.

Rakes, on lawns, tired yawns, and shouting in-potently at glee.
True, false or indefatigable, undefined, pure, tasks refined.
Filters, jilted lovers jihad, tilted mills, caffenated jitters,
Mobiles Critters, caricatures of caution, cauterized.
Defining Fritters.

See the recluse, induced to recline, credit proffered not declined,
new car scented clear-cut-TP pine, toxic Psittacosis, cirrhosis, advocated
Avuncular, avatar, ark of the covered tent.
Inundated, most abundant anti-bacterial resistant strains.
Grab some copper for your fittings.
Don't look now, there goes another pair of infected Cranes.

Filters, on Feline, no, nein, Equine Fecal factors, fed up of K-Fed,
Sort through the reply chains, supply and demand.

I'd really prefer it if people could just credit Kevin Bacon, as he is connected to everything, so probly posted it elsewhere first. I would get all my posts from Kevin web2.poetry Bacon Blog.
posted by infinite intimation at 9:00 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

"One of them said "That is a weird site to be on"."

Yeah, dude, why are you hanging out with those creepy old pseudointellectual downers when you could be lulzing it up with us at f7u12 or fapping to gonewild instead?
posted by Jacqueline at 9:06 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

empath: "Examples please, because I think this is unmitigated horse shit."

Do you read Reddit that often? Because I see this happen all the time. It's hard to find examples for at the drop of a hat, since imgur links are so common (and you can't search comments for complaints), but here's at least one recent instance I could recall the link for.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:09 PM on May 28, 2011

Yeah, dude, why are you hanging out with those creepy old pseudointellectual downers

I think they thought I was a gay communist or something.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:29 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Well, MetaFilter does lean disproportionately gay and communist compared to the population at large, so I can see why they might infer that. :D
posted by Jacqueline at 9:34 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: Gay communists or something.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:35 PM on May 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Goddamn it people it took reddit 26 hours to do Bohemian Rhapsody. We could have beaten them. It's shit like this MetaFilter.

I miss Freddie.
posted by zarq at 9:45 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Second, I think MetaFilter has pretty much stopped having the "via" link as part of the posts since... oh, I dunno... for years now.

I still use it when appropriate. I know I'm not the only one.
posted by zarq at 9:48 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

I miss Freddie too.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:56 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Here is something great on reddit for those not acquainted.wildlife cameraman answers questions.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:45 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ad hominem: "You just have to take a look at /r/drawing to see how much user created art there is"

Eh, yeah, but MeFi's own hellojed posts a ton of his stuff on Reddit, and quite a few of it bit up on the front page or second page of r/all, but I always see his stuff via his Twitter or his Tumblr. Sometimes he mentions that a Reddit user gave him the idea, sometimes he doesn't. I don't think the onus should be on the post creator to chase the original content all the way down the rabbit hole just because there was a smidge of a chaance that the content originated somewhere else or was created for something else.
posted by Phire at 11:03 PM on May 28, 2011

Fair enough, I was not arguing in favor of a via, I agree with you that due to the way that links get passes around it is not very feasible to source things. I was just making the point that Reddit is more than a simple link aggregator.

Now that I think about it, I think the reason Reddit users have been so vocal, we never get meta posts wanting attribution for hacker news, is due to the karma system and gamification on Reddit. There is always consternation over who posted what first and never got karma.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:21 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

[via Cool Site of the Day]
posted by Rock Steady at 11:56 PM on May 28, 2011

Now that I think about it, I think the reason Reddit users have been so vocal,

Is it because they have the perspective of flat-worms? The empathy of suicide bombers? The ambiance of a meth lab? The taste of Donald Trump? The competence of FEMA? The charm of Dominique-Strauss-Kahn? The diplomacy of Muammar Gaddafi? The objectivity of the Spanish Inquisition?
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 11:59 PM on May 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

>> I'm not sure I've ever once seen a webcomic linked on reddit that hadn't been pulled off the creator's site and reuploaded to imgur without attribution.

> Examples please, because I think this is unmitigated horse shit.

Er, really? Sorry if I'm not being clear -- I'm talking about comics made by people who create webcomics independently of reddit (not comics created explicitly to be posted to reddit). If someone on reddit sees a comic elsewhere they think is funny, they could either link to the comic on the creator's site or download the comic and reupload it somewhere else and link to that. The latter is what I'm referring to.

I've seen dozens and dozens of different individual comics on the front page of reddit. XKCD and The Oatmeal comics are the only comics I've ever seen linked to on the creator's site. Every single other one has been ripped and reuploaded somewhere else.

It's disappointing because reddit's a big site, and there's a lot of webcomic artists I really love but I only ever see their stuff on reddit when it's been yanked out and hosted elsewhere without attribution.

Since you asked for examples, I went and skimmed the "pics" subreddit under "top". Here, honestly, are the first ten webcomics I found linked there:

http://i.imgur.com/uxizC.jpg
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lk344kvJhk1qcdgx6o1_500.png
http://i.imgur.com/A2fGq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/P4qUt.jpg
http://imgur.com/Nyh15
http://i.imgur.com/gDpe0.png
http://i.imgur.com/zvWHU.jpg
http://imgur.com/5NMC3

I didn't find any links to a comic hosted on the creator's site. The only attribution I see is the occasional watermarks on the comics themselves.
posted by churl at 12:13 AM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Via Twitter.
posted by Artw at 12:15 AM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

"...is due to the karma system and gamification on Reddit..."

I don't completely understand this aspect of Reddit. Sure, I check my Favorites count on my MetaFilter profile page daily and am pleased whenever I see that it has inched up a few more digits. But Redditors take competing for internet points to a whole 'nother level. I understand how up/downvoting affects how widely a particular link gets seen, but why are Redditors so obsessed with their individual karma numbers? Does it have any tangible effect on their interaction with the site or is it really just competing for virtual status?

I'm not trying to make fun of Redditors with this question -- I genuinely want to understand why they do this, because making a living by somehow motivating thousands of people to compete to see who can provide you the most/best free content is a pretty sweet business model.

(Yes, I do understand that this is also MetaFilter's business model, but MetaFilter seems less like a business and more like a place where a bunch of gay commies just tried to build a nice community but accidentally made a profit off of it. Also, I love this place for its uniqueness but that uniqueness that leads me suspect that creation of such a place may not be a repeatable event.)
posted by Jacqueline at 12:22 AM on May 29, 2011

I don't completely understand this aspect of Reddit. Sure, I check my Favorites count on my MetaFilter profile page daily and am pleased whenever I see that it has inched up a few more digits. But Redditors take competing for internet points to a whole 'nother level. I understand how up/downvoting affects how widely a particular link gets seen, but why are Redditors so obsessed with their individual karma numbers? Does it have any tangible effect on their interaction with the site or is it really just competing for virtual status?

Given my experience with both sites, I think the majority of Redditors seem far less concerned about karma than Mefites with favorites. I remember the great favorites-controversy of yesteryear where I was rather shocked to see the number of people who were extremely concerned about how many favorites they were acquiring and who was favoriting them. Like, really? People cared about who was favoriting them and how many they had? Truly bewildered.

I don't compete for karma, and usually the people who seemed most concerned with why their shit got downvoted are Reddit newbies who see it as a life or death thing. It seems like once you understand the site a bit, karma is not much of a concern. In any case, it's a very, very easy thing to acquire loads of link and comment karma.
posted by The ____ of Justice at 12:36 AM on May 29, 2011

> Yes, I do understand that this is also MetaFilter's business model, but MetaFilter seems less like a business and more like a place where a bunch of gay commies just tried to build a nice community but accidentally made a profit off of it

Actually, from last I heard, the majority of MetaFilter's business really comes from google ad words associated with Ask metafilter, and various other advertisements (most things you don't see as a paid for logged in user). If anything, it is the insightful and decent comments in the ask section of this site that keeps the lights on and the servers running more than the sum total of the supposedly stolen links to the front page.

I think the numbers are somewhere around 5-10 times the number of registered (ie, mostly likely paid accounts) will visit metafilter in a month than will post. And then an even smaller subset will participate in MetaTalk.

It says something about the signal to noise ratio for this website compared to a place like reddit.

And I really have to say, reddit feels like the 15-35 year old, white, white collar, male demographic of the internet. So hanging out there feels like I'm hanging out in my freshman dorm with all my fellow CS engineering students. And if reddit was the freshman dorm, then Metafilter was my first job at my campus coffee shop where I worked with all the gay commies and hungout with the non traditional students who had real jobs outside of school and children, and were doing their best to take advantage of their access to a college degree.
posted by mrzarquon at 12:43 AM on May 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

"People cared about who was favoriting them and how many they had?"

I used to comment almost exclusively on AskMe, so for me it was an affirmation that I had provided helpful information or advice. Helpfulness is one of my core values so every time someone clicked the + button it felt like I was being told, "You are such a good person! Yes you are! YES YOU ARE!"

The affect of that number on my self esteem has waned inversely to my level of participation on the grey and the green, because now I realize that I'm "earning" a lot of my favorites just by being snarky.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:58 AM on May 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

It's pretty funny, Jacqueline. You're hitting upon something I've come to feel about this place.

Here's the thing about metafilter. I don't see it as coffeehouse full of gay commies at all.

Aside from a couple of brilliant members and some great input from askme regulars (for whom I stay), I feel like this place has (forgive me), an inordinate amount of users who have a "wasn't that clever, mommy? Can I have a pat on the head now?" vibe to them.

It's like this place is crowded with people who were once considered precocious children but never quite outgrew the need for attention and affirmation. Yes, we all need attention and acceptance, but for some reason I always got the sense metafilter has an inordinate amount of people who really, really yearn to be seen as clever.
posted by The ____ of Justice at 1:21 AM on May 29, 2011 [14 favorites]

A number of unrelated points, because I don't feel like making them all separate comments:

1. Reddit is big. I'm not sure why anyone would think it any easier to characterize the entirety of its userbase than it would be to characterize Metafilter's.

2. Insulting redditors as a whole (as distinct from insulting reddit, the site) is uncivil and in effect insults MeFites, because there is overlap between the userbases.

3. As a redditor, I have to say that giving attribution to reddit is extremely silly. I'm not sure where even to start with this one. You might as well, had you found an article via the citations section of a wikipedia article, give attribution to wikipedia. Expecting any other aggregator/discussion site to give reddit attribution is bizarrely clannish; unless redditors made the content for reddit, there's neither any point to the practice nor any guarantee that the content was found at reddit anyway. I want reddit to do well, too, but it doesn't need Metafilter's help on this one.

4.1. Attempting to use reddit without managing your subreddits is going to give you a bad experience. Using reddit after you have managed your subreddits can give you a good experience (it certainly provides value for me).

Vocal Mefites have indicated their lack of interest in putting forth the effort required to find the subreddits that are compatible with their tastes (both in terms of links and discussion). I don't blame anyone for not wanting to (reddit really needs to improve its default subscription system), but it's easy to see why people that have gone through that effort would get defensive about it. It's a sunk cost, and we don't want to think that paying that cost was worthless. (c.f. Linux config)

4.2. If you find yourself thinking "reddit is like Metafilter, but worse in pretty much every way", then you are trying to use reddit like you use Metafilter, and this is not going to give you good results. They're good for entirely different things.

Metafilter gives me very few links in a day, and those links may or may not be useful to me, but the discussion is pretty good. Reddit gives me many links in a day, a far greater fraction are useful to me (because I've managed my subreddits, and the posts made to a subreddit do not have to assume a general audience as Metafilter posts generally do), and the comments are not particularly good.

So Metafilter is where I hang out to be social and be surprised by interesting things, and reddit is a useful tool for my professional development, giving me a firehose of career-related links in my RSS reader (where I can jump directly to what reddit links to without having to look at any comments at all if I don't want to see them).
posted by Jpfed at 1:49 AM on May 29, 2011 [9 favorites]

I can understand the hate here and being accused of all kinds of stuff - accusing others of lying or "stealing links" (wtf does that mean?) - because it wouldn't be civil discourse metatalk without it, but what annoys me is hos impossible it is to have a discussion without having to confront the mob mentality. You took offense at what I said and I should have expressed myself better, but repeating these things x times doesn't make them any more valid, it just makes me think that you're here for the pile-on. Why not chill and let me say my shit first?

As for the unkind and hurtful words some of you have said - I'm sooo defriending you right now AND YOU'RE ON MY LIST. Back the fuck up Internet People because I'm just pixels from CLOSING MY ACCOUNT!!!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:57 AM on May 29, 2011

It's like this place is crowded with people who were once considered precocious children but never quite outgrew the need for attention and affirmation. Yes, we all need attention and acceptance, but for some reason I always got the sense metafilter has an inordinate amount of people who really, really yearn to be seen as clever.

I think both of us would be happier if you moved exclusively to Reddit. Seems like a good match.
posted by codacorolla at 4:17 AM on May 29, 2011

Why not chill and let me say my shit first?

There's a line between threadsitting and participating, and another between participating and not participating. You made a comment that seemed to accuse people of lying about where they found links for fpps, and then declined to participate for 12 hours. It's hardly surprising (not necessarily good, mind you) that people would speculate about what the hell you meant by that "well..." comment. You're not a n00b; you know how shit goes here.
posted by rtha at 6:29 AM on May 29, 2011

So, here's a question for you. When y'all post something you found via Metafilter on your Facebook or your Twitter, do you give attribution? I'm not asking you what you think is right or proper, I'm asking you what you actually do. I've wanted to ask this question for a while now.
posted by santaslittlehelper at 7:05 AM on May 29, 2011

Foci for Analysis, now that you've returned to the conversation, could you please explain what "As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well..." means? I genuinely don't think anyone here knows what you meant by that.
posted by hot soup girl at 7:41 AM on May 29, 2011

Foci for Analysis: You took offense at what I said and I should have expressed myself better, but repeating these things x times doesn't make them any more valid, it just makes me think that you're here for the pile-on. Why not chill and let me say my shit first?

I've re-read your latest comment a few times now and I think I missed the part where you expressed yourself better. Several people asked for clarification to your previous comment and all you appear to have done is avoid the question by talking about how you don't like pile-ons. While I don't wanna join in, I am genuinely curious what exactly you meant.
posted by gman at 7:45 AM on May 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

The ____ of Justice: "Given my experience with both sites, I think the majority of Redditors seem far less concerned about karma than Mefites with favorites."

If that's the case, why do we see posts like this demanding credit for linkage from Reddit every few weeks here? And why do I see similar demands all over the Internet, on hacker news and even on personal blogs sometimes? You can say that Redditors are less concerned as a whole about 'karma,' but they seem to be the only ones wandering around the Internet demanding to be thanked for showing something to somebody.

Besides, it's clear just from looking at the design of Reddit that it's a site that's entirely built upon karma. Unless you get up votes, most people will never even see your comments. Now that they've made changes to the up vote system over there, I think even hacker news probably has a more discussion-friendly design.
posted by koeselitz at 8:15 AM on May 29, 2011

The real question is whatever happened to "digg". That redesign seems to have killed it deadd.
posted by Rumple at 8:32 AM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

People on Reddit post links to images on imgur because the sheer volume of hits from a front page link on Reddit will bring most webcomic servers (which are mostly made from old toilet paper tubes and pipe cleaners) to their knees in a heartbeat.

There was a period of time just before imgur arrived when your chances of clicking on a working image link were about 50/50.

In discussions about this topic, the majority of webcomic artists are quite pleased about a) the attention they get from a front page Reddit link and b) their servers not bursting into flames.
posted by Aquaman at 9:14 AM on May 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

digg is indeed on life support. I've been waiting for an update on that epic Reddit vs Digg War (1, 2) comic. Part 3 will hopefully come out some day.
posted by cashman at 9:17 AM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I didn't realize Kevin Rose quit Digg back in March.
posted by crunchland at 9:41 AM on May 29, 2011

This is one of the strangest call-outs and even more bizarre that it's been done multiple times. Do reddit-folks really think that the internet revolves around them? Half the links on the front page of Mefi are one's that I've already seen but I never go to reddit.
posted by octothorpe at 9:53 AM on May 29, 2011

When y'all post something you found via Metafilter on your Facebook or your Twitter, do you give attribution?

Yes. If I don't link to the fpp itself - and I often don't, because what I want people on my fb to see is the link itself, not necessarily mefi's discussion of said link - I say something like "Thanks, MetaFilter!"
posted by rtha at 10:04 AM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm sooo defriending you right now

Wait... there's "friending" on MetaFilter? When did this start? I can't find any mention of it in my profile page... Is this a MeFi Plus feature?
posted by hippybear at 10:19 AM on May 29, 2011

The real question is whatever happened to "digg". That redesign seems to have killed it deadd.

Yes and no. What it killed was the amount of time people spent on digg, so metrics like pageviews and time onsite and bounce percentage are way down, but as many people visit it now as did before, pretty much. Reddit is still exploding, though.

Interesting thing i just noticed looking at Alexa, though -- Metafilter has an 80% bounce rate! -- 80% of people look at one page and leave. (Compared to 25% for reddit).

Do you guys have some metric of what page people are landing at? Is it mostly people hitting an askme page from google, getting an answer to their question and leaving, or is it mostly people hitting the front page and following a link, and never reading comments.
posted by empath at 10:40 AM on May 29, 2011

Well what?

Well, OK, already.
posted by y2karl at 10:51 AM on May 29, 2011

Several people asked for clarification to your previous comment and all you appear to have done is avoid the question by talking about how you don't like pile-ons. While I don't wanna join in, I am genuinely curious what exactly you meant.

Don't feed the troll! What they meant was *holds thumb to nose, waggles fingers*.
posted by carsonb at 11:06 AM on May 29, 2011

a fun little exercise is to search metatalk for digg, fark, slashdot and see how similar the discussion is. "are we becoming too much like _________???" "stealing content from ________!!!" "________ is full of unwashed masses!"
posted by nadawi at 11:37 AM on May 29, 2011

One can very easily go to a site like popurls and see what's on the front page of reddit, digg, slashdot, metafilter, etc and when it was posted and do a comparison. If it really matters you'd dig deeper.

Interesting about digg. It seems like it just fell of the face of the internet somewhat - from ubiquitous to memepool in a few weeks.

I miss memepool.
posted by Rumple at 11:43 AM on May 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

I do that, too, rtha, but instead of "thanks Metafilter", I'll put via Metafilter, via BWE, or wherever the link came from. I assumed that's what would be required in a Metafilter post (and one of the ((many)) reasons I've never posted to the blue.

A few weeks ago I found some interesting content that wouldn't need to be via'd, because I found it in a Google search. A guy collecting pictures of ugly airport flooring. I briefly thought about posting it to the blue, then heard a cortex-y voice saying "this would be better suited to a personal blog" and thought better of it. But it wasn't via anybody but me.
posted by santaslittlehelper at 12:02 PM on May 29, 2011

codacorolla: Well, I suppose I got pretty ranty there.

Allow me to clarify: Metafilter isn't much different in terms of discussion quality to most of the sites I frequent on the internet. It has its share of geniuses and idiots. (The racist, sexist stuff is banned, but it's not like people can't find other ways to demonstrate their stupidity.)

Askme, however, is awesome, and a whole different story altogether.
posted by The ____ of Justice at 12:26 PM on May 29, 2011

> I can understand the hate here and being accused of all kinds of stuff - accusing others of lying or "stealing links" (wtf does that mean?) - because it wouldn't be civil discourse metatalk without it, but what annoys me is hos impossible it is to have a discussion without having to confront the mob mentality. You took offense at what I said and I should have expressed myself better, but repeating these things x times doesn't make them any more valid, it just makes me think that you're here for the pile-on. Why not chill and let me say my shit first?

As for the unkind and hurtful words some of you have said - I'm sooo defriending you right now AND YOU'RE ON MY LIST. Back the fuck up Internet People because I'm just pixels from CLOSING MY ACCOUNT!!!

Oh, grow up.
posted by languagehat at 12:31 PM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

santaslittlehelper, that sounds like a kind of cool post to me, not personal blog-ish at all. You should flesh it out a bit and go for it.
posted by donnagirl at 12:37 PM on May 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

last night i read parts of a conversation on reddit where multiple users discussed their pedophilia in depth, one comment including links to his favorite "softcore" models (totally clothed! nothing illegal!). i was reminded how glad i am for a community like metafilter.
posted by nadawi at 12:37 PM on May 29, 2011

"When y'all post something you found via Metafilter on your Facebook or your Twitter, do you give attribution?"

Oftentimes I'll add a quick "Via MetaFilter," but I'm not religious about it.

If I think the MetaFilter discussion on the link is a good one then I'll definitely follow up with a comment linking to the MetaFilter thread as well.

And sometimes my only response to some of my friends' arguments is to link to a particular comment in which another MeFite has already done a better job owning that point than I ever could hope to do myself.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:40 PM on May 29, 2011

As for links not necessarily coming from Reddit, well...

I should have clarified this earlier. I simply meant that I think that people do post links that they have seen on Reddit. I DO NOT believe people are lying, stealing, etc, etc.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:48 PM on May 29, 2011

santaslittlehelper: We've already had two posts on casino carpets. I bet that your one about airport carpets would be equally welcome.
posted by hippybear at 1:17 PM on May 29, 2011

> I simply meant that I think that people do post links that they have seen on Reddit

That may in fact be the case, or it may be that their friend send them the link. There is no easy way to prove as such, with the exception of someone actually copying the reddit text verbatim (which is lame, and possibly the only justifiable excuse for flagging / mentioning the lack of citation imho).

Lets take for example the most recent case which apparently started this whole meta:

"Thats a Paddlin" the metafilter post, uses it's own title text, and quotes from the linked youtube video.

Searching for the same youtube video on Reddit shows three posts in the 1-2 days prior to the MeFi post, but entirely different posts, titles, and no via or citation to the 'original' poster a day prior to the two doubles.

Not to mention that the original video was posted three years ago to youtube.

Now some more cursory googling shows that this was posted on 5/24 (wtf is up with sites not giving REAL time stamps, fuckers) to videosift.com, which was then reposted to bestweekever.tv, and then retweeted around 5/25 here.

Now searching twitter with just the shortened youtube URL appears to have the first public tweet around 5/25 as well.

And as you can see, it has exploded everywhere on the internet since 5/25, which depending on how reddit counts days (seriously, anyone figure out the date/time of this post would sort this out) could be the result of it being posted to Reddit or what caused it to be posted to reddit. Being as it has only 167 upvotes vs the spread on Twitter, I'd guess that reddit just posted it after it was already circling twitter a few times.

So, as you can see, just because a link shows up on reddit before it shows up on metafilter doesn't mean when the link shows up here it's because someone saw it on reddit. In fact, reddit may have just captured the meme circling the web (being as it's a giant fucking firehose of links, that rewards people for making first link posts), while it took longer to reach the saturation point for MetaFilter to take notice.
posted by mrzarquon at 1:35 PM on May 29, 2011 [13 favorites]

Oh, I see now, the first reddit post was submitted on 5/26.

So yeah, does this guy need to cite siftvideo, the tweet he got it from, or bestweekever.tv?
posted by mrzarquon at 1:42 PM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Not to be a dick, but there have been two posts that I saw on Reddit first since the kayak post. the Whitest Kids You Know pledge of allegiance and the Slate commuting article.

I think this is interesting, I think the barrier to post is significantly higher on MetaFilter. I would bet money these links start circulating the internet consciousness and simply make it to the Reddit front page before someone gets their steam up to post them here.

Reddit seems to have latched on to a MetaFilter favorite.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:01 PM on May 29, 2011

I don't really mean to be snarky, but I am trying to point out how difficult it is to find the original 'author' for a work that is primarily sharing a video of a guy paddling a canoe.

Also, it doesn't help Reddits' case of trying to not be a bunch of self absorbed link and karma/credit hogs when they immediately assume that because it was posted there (with no duplicates) it somehow is the first time ever someone on the internet has seen it, therefore all subsequent posts including those links must have obviously seen it on reddit and posted it without attribution.

And while there may be cases of someone seeing a link on reddit, deciding to share it on MetaFilter, and then not using the via, the subject matter and 'link value' in question is almost is so trivial that arguing over it is just seen as petty. Which explains the level of dismissal and disinterest in the whole idea of giving reddit attribution for what is usually almost always single link posts with no meat, stuff that really isn't the better MeFi Posts anyway.
posted by mrzarquon at 2:04 PM on May 29, 2011

> the Whitest Kids You Know pledge of allegiance and the Slate commuting article.

The pledge came out on Friday, Slate article on Thursday.

MetaFilter is by design not meant for breaking news and first post articles. So Reddit will always have popular media reposted there before MetaFilter does. Because the only bonus points MetaFilter users get for a first post is for it to not be a double. And even then the person with the better, but later to the party, post may get to keep theirs around. And when it does, it is almost always done so gracefully.

Compared to Reddit, where frequent first posters with upvotes do actually get a benefit of the fact that their post will rise above the noise and get noticed. So higher karma, higher base upvotes it looks like, and higher up on the queue your post is likely to get noticed. And the longer it will stick around.

In short, first post wins, gives the user more status among the community, and more likely ability to have their next post seen, giving them more karma and so on. And no wonder people fight over via's, an interesting post by a new user could easily be stolen by a users with higher karma, and therefore wipe out the new users ability to accumulate karma since the established users post will rise to the top before the newbies does.

Talk about a race to the fucking bottom.

Metafilter, one post per 24 hours, regardless of the past posts quality (infact, badly formatted or framed posts sometimes get deleted with a note to clean it up and try again later), and regardless of the users post history, shows up on the front page in chronological order.
posted by mrzarquon at 2:19 PM on May 29, 2011

I should have clarified this earlier. I simply meant that I think that people do post links that they have seen on Reddit. I DO NOT believe people are lying, stealing, etc, etc.

Sure. Some will add a (via) and a lot won't. And a lot of people who post links that have also appeared have not seen them on Reddit, because we do not read Reddit - we found them on facebook or twitter or elsewhere.
posted by rtha at 2:42 PM on May 29, 2011

And a lot of people who post links that have also appeared

s/b And a lot of people who post links that have also appeared on Reddit...
posted by rtha at 2:43 PM on May 29, 2011

Not to be a dick, but there have been two posts that I saw on Reddit first since the kayak post. the Whitest Kids You Know pledge of allegiance and the Slate commuting article.

I don't visit Reddit, and I made the Pledge post because someone forwarded me the link, I looked at it, and thought it was funny enough and topical enough to share on a vacation weekend that celebrates war. Reddit might be a great site, but I don't get my post material from there, and I don't plan to "give credit" to what is ultimately a blind aggregator of other people's work, which in any case I do not visit. Hope this clarifies why I "left out" attribution to them.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:49 PM on May 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

And I'll note that I have added a (via) to my posts, where appropriate. It's a courtesy that I extend, but speaking as a prolific poster on this site, I would hope it never becomes a requirement for participation.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:56 PM on May 29, 2011

Didn't mean to imply you should "give credit",I don't think you reposted it from reddit, I simply saw it there first. I am not interested in VIAs anyway, what I am interested in is how these links spread.If somebody wanted to do some research it would be interesting to obtain and analyze the logs from a site that went viral.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:13 PM on May 29, 2011

Yeah, I get where you're coming from.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:46 PM on May 29, 2011

Yep, I've just passed my Metafilter birthday. I've now been here long enough to see this complaint come and go. Again.
posted by maryr at 6:55 PM on May 29, 2011

At least "credit to Reddit" is a nice rhyme.
posted by WalkingAround at 7:38 PM on May 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Reddit is one of my weekly (sometimes daily) reads. The subgroups I'm in definitely have original content and analysis. Questions posted without external links ("self.reddit") can lead to discussions that are the equal of those on ask.metafilter.

However, to get reddit to show me interesting things, I've had to subscribe to subgroups (and delete ones I'm not interested in). This results in a front page experience much better (for me, and I suspect most Metafilter users) than the default.

That said, I don't assume that a link on Reddit is original and worth via-ing unless it's obviously unique - a well-formed post and something that's not also in my Twitter/Tumblr/Hacker News streams.

open your eyes
posted by zippy at 9:01 PM on May 29, 2011

Look, if you see a post here that you saw before on Reddit (or boing boing, or kottle, or drudge, or anywhere else on the web), do what the rest of us do --- bask in the satisfaction that you're better than the rest of us, that you're closer to the orifice where all the memes poop out of, and just leave it at that.
posted by crunchland at 9:09 PM on May 29, 2011 [7 favorites]

Re the clever snarky takedown thiong and the favourites thing, I don;t really know if they are completly linked - a lot of the people who are heavily invested in rubbishing every post that comes through the place are the same that HATE favorites.

That's actually one of the things I like about Reddit - people tend to actually like it when someone posts a link, and don't line up to take potshots at it for not being substantial enough or whatever, so the comments don't have the shooting gallery feel they do in Metafilter sometimes.

Of course, it could be that a bunch of links get buried and the comments for those are just as toxic as Metafilters is.
posted by Artw at 1:29 PM on May 30, 2011

If an author of a medical journal paper finds another paper relevant to their topic through PubMed, and incorporates some of the ideas from that paper into their own, they have to cite the other paper. They don't have to cite PubMed.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:31 PM on May 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

Via Bing.

(just kidding)
posted by Artw at 1:32 PM on May 30, 2011

I did feel the need to add a via here, since I stole not one but two connetced links from RPS. Not sure if I would have called it that way if this thread wasn;t on my mind.
posted by Artw at 2:12 PM on May 30, 2011

"Not to be a dick, but there have been two posts that I saw on Reddit first since the kayak post. the Whitest Kids You Know pledge of allegiance and the Slate commuting article."

Contra-anecdote: I saw the pledge video on Facebook several times before I saw it here. I saw the commuting article here first, but it showed up on a blog I read shortly. I have yet to see either on Reddit! And that's not for lack of being on Reddit this weekend. I think it just depends a lot on which subReddits you're subscribed to. Your Reddit experience is not necessarily representative of anyone else's Reddit experience.
posted by Jacqueline at 6:07 PM on May 30, 2011

MetaFilter: not necessarily representative of anyone else's Reddit experience.
posted by hippybear at 9:00 PM on May 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

Dog sings Lady GaGa (via reddit (via youtube (via Bill's twitter (via Bill's aunt Jane's facebook page (via an email from Bill's aunt Jane's sister (via an email from Bill's aunt Jane's sister's co-worker Stella (via Bill's aunt Jane's sister's co-worker Stella's niece's videocamera (via Bill's aunt Jane's sister's co-worker Stella's niece's dog Poopsie))))))
posted by pardonyou? at 1:08 PM on May 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

This is the kind of expressed concern that actually creates a physical response in me, bordering on a convulsion. One end of the intellectual property grievance spectrum is whole-sale piracy. The other end (likely due to good intentions gone crazy) is insisting that you have to tell everyone exactly which friend of yours showed you that great library book, because finding content is as credit worthy as making it. I'm convinced that there is a good heart at the bottom of this kind of thing, but it drives me just bonkers whenever I hear it.
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:52 PM on May 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

I, too, am repulsed that the act of finding something is more "valuable" than making something these days.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:11 AM on June 1, 2011