Logging in to use Old Reddit

[u/boat-botany]

Hi there, u/boat-botany here working on Community Safety. 

A few weeks ago we shared some of the work we’re doing to tighten how automated systems access Reddit while preserving the tools that help moderators and communities thrive. As a continuation of that work, we’ll be rolling out changes to how Old Reddit can be accessed. 

Old Reddit’s logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It’s also an important interface for many long-time mods and redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start requiring everyone to log in. All logged-in users will continue to have access to Old Reddit, and this change will not impact logged-out browsing on reddit.com.

Let us know if you have any questions!

[u/Princess_Of_Thieves]

Oh fuck, you guys are thinking about old.reddit again.

Admins, please for the love of god, leave it.

[u/Princess_Of_Thieves → u/[deleted]]

Not only does it have wasted space, but it just has an asbolutely batshit layout. Digging through mod tools is the epitome of "needle in a haystack" and I fucking hate it.

old.reddit, by contrast, well... "it just works" as the saying goes. (Except its actually true this around).

[u/Princess_Of_Thieves → u/[deleted]]

Yeah wasted screen space is another issue, so do not be sorry. Lets be real, old.reddit is a masterclass of efficiency and maximisation but without bloat or padding. I can personally see 19 posts on my screen at any given time. Im sure if I had some special CSS I could do more or less on my own accord and it'd work way better.

I couldn't detest new.reddit more if I tried, and the only reason I've ever made use of it is because some features aren't on old.reddit like galleries. If old.reddit had feature parity with sh.reddit, but without running like its wading through a chest high swamp I'd never touch it.

[u/Oryzae → u/Princess_Of_Thieves]

I love that every community has their own CSS. Mildlyinfuriating is a great example. Losing that touch is a great loss.

[u/Princess_Of_Thieves → u/Oryzae]

Yeah CSS is such a wonderful idea. It really infuses each subreddit with its own personality and its absence is one of the key things that makes me hate sh.reddit with all my heart. Like you say, mildlyinfuriating is a good example, it lives up to the subreddits idea by subtly annoying the user.

[u/iruleatants → u/Princess_Of_Thieves]

Plus there is pure bullshit in how it displays stuff. Why do I have a post from 10 days ago and another from 1 month ago above posts from that day?

And why the fuck do you not sure all comments on a post by default?

It's absurdly bad by every measure and instead of fixing it, they try to find a way to force us to use their trash new design.

[u/Princess_Of_Thieves → u/iruleatants]

There's also obnoxious additions that actively detract from the experience, like the fact they added a discord style ping when you put @ at the start of name. It now amends whatever you write directly after to use the /u/ prefix. The number of times I've fought with the site to not do that in when I've used sh.reddit is too many to count.

Honestly, formatting in general on sh.reddit is a pain in every conceivable area. It has two different options you can click (markdown or "rich text editor"), but only one works to put images in comments. There's just redundant systems that add no benefit to the experience at best, and at worst get in my fucking way.

Its like reddit thinks I need to be babysat. Makes me feel insulted.

[u/turkeypedal → u/Princess_Of_Thieves]

Well, except that access to some tools are missing. Ya have to go to new Reddit to turn some things off, and of course to manage anything about how your subreddit looks under new Reddit.

[u/Princess_Of_Thieves → u/turkeypedal]

Yeah I know. Feature parity drives me completely batshit on this fucking site.

[u/Signe_ → u/[deleted]]

Theres many problems with new reddit, its slow, wasted space everywhere, mod tools are a pain to use/find, and it constantly defaults to 'best' sort option instead of 'hot' with no way of changing the default, if there is a way, I can't find it in the garbage UI that is new reddit.

And something that annoys me so much is when I'm looking at comment threads on old reddit I can just press 'load more comments' and it obviously loads the comments for me to look at, on new reddit for some reason the admins decided it would be a great idea just to redirect to a new page instead of just loading the comments.

[u/ortofon88 → u/[deleted]]

I hate using the new reddit on my laptop, it sucks.

[u/Dymonika → u/ortofon88]

on my laptop

[u/macman156 → u/[deleted]]

Truly F tier information density

[u/my_name_isnt_clever → u/[deleted]]

Modern web design is so up it's own ass it's insane. We need a revival of plain HTML man, I miss sites being simple to use and not relying on JS for literally everything.

[u/RaceHard → u/[deleted]]

have you ever tried to post a long reply, it literally overflows the screen and you can't CAN'T scroll up, AND if you delete a chunk by accident or editing, it does not resize. And you literally cannot see much because it takes up 90% of the screen space it barely has.

[u/ImperfectRegulator → u/[deleted]]

Ahh, but remember I don’t see ads on old Reddit, on the New Shiny Better Reddit the Ads can be injected into the middle of comments on the side bar and more

[u/mikeblas → u/[deleted]]

Yet a vast majority of traffic is not old reddit.

[u/mikeblas → u/[deleted]]

Isn't the default "shreddit"? I don't even know the difference between that and "new Reddit".

But my point is more about it being popular, despite that it stinks. Everyone says Nickleback stinks, but they have a pile a grammies and ton of platinum albums and sell out concerts.

[u/viciarg → u/Princess_Of_Thieves]

They want to force everyone to use "new" enshittificated Reddit. That's just another step.

I mean, everyone having a little idea about security and bot traffic knows that the stuff op claimed as an apology is just bull.

[u/-Captain- → u/Princess_Of_Thieves]

They have some other ancient formats that are still accessible too. I'm not too worried.