Vince

_{All comments are created equal.}

^{By Vincent Nguyen | April 18, 2024 7:00pm PST}

This has been a little pet peeve of mine since I can remember and I’m pretty sure it can be classified as a first-world problem, but since I like topics about society and how it works, its tendencies, and what should be done to make it better, it’s more like a first-world interest for me.

With that being said, this topic might appeal to you if you like to use social media and tend to check out the comment section to see what others have to say — specifically Reddit amongst the popular ones out there.

Reddit is one of my favourite social media platforms, if not the most. It has a plethora of communities called subreddits covering a wide range of topics. From general ones like sports, music, movies, politics, technology, etc. to unconventional ones that will surely pique your interest.

Within these subreddits contain user-generated posts from people of various backgrounds and places, you can learn and discover amazing things around the world and maybe locally where you live.

You can also learn much more from the comment section. A lot more. Sometimes things that aren’t even related to the post itself, yet still interesting.

Sometimes you’ll be wondering how users (known as Redditors) know such fascinating things, and you might wonder to yourself how they know it and who they are in real life.

Take the community r/whatisthisthing for example, a popular subreddit of over 2 million members, where people help each other figure out the names of odd-looking objects unfamiliar to the average person.

What’s cool about this subreddit is that there’s usually somebody within the sub who knows exactly what ‘the thing’ is and can explain what it’s for.

r/whatisthisthing (and other helpful subs like it) should be kept in your arsenal alongside your trusted Googling skills in case you can’t figure out what something is with a simple Google Search or with Google Lens, you can post it on a subreddit as a backup plan and let the ‘Reddit detectives’ get to work.

But as interesting as Reddit is, its comment system, in particular, is what gets on my nerves.

Look at almost any comment section in a Reddit post, and you’ll begin to notice a rather annoying trend, especially from popular posts that have received significant upvotes and comments.

What is it?

Well, you’ll notice that most Redditors will flock towards the top comments and reply to them in bunches.

Not only that, many users will reply to other replies that are connected to those top comments.

Why?

Because it’s a surefire way to get noticed and receive upvotes. It’s a neat little trick to game the system, essentially using other people’s ‘success’ to reap the benefits.

Sometimes you can even receive digital awards from other Redditors via gilds if someone really likes your comment, but that can only happen if your comment is seen by others, which is why the top comments gets most if not all of the attention and become bombarded by users.

The problem with this system is that it creates an unbalanced attraction towards these top comments, where most people won’t feel inclined to submit a comment of their own, but only reply to the popular ones instead.

So basically, most people who want their voices heard will only end up replying to the top comments.

And let’s face it, the majority of us want our opinions to be heard, we want to be recognized in some way shape or form rather than go unnoticed and be buried at the bottom of the pile.

If I told you that you had the option of leaving a personal letter directly on your mayor’s desk in order for him or her to address any issue that you think needs to be taken care of, OR you could leave that same personal letter in a pile of other letters in a sorting facility somewhere and hope it makes its way to your mayor, you’d pick the former in a heartbeat.

On top of this, if you want your independent comments to gain significant upvotes, it’s wise to be one of the first to comment within the first 2-10 minutes on a newly made post, rather than doing so on a post that has been up for 2-10 hours or longer because there would already be many comments vying for attention by then.

Likewise, if you want your replies to gain significant upvotes, it’d be wise to reply to a top comment that barely has any replies to it for the same reason mentioned above.

Overall, the current comment system for Reddit not only creates an unbalanced attraction as mentioned, but also rewards people who can submit a comment or a reply early in a post’s lifecycle.

Someone busy working that day or who’s sleeping in another timezone won’t have the same chance of being recognized later on.

I guess the same could be said about other social media platforms.

But unlike other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter/X, and TikTok, Reddit is different in a not-so-good way because most of the replies to the comments are actually fully shown (to a certain extent) without needing to tap on them to reveal them, making Redditors becoming like bloodthirsty mosquitos to get their upvotes.

I mean sure, Reddit could go the same route as the other platforms and call it a day, but it still wouldn’t fix the problem of new comments submitted later on that would be buried for nobody to see (except for maybe the few who like to sort them by ‘new’).

So how could this comment system be improved?

Currently, some subreddits try to change it up a bit by shuffling comments and keeping the upvote score hidden, but this only works to a certain extent and after some time, it’s back to the same old same old.

I don’t have a perfect solution to balance this system, or maybe it doesn’t need one at all and I’m just being fussy, but I do have one that might balance the scale a bit and get more of our opinions noticed — especially for those of us who aren’t on social media all day.

Let’s just call it the ‘hourly clock out’ system, or HCOS.

How it works is, for every passing hour, the top comments in those hours will be automatically collected and placed above the overall comment section for all to see and reply to.

By the time a post has either, A) reached 24 hours, or B) nearing the end of its peak time in the hot section, all of the top comments from each hour will be showcased in random order (up to 24 ‘Top Comments By The Hour’ can be displayed (see image below)).

_{Drag slider left or right.}

Also, as you can see above, every post will also display the most upvoted comments side by side with the most controversial/downvoted ones as a way to remind everyone that there are usually opposing opinions to every story.

So with this hourly clock out system, it wouldn’t matter if you’re one of the first to comment on a new post, or you’re going to do so 10 hours later — almost every good comment gets an equal opportunity to be on top, or at least be recognized in greater magnitude compared to now.