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0 pointsbnralt2y ago0 comments

> With the result that Reddit lost a popular, interesting feature and a lot of cultural relevance.

Looking through /r/IAMA, and I can't say that I'm seeing that. If you look through the top voted AMA's of all time there, the vast majority are some years after Victoria's departure. Comparing those to the few on there from prior to her departure doesn't seem to show much of a difference, at least from what I can tell.

It does seem like the sub peaked a few years back, but again, that was still several years after her departure.

0 comments

CommieBobDole2y ago

I don't know if this is a good metric because Reddit five years ago had 4x as many active users than 9 years ago.

It would probably be an interesting exercise to download the data for all the AMAs and adjust by MAU to see what the actual most popular threads were, but I'm not going to do that right now.

bnraltOP2y ago

> I don't know if this is a good metric because Reddit five years ago had 4x as many active users than 9 years ago.

It does today, yet most of the top upvoted ones aren't from the last few years. Rather, most seem to be from 2 to 3 years after Victoria was fired. So they seemed to get more popular in the first few years after she was fired, and then less after that. I'm not sure that can simplistically be chalked up to an expanded user base.

The most upvoted AMA of all time is Obama's from a decade ago. However, that was a year before Victoria started working there (she only worked there two years from what I can find).

None of this is to denigrate her work, for what it's worth. Just that the doomsday scenarios that were given back then (IAMA mods were claiming they wouldn't be able to continue unless Reddit changed its decision) never came to pass.

chimeracoder2y ago

> It does today, yet most of the top upvoted ones aren't from the last few years. Rather, most seem to be from 2 to 3 years after Victoria was fired. So they seemed to get more popular in the first few years after she was fired, and then less after that.

The subreddit was a default subreddit for a while, and no longer is. So for some years, every new Reddit user was automatically subscribed to it, and that stopped being the case.

Everything you're saying actually corroborates OP's claim.

duckmysick2y ago

> If you look through the top voted AMA's of all time there, the vast majority are some years after Victoria's departure.

It could also be explained by a growing userbase. More users in recent years means more upvotes in threads from the same period, compared to older ones. I checked a few big subreddits that are at least 10 years old and their all-time top posts are from up to five years ago.

Also, reddit changed how the upvotes are counted somewhere in 2016.

1024core2y ago

> If you look through the top voted AMA's of all time there

That doesn't account for user growth though. You should normalize the figures by dividing by the total number of Reddit users, or at least IAmA subscribers.

bnraltOP2y ago

If the sub is experiencing substantial user growth isn't that an indication that the sub is doing well?

TremendousJudge2y ago

No, /r/IamA was a default subreddit for many years, thus all new users would get subscribed to it (I think defaults have been gone for some years now, but subscriber inflation already happened)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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CommieBobDole2y ago

I don't know if this is a good metric because Reddit five years ago had 4x as many active users than 9 years ago.

It would probably be an interesting exercise to download the data for all the AMAs and adjust by MAU to see what the actual most popular threads were, but I'm not going to do that right now.

bnraltOP2y ago

> I don't know if this is a good metric because Reddit five years ago had 4x as many active users than 9 years ago.

The most upvoted AMA of all time is Obama's from a decade ago. However, that was a year before Victoria started working there (she only worked there two years from what I can find).

chimeracoder2y ago

The subreddit was a default subreddit for a while, and no longer is. So for some years, every new Reddit user was automatically subscribed to it, and that stopped being the case.

Everything you're saying actually corroborates OP's claim.

duckmysick2y ago

> If you look through the top voted AMA's of all time there, the vast majority are some years after Victoria's departure.

Also, reddit changed how the upvotes are counted somewhere in 2016.

1024core2y ago

> If you look through the top voted AMA's of all time there

That doesn't account for user growth though. You should normalize the figures by dividing by the total number of Reddit users, or at least IAmA subscribers.

bnraltOP2y ago

If the sub is experiencing substantial user growth isn't that an indication that the sub is doing well?

TremendousJudge2y ago

No, /r/IamA was a default subreddit for many years, thus all new users would get subscribed to it (I think defaults have been gone for some years now, but subscriber inflation already happened)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse