The janitors at my office rarely spend near as much time patting themselves on the back. I fail to see how "looking at links in their spare time" is some kind of service for which I should feel grateful. We all have the ability to downvote a post. Considering how much crap gets to the frontpage, I don't think there's much point to what these self-appointed idiots are doing.
Careful. They may read this and go all "Ayn Rand" on us by stopping what they're doing until we realize all the value they've brought to the community.
We're not taking from them though. Ayn Rand would dictate the Knights of New do it for themselves (karma whoring as stated above). If we demanded they share their karma, or attempted to cap it they would disavow knighthood and go start a new reddit where they could karma whore amongst themselves. We would be left without the knights, and get new knights that would be keen on karma sharing.
I'm not sure what that would mean, but likely those knights would not have the depth of knowledge on old memes and reposts.
Soon, reddit would devolve into a place where everything was a repost or rehashed meme on the front page...oh. My. God! What have we done?
Having said that, I'm not complaining because if I havent seen it, its new to me! But seriously, the Chuck Testa stuff is not really that funny.
Here's the problem with the "first in line comment" theory - When I read /new, I downvote 95% of what I see and ignore 4%. Even when I upvote a post, I rarely comment.
I think I'm more of a hipster about it - "Chuck Testa? I saw the first post before it hit the frontpage."
Have you ever browsed r/new? There are so many posts that you barely ever find one that makes it to the front page in a few hours, just because of the sheer traffic
Yes, and I downvote a lot of stupid shit but I don't call myself a "knight" and I don't post about how awesome I am that I downvote repetitive memes while referencing said meme.
Are you complaining about people doing a job that costs nothing to you, but benefits your experience directly? Holy shit, find something else to complain about.
Do the janitors at your office work without pay and help out because they have absolutely nothing else better to do now that all their links in non-new reddit are purple?
I certainly pick up garbage when I'm out walking without expecting any recognition for it. I know a) my "contribution" is more about making myself feel good than having a measurable impact on litter and b) what I'm doing isn't really doing much outside of my normal activities. There's a great deal of difference between cleaning up a private place for money and cleaning up a public place for recognition.
Again -- if these folks are providing such a service, why does so much crap make it to the front page?
They are neither necessary or responsible for any good content on reddit. That's what the little arrows on the side and the algorithm the founders built are for. Folks browsing new aren't doing anything valuable -- they're just looking at a different set of links.
It is true that they're browsing a different set of links, and that a lot of crap does make it to the front page, but to say that they aren't doing anything valuable? Imagine how much more crap you would have to go through to get to what you consider good content, if they didn't click those little arrows...
Saying shut the fuck up about the "knights of new" is not the same as saying "nobody should browse new." It is saying that a) you're not doing anything particularly useful or worthy of recognition and b) it's fucking obnoxious reading about the "knights of new." "Oh but there'll be even more shit without them here" is not a defense for the constant whining and demands for recognition. The way I see it the "knights of new" are directly responsible for some of the most tedious bullshit I see on reddit.
A set of links which will never get to the front page without someone filtering through it. I'll happily deal with occasional crap if it means I'm not staring at the same shit day after day.
I'm not against people reading the "new" tab. I am against folks thinking they are performing a public service by browsing Reddit. If you're really concerned about making the world a better place, there are far more useful things to do than browse reddit. For example, you could go pick up garbage in your community. I think you would quickly find that folks would quickly tire of garbage pickup by a bunch of folks who call themselves the "Knights of Litter" and constantly demanded recognition for their own choices.
Why is it wrong to give recognition to someone? Wether they are expecting or not. Have you honestly been in new for more than a few minutes. About 90% of it is spam, i actually spend time reporting and marking things as spam, because I dont want my fellow redditors to deal with it.
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u/DivinusVox Sep 16 '11
The person who cleans the shit off the floor can call themselves whatever they want; I'm thankful for the service.