Don't you think they should be showing comments from "gold" users differently? Kind of like what PG did a while ago using different colors highlight distinguished users...
That would segment Reddit immediately into at least four communities among the gold/ungold and supports-highlighting/opposes-highlighting axes, and I suspect many members of those communities are going to be violently passionate that only their position is acceptable for True Reddit Supporters and that the heretics must burn.
Judging from the comment thread[1], it looks like that's already happening.
The top rated comment starts, "As someone who donated..."
And from the second highest comment, 'I will not be "donating" money to a corporation which has shown no real initiative in growing the site.'
That said, I think any drama would just be background noise for the vast majority of users. People go to reddit for entertaining links and funny or interesting comments. Drama doesn't threaten that.
Maybe being able to buy virtual swag might be a better way to go for Reddit, in a similar fashion to Dungeons & Dragons Online.
Tiny [icons] of narwhal tusks, lolcats or rashers of bacon that could appear next to your name could prove quite popular with the community. Similarly, being able to not only upvote, downvote, but also put a 'hex' on a comment I could see as being an amusing pastime. Not to mention, they already have the beginnings of an achievement system in place with the awards panel. I could see them greatly expanding that with quest style achievements; "posted 5 links", say, to earn /reddit/credits.
I'm not sure how it would affect the community, but the revenue possibilities are endless.
Depends on which section you read. I introduced my fiancee to /r/IAmA and she thinks reddit is mostly about child molesting drug-dealers who fly fighter-jets and rescue endangered species, because they were raised in a polygamist cult family living in the Everest base camp.
To me it's mostly proggit, hastily scanned once every 1-2 days.
/. has had editing problems, but the comment quality has not, to my experience, dipped that low. It's not as high as HN, but it hasn't dipped that low, either.
HN and /. are on opposite ends of a spectrum--HN is what happens before the trolls arrive, given you seed the community well, and /. is what happens after the trolls leave.
I always though the biggest problem with slashdot was that the moderation somehow lead to an extremely insular community. There was a prevailing "slashdot" opinion and that was pretty much the only opinion expressed in highly moderated comments. I was a reader for years and that's pretty much why I left.
What's strange is that slashdot moderation isn't that different from any other site, but for whatever reason, I think it hurt slashdot far more than any other site. Maybe, it's just that by default not that many comments are displayed as opposed to reddit or hn, so it's all the more noticeable when the top 20 or so comments all are basically the same.
I usually found a lot of highly moderated comments opposing the "Slashdot groupthink", particularly ones that criticized the "Slashdot groupthink" by name. But there were a lot of shared cultural assumptions there as well.
There is a 'lounge' subreddit that only donators can get into. I don't think they should treat people differently on the main part of reddit, it'll cause too many issues/arguments.
