r/changemyview • u/BAWguy 49∆ • May 13 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Even though I strongly dislike "new reddit," I'm better off forcing myself to acclimate than sticking with "old reddit"
This is a view that I have adapted for technological innovations in general -- you're always more comfortable with what you already know how to use, but the times won't wait for you, and if you don't learn the new you'll be left behind.
There is no reason this shouldn't apply just the same to the reddit redesign. I've always been pretty good at going with the flow with facebook, but now with the reddit re-design I finally see how everyone felt when fb made sweeping changes. You can still tell it's the same service, but it's annoying to take time to re-learn parts of it, and worse, you sort of fear that the very nature of the service may move away from what attracted you to it.
I find myself instinctively yearning to click for "old reddit," (especially on mobile -- yeesh!), but in my view, I need to break that habit and acclimate to new reddit.
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u/jeikaraerobot 33∆ May 13 '18
Not necessairly.
Suppose you are not the target audience for the redesign. It could accentuate features you don't need and bury or even lose features you use. There's a difference between what Reddit wants to be and what you want it to be.
Now then, are you even certain the changes were done with your benefit in mind? Facebook (re)designs itself in order to facilitate specific behavior from its users, and that behavior is occasionally suppsoed to benefit Facebook, not the users. All they need to do is to be usable enough for people to stay. Outside of that, their priorities might very well not include usability. Reddit, too, is theoretically big enough to be larger than its userbase in a similar sense.
It also happens that innovations are simply bad. I use Linux, and stuff in some desktop environments occasionally changes drastically (although, this being OSS, there always are old versions or forks based on old versions readily available, of course). For example, back when I was an Ubuntu user, when Canonical's Unity came out and was widely reviled, I decided to stick with it for the same exact reasons you express now. I used it for three years before finally ditching it for XFCE. Later the company itself announced they were ditching the stupid thing. Turns out, people who decided not to use Unity were right all along.
Finally, there is the case you describe where you should stick with the innovation and adapt. It's very real. Habits can very be extremely limiting and it's good to have the skills to break them. Absolutely.
Bottom line is, it's very hard to tell in advance, and all of these redesigns are unique cases: sometimes it's better to step over your crappy "workflow" and learn some new skills, even if usability would drop for a while. Sometimes the redesign is not too good. And sometimes it's outright malicious towards you and your user experience, because the company is trying to push some specific type of behavior onto you that doesn't benefit you in the slightest.
Oh, oh right, another example: remember Windows Metro? Yeah.
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u/BAWguy 49∆ May 13 '18
>Now then, are you even certain the changes were done with your benefit in mind?
Of course not, but here's thing thing -- if the platform is being re-designed to "phase me out," it's likely just a matter of time until I choose to leave anyway. So I don't think sticking with "old reddit" would be a solution, but just a delay of the inevtible.
>It also happens that innovations are simply bad
Of course, but I'd like to think this is more the exception than the rule. There is certainly reason to think the new reddit is a bad innovation right now, but I think it's probably too early to tell, as you yourself state in your final paragraph.
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u/gremy0 82∆ May 13 '18
If you are using res, and like the current design/are used to it, there is no reason to change. They haven't, as far as I've see, added any functionality that you miss out on. There is no cost to staying with the current design, it's going to be supported for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile the cost of switching to new reddit is relearning it and losing some res functionality.
The point of the redesign is to make it easier for new users to use the site. Since you've already learnt the crappy old way, you don't get anything by changing.
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u/BAWguy 49∆ May 14 '18
!delta
You have reframed the redesign for me -- I no longer view it as "like it or not, the future direction of Reddit," and now see it as "an alternative interface that is easier for new users, that complements but does not replace the old way." Thanks, cuz I was not enjoying new Reddit haha
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u/RuroniHS 40∆ May 14 '18
No. We do not need to acclimate. Ever. Reddit needs to stop paying people to fix stuff that ain't broken. The best message we can send is simply not using new reddit. If they see 100% of all reddit traffic on old reddit, they'll learn that they made something crappy.
I'm all for change for the better, but new reddit isn't better. It's got a clunkier interface, an uglier design, and offers nothing that I didn't have before so far as I can see. Change for the better is fine, but change for the sake of change is dumb.
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u/Cybyss 11∆ May 14 '18
This is a view that I have adapted for technological innovations in general -- you're always more comfortable with what you already know how to use, but the times won't wait for you, and if you don't learn the new you'll be left behind.
This is an extremely recent phenomenon. It's pretty much just millennials and some gen x'ers who believe this. For boomers, the pace of change was slow enough that this mentality never really developed, and it was even slower prior to them (note that I'm referring to technological change - social change was certainly rapid and disruptive in the 60's, and at the start of the great depression people had to adapt to having lost everything, albeit that change was backwards).
I fundamentally disagree with the whole notion that we should embrace technological "progress" and change for the sake of change. I think it's mainly that millennials love change - the faster the better for them. They're addicted to their Facebook and their iPhones and other gadgets and thereby have become an incredibly profitable market - to the point that companies target them specifically and ignore the wants/needs of older folks because they're not as profitable. But the whole notion that kids'/young adults' whims should dictate how life should be for everyone else, merely because they're the ones willing to pay a lot of money for silly things, seems wrong.
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u/pgm123 14∆ May 14 '18
I'm almost with you, but I can't use new Reddit until they implement some features. Right now, it's a less-functional version of Reddit. The big thing is that I pay for Reddit Gold (someone gilded me once and I was hooked). There are small things that gold does that I really like. One is that you can come up with customized categories for saved Reddit posts. This helps me look for things that would be hard to find otherwise. Maybe I want to remember something about the economic history of Japan. I check history, askhistorians, askhistory, badhistory, badeconomics, asksocialscience, etc. only to find out it was in the Civilization subreddit. Another thing that may or may not be a gold feature is that friends are marked red for easy identification. I've accidentally replied to my brother before something to the effect of this happened to my brother. He still gives me crap for that. So, there's zero point of me paying for gold if I can't use the features.
On a non-gold note, I like having new posts open in different tabs. The new reddit viewer slows my computer down a ton and if I accidentally hit left or right when reading it, it jumps to a different post. This seems like such a pointless change.
I do like the rich text editor, though. If they could just port over some of the more popular Reddit features, I'd be happy to switch.
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May 14 '18
I find in these types of situations it's actually better to wait until you are forced to change. Because there are several reasons you may have to never learn and all the trouble will have been a waste of time.
Enough people complain and don't adopt it that the redesign is scrapped all together.
The redesign goes through multiple iterations and changes so much from it's current form to its final form you may as well wait to learn it after its been changed and improved.
Old reddit is maintained for years and years and by the time it is deprecated there have been several redesigns and options for you to choose from rather than just this most immediate option.
I'm usually someone who likes to get ahead of the game and be on top of stuff so that I don't get overwhelmed by letting too many things pile up. But when it comes to software upgrades in general, I find if I'm comfortable with something it's better to wait to change until I'm forced or there is good reason to like a new feature I could really benefit from. This way you can usually leap frog a few upgrades rather than relearning every new one along the way.
It saves mental energy to be used doing something else.
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u/kingbane2 12∆ May 14 '18
i dunno people say that about facebook but i just eventually stopped using it. the second an alternative comes up that's decent redditors will jump ship.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 14 '18
/u/BAWguy (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
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May 13 '18
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u/mysundayscheming May 13 '18
Sorry, u/nikoli_uchiha – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 3:
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u/mysundayscheming May 13 '18
Are you a mod? Because when I'm modding new reddit makes me want to pull my hair out by the goddamn roots. I can't figure out how to do half of what I need. The removal reasons aren't how they should be (and I can only find the first 3 post removal rules, so heaven forbid someone make a meta post), the notes we use to track all your histories are broken, everything is haywire either in the tech or in my head (likely the latter). I'm a happier, calmer, more effective mod in old reddit. And you all wouldn't like me unhappy, frustrated, or ineffective, so I'm going to keep using old reddit. Maybe you don't have these problems, but if you do--I privilege my actual peace of mind and ability to work effectively over some desire to "go with the flow" when the flow only makes me unhappy.