54 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: Making Redditing Simpler
I suspect those numbers are low simply because most users these days don't even know old.reddit exists as an option. I'd bet more people would adopt it if it were actually advertised.
Comment by shiruken at 07/03/2023 at 19:02 UTC
25 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Realistically, most people would likely be turned off by the ancient design and confusing user experience. That was a longtime complaint about the website even prior to the launch of the Redesign.
The vast majority of Redditors (>70%) are using the platform via the official mobile apps.
Comment by Bardfinn at 07/03/2023 at 21:19 UTC
-5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Most people use iOS / android apps, instead of visiting the site in a browser window. That segment often isn’t even aware that Reddit is a website.
Also (while I love old reddit), old Reddit was designed and implemented by people who were used to the user interface and usability of Digg and Slashdot, which were designed and implemented by people who were used to the user interface and usability of webring visitor pages, which were designed and implemented by people who were used to the user interface and usability of USENET, Gopher, `finger`, CLIs, `vi` and `emacs`.
Which, in turn, were all skeuomorphic to “how office workers in 1950’s America would prefer to swap memoranda and collaborate on a project”, not so much geared to “how a lot of people gather around a campfire to swap ghost stories and listen to someone play a guitar”.
Designing for a web browser is — absent experiments — an exercise in being constrained by the informatics of 1950’s IBM.
Designing for an app *can be* one where multitouch gestures, eye tracking, gyro sampling to see if the user is walking, etc - are usable — these are ways to engage people and bring them together, to make the interface thinner, less intrusive to the experience.
People who normally vocalise shouldn’t be forced to tap buttons to connect with others over social media. Keyboards are an instrument of expression and just *one* instrument of expression.
And old Reddit will always revolve around keyboards.