Once again, we have another unusual way to use Reddit, and this time, it comes in the easy-to-digest form of the Reddit Investigator, a covert web app for all you Internet snoops out there. So grab your binoculars and your notepad (and maybe a first aid kit), for today, we’re jumping into the Reddit Investigator.

Get To Know Someone (Better)

I’ve seen several instances on Reddit in which people say that they have met other users of the site, and although the chance of meeting someone is probably better than I think, it at least seems rare. This almost makes the online world “real”, and it’s at that moment when you go to these sites that you realize you are dealing with actual people. With that being said, since we’re in the social networking era, I believe it can be safely assumed that everyone still stalks their friends online on at least some level – don’t deny it.

The issue here is that Reddit isn’t so of much a social networking site as it is a link aggregator with many users. However, at the same time, it builds up quite a bit of discussion and sometimes even friendships. So there certainly is a social element, and for those lucky few whose friends are also Redditors, it can be assumed that social element is kicked up a few notches.

But let’s say that you just met someone and found out they are a Redditor….well, in this hypothetical–not–likely-gonna–happen situation, Reddit Investigator is a great way to creep up on them.

Discover Their Interests

It’s fairly simple to figure out someone’s interests with Reddit Investigator. Simply plug in their username on the front page of the site, and the web app will lurk the corridors of Reddit, peeking into every hall and scouring each electronic scroll in which the searchee has written their thoughts upon. It’s interesting that it’s able to do this, and although I’ve harped about privacy before, you have to understand that this is Reddit – it’s a rare instance if anyone knows who you really are.

Basically, on the left side of your Reddit Investigator results, you will see every single subreddit that the user has commented in since the beginning of time itself (except not really). Furthermore, you’ll be privileged to find every single subreddit that they have submitted items to, as well.

Check Out Their Stats & Data

Some of you are number crunchers (for those of you that can figure out the chances of meeting another Redditor, please do). With Reddit Investigator, you jump on those crazy little things called stats that some of you crave. Here are just a few of the things you can unravel:

• Most Active Hours Timeline.
• Link Karma Timeline And Data.
• Comment Karma Timeline And Data.
• Activity Timeline.
• User Data.
• Word Data.
• Fun Guessed Data (stuff like location, political stance, reputation).

For those of you that noticed the timeline that covers the Redditor’s most active hours, I can only hope that your boss doesn’t know your username. At least you could probably figure out how to best manage your time with this web app. Always a silver lining, right?

Conclusion

That’s pretty much all there is to it, ladies and gentlemen. Honestly, there isn’t any tool quite like a functional tool, and that’s what we have here. You really can’t beat that. Granted, I don’t know how legal your intentions are for Reddit Investigator, but in the meantime, I’ll play dumb.

What other tools for Reddit do you use besides Reddit Investigator? Did you find anything interesting about this one? Have you ever met someone from Reddit?

Fortunately, the Reddit-related site Erqqvg has created a nifty little real-time visual Reddit updater that goes by the name of Vizeddit. It’s a fresh take on the original site, and although it’s not something that is designed to be used it all the time, it’s a nice find. Is it cool? Absolutely. Is it functional? Actually… yes.

Sleek And Sexy Design

From the get-go, Vizeddit presents the top 25 links of Reddit on its front page. Each link is represented by a multicolored column, so it’s simple and easy enough to distinguish between each piece of content. However, the question that needs to be asked is, “What does it do?” 

You’ll notice that for each column, plus-signs and minus-signs will come streaming down, falling on top of the colored bars. If a green plus-sign hits a bar, it rises. If a red minus-sign hits it, then (quite naturally) it shrinks. Easy enough to understand, right? Each plus and minus sign represents the upvotes or downvotes that the link receives, and ultimately, the website serves as a means of understanding what’s hot and what’s not on Reddit. Basically, consider it Reddit 2.0.

The site utilizes Reddit’s API to consistently update these colored bars to go up or down based on the content. Along with this information, randomly selected comments will drop down (Tetris-style) so that you can take a gander at what’s happening in the motherland. Also, after clicking on the bars themselves, you will be given the option to actually go to the links and see the voting ratios.

Functionality

Trust me, I wouldn’t share Vizreddit with you if it was just a pretty face. The site has a variety of functional uses that you can take advantage of everyday, and although some could possibly need a little imagination, it’s still a way to make use of it. Here are a couple of examples concerning the functionality of Vizreddit.

For instance, since Reddit is a major content aggregator, you can actually use Vizreddit to find out what exactly the hottest topics are currently in the world. Much like Twitter hashtags, this simply can call your attention to what’s fresh. For instance, post #3 on Reddit may be a cute picture of a cat, but post #21 may show off a recent uprising in a foreign country. Although post #3 remains in a higher slot, using Vizreddit, you could actually see the more rapid pace of voting occurring and realize that something may be up with post #21.

Besides that, this is is just a simpler way of viewing Reddit in real time. Instead of looking at the dull text design of the site itself (that I hope never changes), you can dive into a cooler way to read up on things. Honestly, it’s just like viewing the original Reddit. The only catch is that you can’t scroll through all the links – only the top 25 are available.

Conclusion

I believe Vizreddit is an excellent tool to supplement your Reddit experience. That is, of course, if you use Reddit as your primary funnel for information. However, you shouldn’t use it as a standalone site (that’s not what it is), and beyond that, it does have a little bit of a novelty feel. However, it still works.

What other Reddit-related sites do you like to use? How has Vizreddit helped you?

Today, I’d like to give just a general overview of how Reddit works. I’m not making excuses for the bad parts of Reddit – of course not – but I do want to keep you informed. The more you know, right?  Oh and don’t forget to read Dave’s informative manual on Reddit too.

What’s Bad About Reddit?

Contrary to popular belief, Reddit is not a site devoted to child porn and degradation of women. That would be 4Chan, and if this was the case, I wouldn’t be using it. I’m not at all a proponent for things such as these, but I’ll admit that there are a lot of ugly things on Reddit that are pretty close to the items mentioned, such as:

GoneWild: A subreddit where users post fairly-sexualized nude pictures of themselves, desensitizing the human race to the beauty of sex and giving those who post misdirected praise.

Obnoxious Religious Debate: Militant believers and militant nonbelievers tend to duke it out on the main page of Reddit – something that should be relatively unbiased, methinks.

Exploitation of Teens: There are a few subreddits that depict teenagers in a rather sexualized way – not pornographically, but close. There is the possibility that the pictures found on these subreddits are routed through Facebook, but I will explain how these sections of Reddit are completely within themselves later on in this post.

These are just a few of the bad things about Reddit, and there are quite a few others. I’m not kidding. However, you have to understand how Reddit works before you form an opinion of it.

How Does Reddit Work?

Let’s imagine a place where the entire world is connected through computers. People are able to create pages that can be read on a screen, and other people can read them and even write on them to the people that have created them. These pages eventually become large communities of people reading and writing, and they range from discussion about cats to ramblings about faith all the way to videos of pornography. However, each person chooses to go to the page that interests them the most, so the people that go to the page about cats do not go to the page with pornography.

You may say, “Josh, we already have that – it’s the Internet!”

I say, “No, sir. It’s not the Internet that I’m describing. I’m describing Reddit.”

What amazes me is that the people who bash Reddit are actually users of the Internet – a place that is full of discussion about cats, ramblings about faith, and even videos of pornography. With that being said, Reddit is divided into communities – called subreddits – just like the Internet, so at the core, Reddit is like a miniature version of the Internet itself!

Basically, here’s what I say to a person that bashes Reddit – you wouldn’t automatically say someone looks at jailbait just because they get on the Internet, right?

Should Reddit Censor Itself?

In my opinion, Reddit should censor itself to some degree. It’s technically a private website created by individuals looking for profit, so it’s fine with me if they choose to censor items. However, the question always arises, “What kind of stuff should they censor?”

Well, for me, that’s anything to do with jailbait, and yes, there are Reddit communities devoted to this (by all technical means, they are not pornographic, but they are still disgusting). So most importantly, young children and even young teenagers do not deserve to be viewed in a sexual manner whatsoever. Furthermore, it puts a bad mark on the other users of Reddit, for other people do not understand that the site is divided up into communities, and typically, those communities do not ever see each other except for when an individual chooses to go to them.

When it comes to trivial things such as porn and religion (bet you never thought you’d see those two in the same sentence), I don’t think they should be censored. However, as someone who is adamantly against pornography in general (but prefers to use discussion rather than force to get his point across), I’d rather not see it at all.

Fortunately, there are methods to censor Reddit on your own, such as the Reddit Enhancement Suite. I use it to block anything NSFW, and I also block out keywords that float around the site. Pretty useful tool, and I recommend it to anyone.

Conclusion

Maybe I didn’t make a good case for Reddit, and that’s kind of hard to do when writing just a blog post. In that case, I’ll just leave this other blog post here.

What other support can you give for Reddit? What are the things about Reddit that you don’t like?  What can it do to improve?

Just as newspapers have sectioned categories, Reddit contains subreddits. Each subreddit is narrowly targeted toward a specific idea or interest, and by adding a particular subreddit to your frontpage you are opting in to receiving the latest and most popular content from that section. If you’re interested in topics like Apple, DIY, or food then Reddit has a home for you. But what about the deeper and more obscure topics?

Maybe you want to see what people are cooking for dinner tonight? Or perhaps you want to find new and inspiring mashup tunes to listen to?  These subreddits may be buried deep within the community, but I’m going to show you how to find them.

Using Reddit Itself

Coincidentally enough, you’re able to find great subreddits using the simple features provided by the website. It’s nice to be able to down two birds with one stone – improving Reddit while enjoying it.

Official Subreddits Page

This page may be the very best resource, and it is so often overlooked.

The page aggregates all of the current subreddits that you have active on your frontpage and combines them with the most popular subreddits overall to offer you relevant suggestions. There should be hundreds of suggested pages shown as well as a complete list of your currently frontpage’d subreddits in the menu to the far right (or only 50 if you have more and are not a Reddit Gold member).

/r/subredditoftheday & /r/newreddits

Just as the names entail, you can follow these two to get a consistent flow of new and interesting subreddits pushed directly to your frontpage. As an added bonus, you can find lots of additional subreddits just by participating in the community and checking out comments that are posted. It’s almost like Inception at this point – finding subreddits within comments inside of a subreddit while on Reddit.

Third-Party Services

If Reddit itself doesn’t offer enough for you, there are a whole slew of third-party sites that parse and index subreddits to search through. Here are my two personal favorites.

Metareddit

Metareddit is generally considered to be the best and most user-friendly way of hunting for your new favorite subreddit. If there was a way to authenticate this as the official third-party subreddit service, I’d do it.

Metareddit offers lots of functionality, some of which is completely unrelated to subreddit-searching. It’s a true way to archive and categorize subreddits, not just find them. You can search through subreddits by keyword, tags, or logo. At the time of this post, more then 90,000 subreddits are indexed in the Metareddit database, so that’s pretty impressive.

They also offer a monitor feature, which is basically the equivalent of a service such as Google Alerts. You can search for a keyword trigger in Reddit posts and comments and it’ll return the freshest results to you. This is a pretty unique way to find new subreddits, also. Stalk is just as good, with a little side of creepy. If you’re obsessive over a particular Redditor’s posts or interests, you can use the feature to find exactly what subreddits they are frequenting.

Subreddits

This site is incredibly easy to navigate and utilize. Right on the frontpage, you’re presented with the most popular subreddits and respective categories.

Across the top menu, you’ll also notice links for you to navigate the top 3,000 subreddits and sort them from a tag cloud.

If you weren’t able to find exactly what you were looking for in this post, I’m willing to bet that you can find it in The Reddit Manual.  Or if you know of another good resource we haven’t mentioned here, be sure to let us in on the secret in the comments.

With that in mind, I typically try to be kind, and furthermore, I try to remember this wise adage that a good friend once told me – “Don’t feed the trolls.” Basically, it’s always a good option to take the high road. However, it’s fine to occasionally vent off-site, right?

So, here’s taking a look at three types of Reddit commenters that drive me up the wall.

Irrelevant Commenters

I don’t understand it, but every once in a while, a commenter will pop up out of the blue with something that only halfway relates to the Reddit post. I’m not quite sure, but this is a character that I dub the “Irrelevant Commenter”.

The Irrelevant Commenter shows up in the strangest of places, and sometimes, he’ll even venture away from Reddit onto other sites, leaving his comments that have virtually nothing to do with the link. Strangely enough, when someone responds to his totally irrelevant comment, he seems to disappear without even an explanation of his actions. But no matter where he is, he always leaves a comment that barely has anything to do with the subject that is being discussed.

You may actually link to this article that you are reading right now on Reddit, and you may even earn sweet karma for it! However, if the Irrelevant Commenter shows up, he will leave something like, “I just love MakeUseOf – particularly that American writer J. Lockhart. He looks so good in that tie!”

As you can tell, the comment is somewhat connected to the link. Unfortunately though, it provides zilch when it comes to constructively contributing to the conversation. Despite my distaste for the Irrelevant Commenter, I find him just a little more forgivable than the other two.

Grammar Nazis

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m a writer, and yes, I know quite a bit about grammar, proper spelling, and the various other twists and turns that the English language likes to take. I’m certainly not perfect with every single thing that I put on the page (to my editors, I apologize), but I’d like to think that I have passed the stage of being a novice when it comes to writing.

However, with that in mind, even I don’t have a problem with the occasional grammatical error on a Reddit post. The purpose of the site is to share information and ideas with other people – not be online masterpieces of literature. Despite my fear of the English language’s eventual demise, I can usually let it slide when it comes to Reddit (and yes, even Facebook).

Unfortunately though, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The action in this case is my flippant attitude towards grammar on Reddit, and the reaction is the guy that likes to pick through even the most important of posts and point out the minor grammar errors that have absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. That being said, Grammar Nazis are simply not my favorite Redditors. We’ve got better things to worry about, my friends.

Repost Hall Monitors

The Internet is full of recycled information, so what ends up on your monitor is typically going to end up on another person’s months from now. Heck, it’s even more likely that whatever is currently on your monitor was on someone else’s before even that. People come and go on Reddit, and it’s a given that users are going to repost stuff that they have just discovered.

There are quite a few folks who tend to complain whenever there’s a repost on Reddit, and for some reason, I don’t have an earthly clue as to why. Part of my curiosity stems from this question – are they on Reddit that much so that they know each and every time a link is reposted? C’mon.

Sure, you can check to see if a link has already been submitted using the site’s search function before posting. However, when the last time that same link was posted months ago, it might be okay to bring it back. Beyond that, even the creators of Reddit ask the users not complain about the reposts through the Reddiquette – the law of the land for all things Reddit.

The irony of the matter is that those who are complaining are the ones that are actually in violation of the website’s usage policies. Some of them complain that the “original posters aren’t getting the karma that they deserve”. I say that the Repost Hall Monitors are probably worrying more about the karma than the original poster.

(By the way, you may have noticed that the Reddiquette also says not to complain about complaints about reposts. Good thing we’re not on Reddit, right?)

Conclusion

These are just a few of my pet peeves about Reddit users, and I’m definitely not trying to get all “holier than thou” on you with the three mentioned. However, some people tend to take the site just a little too seriously. That’s all it is, though – a website.

What are some of your pet peeves about Reddit? What other sites have users that drive you nuts?

Fear not, because I am going to lay some Sub-Reddit knowledge on you and show the places on Reddit where the best entertainment lies. With these Reddits in my mind you will never go astray in your glorious Reddit travels. Of course, I want you to use these Sub-Reddits as a guide, and when you are ready, venture into the scary world of Reddit without me.

Reddit.com/r/funny

This the first Sub-Reddit where I start my day. There is no better way to get in a good mood then to see what kind of funny stuff the Reddit community has dug up on the Internet. You will see everything from funny jokes, to funny pictures and even some funny videos now and again. If you are looking to make your co-workers think you are crazy by laughing like a madman in your cubicle, then this is the Sub-Reddit for you.

Reddit.com/r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu

F7U12 is where the Reddit community comes to get their rage on. The only thing members are allowed to post here are rage comics. These are poorly drawn comics that tell a story about something that was particularly rage inducing. These tend to be hilarious, and often times can be just as funny as the stuff you will meet on r/funny. Not a day goes by that I don’t spend getting my rage on r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Reddit.com/r/technology

I think it safe to assume that if you are here reading MakeUseOf that you are probably a tech junkie like us. If that is the case, then you need to be checking in on r/technology. It is chock full of tech news and opinions from the Reddit community. While you are looking around r/technology make sure to look at the sidebar of the Reddit for a whole bunch of more specific tech-related Sub-Reddits for your reading and learning enjoyment.

Reddit.com/r/history

For all the history buffs this is your one stop shop for knowledge. This Sub-Reddit is absolutely filled to the brim with content. Users post all kinds of fascinating articles and opinions on all things history. Just like with r/technology, make sure to check out the sidebar, because it is filled with all kinds of interesting time and place specific history Sub-Reddits like r/worldhistory, r/ushistory and r/arthistory, just to name a few of the gems.

Reddit.com/r/gamernews

Don’t be fooled into r/gaming‘s shenanigans, r/gamernews is where you come to get real relevant happenings in the gaming world. Sadly, r/gaming has degenerated into mostly just gamers posting nostalgic pictures and things of that nature, so r/gamernews stepped up and brought a hard moderated Sub-Reddit filled with only the most pertinent news from the video game world.

Reddit.com/IAmA

Here is where people come to tell their stories. A user would come and post that they are something, and ask other users to ask them anything. This usually leads to some pretty interesting questions and answers and is a great way to kill a few hours learning about something you never even knew you wanted to learn about.

Occasionally, you will even see celebrities come to Reddit and do an IAmA if the demand is high enough. Check out r/IAMAFamouseArchive to see all the celebrities who have participated in an IAmA session.

Conclusion

These Sub-Reddits should help get you pointed in the right direction, and hopefully make Reddit a less scary place for you. Remember, when you find a Sub-Reddit you enjoy, always check the sidebar, because there is usually links to some related Reddits that you may find amusing and enjoyable.

Check out these other great Reddit articles from MakeUseOf :

Five  Cool Things You Should Know About Reddit
Use Reddit Like A Boss With This Combo Package
3 Ways Reddit Can Help Those In Need

What are your favorite Sub-Reddits? Have you ever stumbled into some Sub-Reddit and wished you had never been there? Let us know in the comments!