Fractal Press

I’ve been following reddit for a while now, beginning when it was just a wee YCombinator startup. Reddit is a social news aggregrator where members can vote up or down on user submitted content. The items with the highest number of net votes make it up and into the front page.

This post is from the perspective of a user who submits content to reddit. I make the case that with the increasing popularity of reddit, and the very large number of incoming submissions, the probability of the user seeing her post climb to the front page is more a function of chance/luck than a function of the quality of the content submitted.

Competition

As reddit has grown popular, the number of new submissions has grown drastically. This has rendered every submission highly sensitive to a single up or down vote. A single down-vote (turning the points to zero) in the early days resulted in only a small change in relative ranking, with the submission at least remaining on the first page of the new category for a while. With the large influx of submissions these days, a single down-vote quickly pushes the submission into the second or even third page of the “new” category where users look for fresh submissions to vote on. This essentially pushes the submission out of visibility for most voters.

This sensitivity to small changes means that the submission becomes increasingly exposed to chance events. The following may play an enormous role in determining whether a submission “makes it” or not:

• Whether the first few voters are familiar with the topic
• Whether the first few voters have other submissions at around the same time
• Whether the first few voters like or dislike the design or color scheme of the submission
• Whether another “important” news story has just broken out (making the submission sensitive to the constantly changing state of the world)
• …

Note that the first few voters alone can play a very crucial role in determining the success of the submission. This is especially true if there is no dearth of quality content being submitted in the new page. This sensitivity to initial conditions and small changes means that “noise” and luck alone will drown out the quality as a factor in determining success.

Incremental changes in performance result in large changes in relative ranking. For this whiplash effect to be present, there only need be a relatively large number of submissions above a certain baseline that has a chance of “making” it on reddit. With the increasing number of blogs, new feeds, and real-time updates, this sensitivity to small changes will only get worse.

Rewards

In the early days, a #1 spot on reddit brought about 5000 unique visitors to the website under question. Now, the #1 spot can expect traffic several times that number. This increases the incentive for more and more submissions, as the rewards have increased. This means a smaller and smaller percentage of submissions make it to the coveted front page. The “head” of the long-tail is growing narrower.

Thus the highly salient reward mechanism only increases the competition in the submissions and encourages a large influx of new content hoping to make it to the front page. This increases the sensitivity of submissions to initial conditions, luck, and factors outside the submitter’s or writer’s control.

So reddit’s continued success (attracting more users) will only exacerbate this effect.

Utility of Skill

If there is any skill in picking out good content for submission or even in writing good content specifically for reddit (ahem), that skill is completely washed out in the competition for limited slots. The submitter will find little utility in any skill she may have in this game.

So skill and effort are not directly rewarded in this environment. They are necessary, but hardly sufficient any more.

Summary

As reddit’s success attracts more and more submitters, the utility of skill and effort in submissions will fall drastically and make the submission’s success more sensitive to chance events and “noise” outside the control of the submitter or content creator.

This may or may not discourage new submissions (which, incidentally, will help increase the utility of skill - it’s self-regulating to a certain extent), but any new attempts to “improve” or “fix” reddit may need to address this very fundamental problem.

I believe competition plays a similar role in many other areas, such as in MBA applications, where only incremental edges such as a better essay are allowed by design. The amount of competition for slots in top universities means that almost every applicant is well above the baseline for admission, so small changes in performance will result in large changes in relative ranking. This again results in noise playing a larger than expected role in admissions.