TIL Redditors have been creating an unofficial magazine (The Redditor) featuring original content (art, interviews, stories) from the community. They have 7 issues and are on hiatus due to lack of exposure on this site.

MNightShyamalan · 10 days

Here's why you and the general sense of negativity in this thread are out of line. I'll write a bit, not just for your sake, but if anyone is curious why I'm done with this site. I see this happen all the time.

As the headline says, we've had trouble finding exposure. So in direct response, the top comments read "Exposure isn't the problem, it's that people just don't care." "Why are people shocked when people don't like what they do?" More than opinion, this thread was fueled by ignorance towards our situation and looking for explanation to 'our failure.'

What people do not realize is, the only way to get significant exposure on this site, is through major subreddits. And we literally do not fit into any of them. We are not allowed to post new issues to /pics anymore due to their new rules (though we were fairly successful when we could.) I was not allowed to do an AMA, because 'no AMA's allowed about reddit." And, this thread, although it briefly hit number one, was removed by mods for vague reasons. The admins of this site used to advertise us on the sidebar, which brought us hundreds of new subscribers per week (aka, people who cared), but they removed the ad when we declined an agreement which would sign over our website and everything else to them. For a while we were probably the fastest growing subreddit and community projects here, but there are just no longer any places to release a new issue and continue that growth. That is a significant problem. I could show you any past release we've ever had, I could show you thousands of comments about our project, articles written, and the reactions are always extremely extremely positive. That's what led me to think at the very least, this project would have a larger audience if we had a place to be noticed. But we don't. It's not simply because people just don't care.

Many of the 'top voted' arguments in this thread literally do not make sense. This is not my opinion vs theirs, I know it as fact because I'm the one who makes this magazine. It's why I believe ignorance and cynicism on this site can take precedent over honest discussion. An example, you yourself posted "Exclusive content? Yeah right, it's all been posted here before" - which is factually untrue - we absolutely do develop lots of exclusive content - yet you were upvoted quite a bit. How could anyone have that opinion? The main 'critique' here about our magazine is "it's old content, we've seen it before." I know this is just not possible for most redditors. We pull the majority of our content from very small communities on the site. There is also so much original and exclusive content being made for each issue, collaborations with users, artists, writers, interviews. Yes, some redditors may see a few things they've already seen on the site, but there is no way it's the vast majority of users (although it is somehow the overwhelming opinion here.) You want to test this? Look at our most recent issue. It's 70 pages, and count on your hand how many you've seen before.

So when the top comments in this thread become 'It's old content' and 'exposure isn't the problem' and 'people just don't care' - It shows they are not aware of the situation, hardly open to what it actually is, and they're exaggerating their problems with it. Bold opinions get noticed and they build and build and they influence first reactions. The thread started out mixed, then it grew negative, and then almost entirely negative. We have never seen this amount of cynicism before in reaction to our magazine. I don't consider it a true representation of reddit. What you're not seeing is, we received dozens of positive emails, private messages, new subscribers, people asking how to help, saying thank you, encouraging us to continue, this thread was upvoted to front page based on inherent interest in the source, but inside these comments became a mob talking shit.

The reason I stand behind what we're doing, is because we have had thousands and thousands of people who enjoy it. Because there are hundreds of thousands of users who post work here that is never noticed and this project is simply a respectable attempt to publish their work. Because in general this site used to embrace community work. Because it's not just my project, but the collaboration of dozens of artists, editors, writers, hundreds of users, support from the admins, professional designers, people wanting to work for us, people offering to pay, subscribe. Because it's free and once a month, it's better than a witty picture of a rock at the top of /pics. I'm not hoping for everyone to read this, or like it, or care. But it's amazing something like this magazine could even exist, and we're trying to make something to help give this site a better image. Because not everyone here, out of 20 million users has sludged through every single thread, and I'd bet some large chunk of them may enjoy a monthly recap of some great stuff from the community. The backlash this project got in this thread is beyond me. I know people's opinions are being swayed by others. I know your own arguments and many others don't hold up in debate. This isn't me being 'pretentious' as you say, this is simply defending a project that has value in existing based on the feedback of tens of thousands of users since we started.

Keep in mind, we started this magazine based on the feedback and interest we saw from users, to do something genuinely different and new, in direct response to a quickly moving and chaotic site, something that at the very least could be appreciated and encouraged to exist and to grow, something with production value, something achievable, a place to publish creative work, something with undeniable potential - but that's not enough? Nobody cares?

I can absolutely guarantee you, if this project had a place to exist once a month (like a cameraphone shot of a cat does), yes, we would have a massive following worth continuing development for. When you'll have half a million views of whatever celebrity user x ran into this afternoon, it's not at all hard to see what we're doing could be appreciated once a month. It's one link among the thousands of others, but instead of some imgur shot of the hour, it's 70 pages of quality work. It's just something nice to be doing. It makes sense for this to exist. Call me 'pretentious' for defending the project and not accepting this 'criticism', but my position on this magazine aside, the ignorance, the lack of discussion, and the widespread cynicism in this thread is more than enough to confirm reddit is just not a community I want to be a part of.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

Jesus. You've been talking a lot of shit in this thread. By 'exclusive', I mean exclusive, as in, yes, we actually collaborated with artists and users from the community to develop new content and interviews for our issues.

In issue 7, the Johan Potma AMA was exclusive to our magazine, the Witch Colony AMA was exclusive, we had photos that were never posted to reddit, dozens of illustrations and pieces from guest artists created just for us. The Q&A with Notch from Minecraft, the Q&A with kickme444 from Reddit Gifts. It goes on and on for several issues back.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

That's what we did, but the sidebar rules are actively enforced by the mods, not simply 'guidelines.' Personally it feels like they're cops giving out speeding tickets for going one over, but it's not a debate I'm going to win.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

The problem I've always had in your assessment is that you're disregarding how many people do like what we're doing, and how many obstacles we've been faced with in sharing it. Based on the feedback we've gotten each release (extremely positive,) I'm less inclined to believe reddit just 'doesn't care', as I am to believe it's just a very hard project to bring to 'the masses' attention. A monthly magazine is not suited to fit in very well on any of the big subreddits where it can be noticed, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worthless or lacks potential or I am naive. I suspect if 1.5 million users of reddit knew about this (the one's you suggest just don't care), we would have 20x the readership. I'll link this thread for you again where I shared the project with 'reddit', and the general responses are, a) we didn't know about this, b) this is surprisingly good.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

Perhaps it's also worth mentioning that despite any speculation of why this project couldn't work, without any advertising at all, we were getting 30,000 issues downloaded a month when we could post our new covers (such as this) to /pics. However /pics later changed their rules so no text is allowed (to fight off memes), meaning we no longer had a place to post a new issue and find readers.

I was never worried about the response the magazine got, I couldn't be happier, people really liked it. But it's just so much work each month if we don't have a decent place to post. I really think redditors in general would appreciate this magazine showing up once a month among the thousands of cameraphone pics and whatever random things they see. I'm just not sure if there's any solution for us.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

I spend way too much time digging around for content and developing exclusives to believe it.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

Original content in the sense that it's all original work from the reddit community, not aggregated further from elsewhere on the internet. Though we also have tons of truly original and exclusive work created just for each issue. As for 'copying', we always get permission from all the writers and artists before anything goes into the magazine, and everyone is always very happy to be published.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

The main problem is simply not having a place to post our new issues to on reddit, so subscribing to our subreddit is helpful. Word of mouth is also very helpful on this site, I've found whenever we're mentioned on reddit we get hundreds of new subscribers, and thousands of issues downloaded.

Our subreddit (/r/theredditor) is also the place to leave feedback, suggestions for future issues, stay updated, etc. We read everything and take tons of ideas from the community in each issue.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

Hope you at least enjoyed the exclusive interviews and guest artists we've been featuring.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

As an editor of the magazine, knowing how deep we dig to find features and articles and artwork people probably haven't seen, I truly think you're exaggerating. Especially with our most recent issue, I'd be amazed if anyone had seen more than 10% of it before. I think you're being massively cynical and short sighted to disregard the whole project as 'reading the same things over again.' At the very very least, if we feature an AMA or AskReddit that you noticed before, it's no longer thousands of comments or a nightmare to read.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

Hey. I'm one of the original creators of the magazine.

I've seen it a few times, but I've never understood the argument that our features are 'stale', even to hardcore redditors. I think it's an overly simple and unfair rational for why the project has struggled to find exposure. I can't speak against your own opinion, but on the most basic levels, we're not rehashing the front page and popular threads, it's more about digging deeper into a community of talented people who's work gets buried under front page headlines. You say you have a magazine of your own - don't you think reddit in it's entirety is an amazing source to develop a magazine? The site is full of artists and writers and photographers and interviews.

See, personally I'm not at all interested in the front page or the 'popular' threads, it's actually the reason I started the project. So most of what we feature was buried in the obscurity of smaller subreddits, lots of exclusives from users, lots of guest artists we've found through the site, and if we do chose a popular AMA, we cut it down from 10000 comments into 3 pages, proofread, edit, polish it up. In my honest opinion, it's really a nice thing (especially for free.) If that's not something you're interested in, no worries, because I know a lot of people are. There is so much here that goes unnoticed even by people who sit on the site 12 hours a day, I'm absolutely convinced a digital magazine showing off some of the best could work.

MNightShyamalan · 12 days

Thank you. If this thread hits front page on TIL it would be the most exposure we've ever had. For many reasons, despite the magazine getting better, it's been getting harder and harder to post new issues on reddit, there's just no good place for it. So any exposure (especially from the larger subreddits) is tremendously helpful in giving this project a reason to continue.

EDIT

Hit front page, then it got taken down by the mods. "No sources newer than two months" ??

Thanks for everyone who helped. Had the most views we've ever had, though, pretty much everyone was shitting on the project.

KILLTHEREDDITOR · 27 days

The short and simple and somewhat obvious answer is that it makes it as easy as possible to get any of our issues on a mobile device.

KILLTHEREDDITOR · 27 days

I'm personally not working on a new issue, just sticking around to keep things up and running, maybe help out a little here and there if needed. Blair, the other main editor, wants to keep it going and will probably be looking for some help. Remains to be seen what will happen. As for when to expect another issue, you might as well try asking a magic 8 ball.

nazbot · 28 days

Sorry to hear this.

In fairness to their argument, (if it makes you feel any better) our magazine is not licensed by reddit and technically not legal to sell or republish. Technically it's probably not quite legal to do it ourselves. Even though it's free for now, Apple just wants to know everything in their store is legit to make a profit from if it is ever switched to a pay app, and that we have the rights to sell and/or publish the content in the issues. I think they're trying to cover their own ass which is somewhat understandable.

I know it's not a good feeling to hit these hurdles but thanks so much for the effort and giving it a shot.

KILLTHEREDDITOR · 29 days

Hey, sorry about this. Servers have been down for a few days but we're working on it. I know this list isn't pretty, but if you can access it you should be able to download any of our issues. Trying to get it all sorted out with a new host right now and things should be up soon.

camobs · 1 month

Don't hold your breath.

KILLTHEREDDITOR · 1 month

Would the redditor work without the fancy artwork and the production value?

To a degree but it's nowhere near as ambitious. Playing around and trying new things, working with guest artists, our covers, new designs, etc was what held my interest. Otherewise it's just mechanically rehashing content, and anyone can do it. I was more interested in doing it as a creative project for myself.
Most of our content comes from plain text so figuring out how to present it is usually the hardest part, but it gives features personalty, defined chapters, takes advantage of the medium and what makes it significantly different / more presentable than the site.

KILLTHEREDDITOR · 1 month

Not 100% sure what you mean by this question. Specifically the second part.

If you're asking about being a troll / starting to make this magazine and getting called out - it was never really an issue. People knew I was having fun on kill365 and the magazine could speak I think. At the start a few people questioned it like I had some evil plan. Though I sort of still think this magazine is the ultimate troll, it's a response in sorts to the audience this site started pulling in. Our first three covers were mocking everything on front page, but showing there is better content behind it all.

KILLTHEREDDITOR · 1 month

"No AMA's allowed "about reddit.""

ohblair · 1 month

We've had lots of problems like this. If we had a AMA about the project on front page we'd have a few hundred thousand new eyes. But nope. 'Not allowed.' Disappointment is not all that surprising with reddit anymore. Allow me to ramble hard. Perhaps people will understand how hard it is to share this magazine on reddit. Grab a cup of coffee and get comfortable.

There used to be a huge general subreddit to share or say anything (/reddit.com), but it was closed to draw focus to more specific interest subreddits instead. Significantly closing the door for 'saying something' to the masses, unless posts are conveniently in the form of imgur links or questions.

When we started, we used to post our new covers to /pics, so we could reach a larger audience (which is how many of you found out about this and got us started.) Our 'issue 1' was the third most viewed pic of all time, so it made sense to stay there with future issues. At first it worked out to a degree - our post goes to our cover, the download links in the comments, and people would subscribe. But they've tightened up their rules, no digital text in pics. But because there is text in our header, we can't post our covers there anymore. So now to fit their rules, we'd literally have to a) print out the cover b) take a photo of the paper. No joke. The rule was made to kill off rage comics and memes - but ironically we took the hit and they refuse to make an exception. They take their jobs very seriously. Their mods said 'I don't know why you need /pics, surely people will still find it in the proper channels.' Unfortunately, not really the case, and there are no 'proper channels.' If those were the rules when we started, this project would have been dead on arrival.

So without /pics, last month we posted our new cover to /funny, because again, there are 1.5 million registered users here and I think we can do better than 12 thousand. I thought we would be ok because our cover was pretty funny, and I've never seen anything funny there anyways. But those mods started discussing banning us from their subreddit too. Fortunately for them it became a non-issue, because the readers of /funny weren't that interested in something that required more than a few seconds of thought, and the release flopped. Lesson learned.

I've tried an AskReddit to get word out - 'Hey Reddit, we're making this free magazine etc, what would you like to see? Feedback? Thoughts?' Everyone who replied seemed to really love it, for the 15 minutes before it got downvoted and buried - probably by "Whats the weirdest thing you've masturbated to?" with a few thousand comments.

We used to get tons of hits from /bestof, another pretty large community, you know, looking for great content from reddit. But a few people started complaining "It's awesome, but i'm not sure it's bestof material.. It was interesting when it started, but we have to upvote every month?" So it died off there too and so did 15,000+ downloads each release.

Reddit said from the beginning 'We love this, keep doing what you're doing', met with an editor, asked us to send them a sidebar ad, ran it for a few months, they gave us exclusive content. Great, very helpful. Then they sent us an 'agreement' that would give them the right to take our website, 'The Redditor' title, and ability to stop us at any time. We're not at odds or anything, but it made little sense to sign from our perspective as we'd benefit in no way. And then our ad disappeared that day. They don't owe us anything, but unfortunately they're not exactly making it any easier and their level of interest is a bit confusing.

Honestly, these are just some of the reasons I'm done for now. I just wish at the very least more people knew about the project. It's a lot to deal with, trying to get noticed and I don't even know where to post a new issue anymore. I'm not totally bitter, more than anything I'm really happy with how it's gone on our end, with those who have subscribed here, so glad it took off and that people like it. We still get 30,000 downloads an issue, which is still insane for basically a DIY zine. And all little projects struggle, but I don't think it should be this hard for this project on this site. Reddit's structure and mods and all the little rules are making it very very difficult with each release. And then we start working on the next issue and deal with it all again.

/rant. ttyl.

KILLTHEREDDITOR · 1 month

And good looks.

KILLTHEREDDITOR · 1 month

Well. This AMA is banned, but might as well answer whoever stumbles by.

Parody can only go so far. The original joke cover was made to point out some of my problems with reddit and because I wasn't really enjoying reading most of the site anymore. I don't like this internet culture of 16-22 year old guys trying to be so witty and right about everything. We all know why reddit is a great site, but I don't like the associations and elitist intellectualism and the forever alone self-deprecation the users have defined themselves with. The site blew up and with so much content flowing in, the increasing way people can get noticed is to be absurdly bold with average opinions and jokes and headlines.

From my legit account of several years, it was really difficult to post artwork or videos or original work or have a discussion, but celebrity twitters and facebook screenshots and memes and all that were taking over. I felt the site was becoming unmanageable, unreadable, embarrassing, and there was another side that deserved more attention. There's insane amounts of content here and an opportunity to make a real magazine, so it only made sense to focus on what I personally wanted to see more of. We'll only have a 60ish pages a month, but it's often stuff most people have never found, or shaped into something much more readable than the site. In a sense, the magazine is the opposite of the quickly moving general front page.

ohblair · 1 month

Ok, I just made an AMA.

It was spam filtered - and then a message from Karmanaut - Unfortunately, we don't allow submissions about Reddit itself. Sorry that The Redditor isn't getting much attention.

Unbelievable.

KILLTHEREDDITOR

TROPHY CASE

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