I was strongly opposed to subreddits when they were proposed. I thought tagging, like Delicious did, would be a better solution.
I'll happily admit that tagging could not have grown Reddit to anywhere near its current size without the site collapsing on itself. The different feel to each community (compare F7U12 are AskScience) is much more appealing than a single homogeneous group. However, I think that it was the first step towards breaking the promise to create an personalized news aggregator. I for one was disappointed when the recommended posts feature was dropped.
The initial missteps with whitelabel sites like the Wired-branded reddit and lipstick.com are amusing in hindsight. I'm not sure how reddit with a pink background with Courier as the primary font was supposed to attract a female audience.
I'll happily admit that tagging could not have grown Reddit to anywhere near its current size without the site collapsing on itself. The different feel to each community (compare F7U12 are AskScience) is much more appealing than a single homogeneous group. However, I think that it was the first step towards breaking the promise to create an personalized news aggregator. I for one was disappointed when the recommended posts feature was dropped.
The initial missteps with whitelabel sites like the Wired-branded reddit and lipstick.com are amusing in hindsight. I'm not sure how reddit with a pink background with Courier as the primary font was supposed to attract a female audience.