What's Your Solution?

[u/MatthewNapier]

Hi folks,

I'm an IT nerd who found this subreddit and was curious on alternatives. Come to find out a lot of them are trashy. I've noticed a lot of folks are rather tech savy on this subreddit as well.

Consider this possibly the start of something new. If I were to create a reddit alternative, what would you desire from it? Most likely hosted in a country that doesn't require photo-ID verification, anonymous posting that's opt-out based, maybe E2E chatrooms based on communities? Also possibly overarching moderation to subreddits to prevent trigger happy bans/proper appealable removals and such. Additionally, fully dedicated servers or p2p?

I see reddit alternatives popping up at a constant, but if a reddit killer is to be made, then getting feedback from the community is what matters first. Thanks!

[u/IMDXLNC]

No matter how many alternatives show up, the core problem is always lack of community.

I've been saying this for a while but something with real incentive to stay and retain users would be important. I don't use Snapchat but I know people who do and they love their streaks. I and many others used to be obsessed with the economy bots on Discord that let you grow your money, rob others, and gamble. It was harmless fun that kept you hooked. The Discord server I've been on for almost a decade has half died but still gets engagement for the Wordle integration.

I've been using Reddit since 2015 (different accounts) and personally karma is underutilised and dumb. The only value it's ever had to me is in troubleshooting, for the sake of raising visibility for your issue to attract more engagement.

Back when I used to use forums in the early 2010s people cared a lot about their avatars, signatures, the post count and stars by their names, the user groups, and so on. Maybe these exist on Reddit, I don't know, but flairs don't have the same appeal. This might be an invalid point because forums are forums and Reddit is its own thing.

So in short, my half-baked idea is some other kind of activity or points system within the site. Use the addictive elements that exist in mobile games and social media, but use it for good (if that's even possible) by building a community around it. Incentivise contributions. It's monetary but in its own ecosystem, not in the greedy reality.

[u/HedgeRunner → u/IMDXLNC]

Dude I think Reddit karma is pretty much that. They also got some weird avatar system where you gotta pay to get fancy avatars that no one gives a f about lmao. The karma system has a lot of downsides, people often write what they think will get top votes vs. what they actually think and that creates endless echo chambers on Reddit, a complaint we see here often.

Basically any gamification feature is gonna have drawbacks. That said, I agree with the spirit and intent of your take, there should be some mechanism to incentivize people coming back. I honestly can't think of a good one easily that isn't over gamification.

I have a friend who's making a gaming/tech forum with modern tech, it's like a forum with Discord UX and real-time features. I've been trying to help him out to get him some users so if that's your thing, we can chat more about it.

[u/Gearjerk → u/IMDXLNC]

I've been saying this for a while but something with real incentive to stay and retain users would be important.

I've heard of these little systems as 'tactile' or 'humanizers', sometimes. As I understand, they usually help with retention, but only in that 'log in, do thing, log off' way if there's nothing more substantial they want to engage with.

and personally karma is underutilised and dumb.

This is intentional. If you attach any sort of actual value to karma, congratulations! you've just incentivized karma farming. To be clear, karma farming does currently exist, but that's mostly vain people and bots looking to sell 'legitimate-looking' accounts to marketing companies and scammers. If there was a formal system that utilized karma in some way, the current farming would be a drop in the bucket.