It's a tough site to run because hundreds of thousands of people have write access to the database and reddit attempts to provide the millions of people reading the comments pages with up-to-the-fraction-of-a-second updates.
It's like running a tenth of a twitter with a 10k char limit, if twitter had 10 people on development/operations
I've anecdotally noticed an increase in stale pages lately as well, which I would guess is from more aggressive caching. For example, new submissions used to show up instantly, but on popular subreddits may now take a few minutes to show up on the New tab.
I don't understand how a question with an unsupported/uncited premise equivalent to "do you still beat your wife?" constitutes "an excellent question".
Would it be a better question if it specifically mentioned that the killing of Osama bin Laden and the disposal of his body violated the Geneva Convention?
He's free to answer 0/"I have never beaten my wife". It's an excellent question because Obama has been responsible for the deaths of many people, some of whom were almost certainly killed illegally.
Your second statement begs the question: Pres. Obama would argue that none of those killed were due to an illegal direct order from him (and he may rationalize this with his own begging of the question).
I think it's particularly interesting to watch some internet event go "mainstream" and watch even large services like reddit strain under the load. Put some perspective around how many people true mainstream media services reach.
I was just going to say that. While, Reddit's not "down" for me, every time I click the "show more comments" button, red text that says "loading" shows up and it ... never ... loads. Considering Reddit's usual traffic, this must be a truly unprecedented weight on the servers.
Weird... I am guessing that if Obama was going to be on Reddit, they would have given the Reddit staff some early notice, in order to add some extra preparations for the load. Or maybe not, does anybody know if there's any sort of normal protocol around this sort of thing?
The AMA mods often arrange high profile AMAs amongst themselves -- or with the reddit community staff involved -- so it's likely they were aware before hand. I can't check the sidebar because reddit isn't responding, but they normally have the "upcoming" AMAs in the sidebar and lots of are listed days/weeks in advance.
Since I'm not up on the Reddit staff, in case anyone else is wondering, Hueypriest is Erik Martin, Reddit's General Manager (formerly Community manager) https://www.twitter.com/hueypriest
To be fair (as a longtime redditor), reddit is guaranteed to go down after anything slightly out of the ordinary (and even then it's not too uncommon).
To be fair (as a longtime redditor), reddit is guaranteed to go down after anything slightly out of the ordinary (and even then it's not too uncommon).
The difference is that the "true mainstream media" is one-directional, so they are just broadcasting the show. If there would be a show with Obama answering telephone calls on live TV or radio, then very few calls could be heard live.
If Reddit would do only broadcasting then it would be an easier problem because reads can be cached easier then reads + writes.
Let the conspiracy theories start. Did the Republicans DDOS the server to stop the President from connecting with Redditors, or did the Democrats do it so that the President wouldn't have to really answer any tough questions but just say he did? Or is it the work of Terrorists? Or Kevin Rose's final revenge?
What does Reddit 'humour' consist of in this case? Tired pun threads? (He did Nazi that coming, Anne Frankly...) Reddit 'celebrities' posting inane comments with all of the child comments consisting of people fawning over them? A Shitty_Watercolor painting? Someone referencing Rampart like it hasn't already been done in every single IAmA since it happened?
The reddit team must be absolutely shitting themselves right now under strain. How the hell do you accurately predict the load when the President is using your site?
He won't be F5ing the page himself, nor will he be typing in answers, so I'm sure answers will just appear as and when his staff are able to post them.
I was just discussing this with colleagues, maybe he gets access to a special page where he can answer questions without going through the standard load balancer/database stack.
At least, that's what I would do if I had some as high profile as the US president using a site that would get slammed HARD.
Can't wait for the top post to be another asinine "comment phrased as a question" about legalising marijuana!
Joking aside, I predict disappointment. Reddit users will want hard-hitting answers, Obama will definitely not give them (already the internet freedom question has been fluffy-answered). In all honestly, no-one should expect anything else- the POTUS is not going to unveil new thoughts and strategies through Reddit.
That said, it shows how far they've come from the "jailbait" scandal a few months ago, but I strongly suspect Republicans will refer back to it in good time.
EDIT: Hey, at least PresidentObama bought Reddit Gold. Somehow I doubt it'll be enough to cover the bandwidth, though.
I'm trying to lay out what I think are the reasonable expectations from this AMA, and how they differ from what a lot of people will want. I'm sorry if this somehow offends you. In the future I'll try my best to be unrelentingly positive about everything, despite the evidence presented to me.
Don't get me wrong, it's a bold and somewhat brave move by the Obama team to do this- there are myriad ways it can blow up in their faces (Rampart, anyone?). But as a consequence of that, they're going to be playing it very safe, I'm sure.
"In all honestly, no-one should expect anything else- the POTUS is not going to unveil new thoughts and strategies through Reddit." <-- cold, hard common sense
If understanding how the world works and telling others makes you a hater, then sign me up.
This reminds me, in Chris Hedges' book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, there is a great section on why everyone always hates reality-based thinkers.
Essentially before and during when the war crimes (or whatever) are being committed, everyone hates the truth-tellers because they think they are wrong and they are challenging their worldview or whatever. And then afterwards, everyone hates the truth-tellers because they remind them that they were wrong. That's why you will never read an article about prominent Republicans coming forward and apologizing to Michael Moore or whatever.
Just want to chime in, it looks like Obama is heading out[1] after answering only ten questions. I think it's fair to call that disappointing when the thread had more than 12,000 comments.
Is it? It appears that his AMA was online for maybe 45 minutes. How long should we expect the President of the United States to stay on the site for? Presumably has has other things to do.
1. Space Race
2. Internet Freedom
3. Favorite Basketball Player
4. Small-Business tax breaks
5. First Activity on Nov 7
6. Most Difficult Decision
7. Money in Politics
8. White House Beer Recipe
9. Jobs
10. Work/Life Balance
They are largely boilerplate answers to softball questions. Nothing you couldn't get from listening to a White House press conference.
Questions about the state of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Egypt, et al would have been more interesting. Characterizing sending more troops as a hard decision is not too surprising.
Ok, but all you're gonna get from him on foreign relations ESPECIALLY is the exact boilerplate that comes out of the state department. There are actually policy reasons to stay boilerplate on that stuff, above and beyond political considerations.
That said, he did come about as close as he could to acknowledging the surge in Afghanistan didn't accomplish much. And he called for a constitutional amendment on Citizen's United, which he apparently hadn't done in public before (according to news outlets trumpeting it).
That's 3 minutes per question, given the half hour he allotted. I don't think that's too disappointing. Did you really expect him to answer 12,000 questions?
For perspective: I read a bit in the most recent New Yorker describing a fund-raiser dinner with the president; it was $50,000 a plate and the president had one hour which equated to 1 minute per person. His staff knew he wouldn't have time to eat so he was prepared a meal he ate quickly in the kitchen beforehand. A staffer with a watch would tap him on the shoulder every 5 minutes when he needed to move onto the next table.
The typical politician will avoid giving real answers whenever possible, and respond to any questions with canned answers that carry as little meaning as is humanly possible. Obama has shown no sign of being any different from the usual in this respect. And why should he? The current US political environment punishes deviations incredibly harshly.
People can be so cynical and unappreciative. It's easy to get caught up in the now and take the little things for granted.
President Obama's predecessor didn't use EMAIL!!!!
Now Obama is taking questions on Reddit.
It's all about perspective. His use of technology is completely different than yours. There are so many ramifications for everything he says and does. You can't imagine living in a world like that - very few can, because very few will.
So just take a deep breath and enjoy the entertainment.
This is just a cool way to suck the air out of the RNC convention news cycle.
I actually get really sick of people like you more than the people that would like our President to stop avoiding that question.
Give me a break. This comment was one step away from "fucking stoners". It's insulting and inappropriate regardless.
This is a typical HN troll post on reddit anyway. If you think the "jailbait" scandal defined reddit at any point, you obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about.
This comment was one step away from "fucking stoners"
No it wasn't, in any way, shape or form. I support legalisation, I'm just tired of it being treated like it's the most important thing you could possibly ask the President about.
If you think the "jailbait" scandal defined reddit at any point
Defined for who? It was on national television. I assure you that a lot of non-tech savvy people will have had their first exposure to Reddit as a result of that report.
If people were being executed for jaywalking, would that be important enough to be persistent in asking? What if only a few people were getting executed? How do you feel about the Mayor of NYC proposing banning certain sizes of soda pop? These questions are related.
"I'm just tired of it being treated like it's the most important thing you could possibly ask the President about."
If you're too jaded to care about millions of Americans dying for no reason, the destruction of the black community, the spread of AIDS and hepatitis, and our crumbling infrastructure, all direct consequences of prohibition, then that says a lot more about you than it does about those who would challenge Obama on the issue.
The reason people treat it like the most important issue facing society is because basically it is.
It's potentially very different in that on Reddit questions are voted up, giving an indication of how many people attach value to it. In theory this would make ignoring difficult questions a lot harder. In practice, in this situation, he can breeze by them all and never return.
You could always write a letter, you've probably got just about the same chance that he'll actually reply with a non-canned answer, and there have been telephone conference town hall meetings for decades.
It's also very different since our population is now 300+ million as opposed to 3+ million at the inception. Any one of those 300 million could potentially have asked the president a question, not limited by geography or social/financial status.
Reddit doesn't track or verify geographical location, so in reality someone from Iran could be asking the President a question just the same as someone from Virginia. That's awesome.
And although their will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals [sic]
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
-[engineers everywhere]
Edited: for relevance ;)
Edit2: SIC WTF? - per comments below
Edit3: Downvotes? Wow. POTUS commenting on IP Law, Privacy, Internet Freedom. etc. PLS Read the context. It was included. Tks.
________
[–]SharkGirl 812 points 32 minutes ago
We know how Republicans feel about protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet Freedom an issue you'd push to add to the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?
[–]PresidentObama[S] 130 points 10 minutes ago
Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although their will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle - and it will be reflected in the platform.
load more comments (25 replies)
[–]davidjoho 104 points 29 minutes ago
And when you say "Internet Freedom" do you mean the Republican version ("Freedom for the access provider monopoly") or the version in which the Internet is free to anyone with an idea or an expression?
It is too easy to confuse the two. They're not using their grammar skills there. Perhaps distracted by NOLA and if he knew whether the new weather was bad there.
The grandparent was posted on the merits and relevance of the material. If you read the context, BO tells Reddit: "I'm all for internet freedom, but don't sweat it if a couple of details are either here or there." Which in matters relating engineering and/or IP law, is a bit of a flip answer. That Potus laid down a [SIC] error is poetic irony, humourus (or not). So your comment, is not really warranted and should at least be qualified.
Does anyone know more about how reddit does booking for their iama? They have a schedule and consistently book notable people. Do they have a staff dedicated to it?
A couple colleagues from my company have done scheduled IAMA's...I believe our communications people reached out to the mods, who then put it on the sidebar schedule.
262 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadIt's like running a tenth of a twitter with a 10k char limit, if twitter had 10 people on development/operations
I don't think that's true. I believe the comment pages are cached for 1 min.
https://github.com/reddit/reddit
Edit: To clarify, I think it's an excellent question. It's just very lazy of you to ask someone else to do it.
Of course, that same scalability (AWS) is what powers Reddit and dozens of other major websites.
... so naturally I'll refresh it every few seconds.
If you need to read the question, click "context."
I was wondering why Reddit was having load trouble. This explains it.
I can't log in though, which is slightly annoying. Would be interesting to see the traffic stats for this once it's done.
Apologies if it wasn't clear my response was tongue in cheek.
- This is so cool, the President of the United States is going to use our website to answer questions!
- OMG, the site is down and the President wants to use our site, fix this now!
At least, that's what I would do if I had some as high profile as the US president using a site that would get slammed HARD.
Joking aside, I predict disappointment. Reddit users will want hard-hitting answers, Obama will definitely not give them (already the internet freedom question has been fluffy-answered). In all honestly, no-one should expect anything else- the POTUS is not going to unveil new thoughts and strategies through Reddit.
That said, it shows how far they've come from the "jailbait" scandal a few months ago, but I strongly suspect Republicans will refer back to it in good time.
EDIT: Hey, at least PresidentObama bought Reddit Gold. Somehow I doubt it'll be enough to cover the bandwidth, though.
It will then be followed by a scurry of liberals saying the Republicans did it just to discredit Obama.
Why bother?
If you're wrong, your comment will seem too negative and cynical (which it is).
If you're right, well, that'd be disappointing, right?
Comments like yours make me want to rename this site Hater News.
I don't see how anyone could truthfully expect that.
Don't get me wrong, it's a bold and somewhat brave move by the Obama team to do this- there are myriad ways it can blow up in their faces (Rampart, anyone?). But as a consequence of that, they're going to be playing it very safe, I'm sure.
If understanding how the world works and telling others makes you a hater, then sign me up.
Essentially before and during when the war crimes (or whatever) are being committed, everyone hates the truth-tellers because they think they are wrong and they are challenging their worldview or whatever. And then afterwards, everyone hates the truth-tellers because they remind them that they were wrong. That's why you will never read an article about prominent Republicans coming forward and apologizing to Michael Moore or whatever.
I still hope that something interesting will come out of it, but 99% of the people who do AMAs just answer the questions that they want to.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obam...
Also, he brought up Afghanistan on his own in response to the 'hardest decision' question. That's not exactly a fluff answer.
Questions about the state of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Egypt, et al would have been more interesting. Characterizing sending more troops as a hard decision is not too surprising.
That said, he did come about as close as he could to acknowledging the surge in Afghanistan didn't accomplish much. And he called for a constitutional amendment on Citizen's United, which he apparently hadn't done in public before (according to news outlets trumpeting it).
I also have things to do and manage to fit in at least a couple of hours a day on reddit
Or is it just some assistant yelling from the other room "should I rephrase our standard answer on campaign reform" and his answer is "yes".
edit: link Verification photo: http://i.imgur.com/oz0a7.jpg
People can be so cynical and unappreciative. It's easy to get caught up in the now and take the little things for granted.
President Obama's predecessor didn't use EMAIL!!!!
Now Obama is taking questions on Reddit.
It's all about perspective. His use of technology is completely different than yours. There are so many ramifications for everything he says and does. You can't imagine living in a world like that - very few can, because very few will.
So just take a deep breath and enjoy the entertainment.
This is just a cool way to suck the air out of the RNC convention news cycle.
Stroke of (political) genius, if you asked me.
If he was right, it just shows that he understands how these things work.
If he was wrong, he would be pleasantly surprised that the expected lack of substance was averted.
One can hold a pessimistic opinion and be realistic at the same time.
Give me a break. This comment was one step away from "fucking stoners". It's insulting and inappropriate regardless.
This is a typical HN troll post on reddit anyway. If you think the "jailbait" scandal defined reddit at any point, you obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about.
No it wasn't, in any way, shape or form. I support legalisation, I'm just tired of it being treated like it's the most important thing you could possibly ask the President about.
If you think the "jailbait" scandal defined reddit at any point
Defined for who? It was on national television. I assure you that a lot of non-tech savvy people will have had their first exposure to Reddit as a result of that report.
If you're too jaded to care about millions of Americans dying for no reason, the destruction of the black community, the spread of AIDS and hepatitis, and our crumbling infrastructure, all direct consequences of prohibition, then that says a lot more about you than it does about those who would challenge Obama on the issue.
The reason people treat it like the most important issue facing society is because basically it is.
Not the future we were expecting, but I'll take it.
_____________________________
demaney 69 points 28 minutes ago
For proof, did he send you a picture of him holding a dated index card? Or did the Secret Service land a helicopter on your house?
yishan 183 points 25 minutes ago
He faxed a copy of his birth certificate.
Oh dear..
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
-[engineers everywhere]
Edited: for relevance ;)
Edit2: SIC WTF? - per comments below
Edit3: Downvotes? Wow. POTUS commenting on IP Law, Privacy, Internet Freedom. etc. PLS Read the context. It was included. Tks.
________
[–]SharkGirl 812 points 32 minutes ago
We know how Republicans feel about protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet Freedom an issue you'd push to add to the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?
[–]PresidentObama[S] 130 points 10 minutes ago
Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although their will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle - and it will be reflected in the platform.
load more comments (25 replies)
[–]davidjoho 104 points 29 minutes ago
And when you say "Internet Freedom" do you mean the Republican version ("Freedom for the access provider monopoly") or the version in which the Internet is free to anyone with an idea or an expression?
One would think that the president of the united states would be able to use "their" and "there" correctly...
You couldn't type correctly with both hands busy and your mouth full.
Aah, those were the days.
Homophones suck.
...goes off to weep that the President, or the intern typing these answers can't even get it right.