On social news site Reddit, the community’s voice is all-powerful. Even when it’s wrong.
Earlier this month, a redditor asked a simple question: Where did the site’s alien logo come from?
“The original reddit alien was a piece of graffiti that the reddit creators spraypainted on the roof of their apartment in Boston.”
That’s the top-voted comment on the thread, written by redditor draynen. And it’s wrong.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanion created the logo himself. There was no spray paint involved, no roof in Boston. Ohanian himself explained where the logo came from, in the very same thread:
“I was bored in marketing class my senior year of college at UVA and doodled the alien in the margins of my notebook,” Ohanian wrote.”I had no reason for choosing an alien, I just really wanted a mascot for our website (which at this point we hadn’t even begun working on).”
On Reddit, users are supposed to vote for the best answer, which then pushes it to the top.
But somehow, as of tonight, Ohanian’s own explanation is still buried halfway down the page.
So what gives?
Reddit has a smart way of handling user submissions. Popular posts rise as they receivemore upvotes, then give way as they age and new threads shoot up the ladder.
But this also means that as a post ages, it essentially disappears in a flood of new content — as does its accompanying discussion.
What did Ohanian do wrong?
He waited too long. His comment was posted a full day after draynen’s wrong answer. And a day is an eternity in Reddit time.
So in a way, the Reddit co-founder is a victim of his own site’s success: no one remained to upvote his comment, because redditors were already too distracted by all the new stuff on the site.
But not all was lost. Ohanian still found a way to bring attention to the error.
All it took was an announcement to his 12,000 followers on Twitter:
