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Comment by zwaps | Hacker News Reader

I have a question regarding the reddit redesign (of a while ago). This is not a joke. I literally have trouble reading relevant comments there now.

I guess I don't understand how to browse reddit correctly. Say there is a thread and it has replies. Now I want to read the replies. Via "old.reddit.com", the replies are listed below.

In the new reddit, most replies are hidden. If I click on "continue thread etc.", then again a window opens where some replies are shown, but not all - neither in the branch of the thread nor generally. If I scroll down, I end up in a different reddit thread altogether.

I have to frantically click several links to find all replies, or alternatively I switch to the old layout.

I am convinced I am just dumb, but I just don't get the interface. So let me genuinely ask: How does one browse reddit correctly nowadays? There must be some logic behind the redesign that I don't get.

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If you’re dumb, then so am I. Like everyone else here, when I ran into that problem, I abandoned the new reddit for old.reddit.

It helps to realize that you’re not really their target audience. The goal is to keep reddit users on reddit for as long as possible. Counterintuitively, one way to do that is to stuff the screen full of seemingly unrelated stuff, because most people are there to see unrelated stuff. They’re not there to read a comment thread in full. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that 90% of traffic doesn’t read comments at all, most of the time.

> In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that 90% of traffic doesn’t read comments at all, most of the time.

I don't think so. Askreddit is one of the most popular subreddits.

One solution is to simply use old reddit until they get their act together. With a plugin it is easy: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

Not sure how long they will keep old.reddit.com around though...

> With a plugin it is easy

Why would you need a plugin? You just set it in your preferences and it will switch to that as soon as you log on, isn't it...? At least that's what happens to me.

they switch you back to the "new" design every day or so and you have to switch it again.

That's simply not true.

It does happen that you can have the setting on and them sending you to new reddit. It’s happened many times for me.

It did happen to me, but only a few times and it was transient, it seemed like the frontend can't reach the settings DB intermittently.

I'm really not sure if I can attribute Hanlon's razor to this. When you log in, that's by definition hitting the database, and should return your settings. Place that in a cookie/localstorage and it should still know your settings offline.

There is no single database at the scale reddit operates.

My bad, *a database.

I'm pretty sure I saw in an AMA that Reddit has an Accounts database (maybe split further by sharding) which I'd assume holds your settings as well.

But I rescind my point; it could very well be attributed to database infrastructure issues, whether that's hitting a shard with stale data, or splitting account settings to its own DB that it can't access when you log in.

at this point they should have those setting at an equilibrium

Same for me. Some report this doesn't work but I can't confirm if they are choosing the correct settings as I have never had an issue with that even on multiple accounts.

It's useful if you use something like Firefox containers and aren't necessarily logged in when you visit a reddit link

I use the Multi-Account Containers extension [1] and make sure the "always with" option is ticked, so the browser will automatically switch to the right container, where the right cookies live. This said, obviously it doesn't work in Private Windows and it's indeed annoying as hell to use Reddit in that case.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account...

How many years have we been saying that now?

I have wondered the exact same thing. Hiding and fragmenting the comments like they do is such an incredibly awful UX that it seems incomprehensible to me that it's intentional. And yet, it sounds like we aren't missing anything, the design really is that bad.

I guess it's supposed to increase engagement/addiction, but it does the complete opposite for me. Having to click through 5+ links just to try to read 15 short comments is extremely aggravating. I know about old.reddit but its days are probably numbered so why keep fighting with a site that hates me and my time? I just avoid Reddit whenever possible these days.

New reddit is so bad I can’t believe they are pushing it. It’s slower. It’s less usable. The us is worse. It’s worse in every way. I hate it and I only say that I hate anything very, very rarely.

I think on the redesign you have to be logged in to show all the replies by default. That has been my experience anyway.

Yes, when you log in the "click to see more comments" largely goes away. It's unusable without being logged in -- perhaps by design.

If you ever figure it out please post it here. Funnily enough it would probably be front page news here and on Reddit :)

i also just open every sub conversation in new tab, on occasions when i can't login to reddit. (since they conveniently forget that you were on old.reddid.com if you are not logged in )

They just want people to use their app. I honestly think their strategy is to piss off non app users into using their app. I tried out the app after years of mobile safari browsing and the experience is clearly heavily optimized.

Reddit is the worst site on the web. I absolutely hate trying to read anything on there for all the reasons you listed, and I _never_ go there intentionally. I have no idea why something so user-hostile is seemingly so popular.

The new layout is just bizarre, I'm guessing their real goal was something else, like more clicks (on ads?).

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