The Complete Beginner’s Guide to By: Matthew Fuller This book is a completely beginner-focused guide to setting up and maintaining a Reddit account for the purposes of staying up-to- date with current events, commenting on articles, or discovering interesting stories online. It is provided as-is for educational purposes only and the author does not guarantee that it is free from errors or that its instructions will become obsolete in the future. Reddit and all references to the site herein are trademarked by Conde Nast. 1 Introduction If you’ve been using the Internet for more than a few days, perhaps you’re looking for a way to find new and interesting stories or learn more about a certain topic. Luckily, you’ve come to the right ! In this book, I am going to teach you about a site called Reddit.

If there is one place on the Internet that encompasses the broadest range of topic diversity, user interaction, and occasional controversy, it is Reddit. Reddit is a form of Internet bulletin board, a place where users can post links to news stories, images, video, or just plain text about almost any topic imaginable. These posts are then voted on by its users and the highest-voted posts reach the top of the page while the negatively-voted posts slowly sink out of sight.

Reddit was started in 2005 by two students at the University of Virginia: and . In 2006, the website was acquired by Condé Nast Publications, although the company has interfered very little in the site’s operation. The site has steadily gained users, and its biggest acquisition of new accounts came between 2009 and 2010 when another similar site, Digg, changed a number of its policies, causing a mass exodus of users to Reddit.

At the time of this book’s publication, Reddit has almost 3 million active accounts. In 2013, there were over 56 billion page views on the website. Actors, comedians, TV personalities, and even the President of the United States have accounts on the site or have posted on it. Needless to say, Reddit is extremely popular and influences a wide sector of the Internet.

In the next chapters, I will be walking through every step of using Reddit. I will cover getting familiarized with the site, setting up an account, securing your privacy, posting, interacting with users, utilizing the many resources available, and customizing your experience. By the end of this book, I am hopeful that you will be using Reddit to its full potential and enhancing your browsing experience. 2 The Reddit Experience Demographics Before I begin walking through each of Reddit’s features and the process of getting started on the site, I want to give you a bit more background that will hopefully be helpful in understanding the site and its users. If you’re itching to just get started, skip ahead to Chapter 3, but I think this chapter should be an interesting read if you have the time.

The first thing you should understand about Reddit is its demographic. It is very heavily populated by young-adult males with a liberal political ideology. The most popular age range on the site is 18 - 29 and the comments and topics generally reflect this. The site’s users as a whole are intensely political, value fairness and free speech, and are also quite philanthropic, donating to a wide variety of causes. If the age or political statistics make you hesitant to visit, don’t worry, there are a seemingly unlimited number of sub communities that differ from the sum of the whole.

Reddit has a very nerdy and technology-slanted presence as well. Due to the fact that a number of its users joined when the site was focused heavily on these topics, the culture remains strong. Technology-centric posts often get voted to the top more easily than other posts and many of the site’s users have a high degree of technological literacy. Users value the openness of the Internet and any companies that work against that notion are shamed.

Due to the younger demographic of many of Reddit’s users, some of its content can seem immature, crude, or inappropriate. There is very little censorship on the site and pictures containing nudity or grotesque injuries are posted regularly (although they can be easily hidden). Despite this, the user has the ultimate control over everything he or she sees, and I’ll be walking through the steps to customize the experience to a personal liking.

While the generalizations above apply to the average of Reddit’s users, there is no shortage of demographics that do not fit the mold. While the political ideology is predominantly liberal, there are countless communities for conservatives, libertarians, anarchists, socialists, etc. Despite the overrepresentation of male users, female users have a wide variety of communities to join, including ones for women’s rights, motherhood, parenting, etc. This pattern repeats, resulting in a site that can cater to almost any political ideology, age, gender, and hobby. Common Terms In this section, I will define some common words and phrases that I’ll be using in the book or that are popular on Reddit. The definitions will be brief, but don’t worry, I’ll be getting into much more detail later.

Subreddit - A subreddit is a community within Reddit that covers a particular topic. For example, the “politics” subreddit centers on political topics, news stories, images, and videos. Subreddits are denoted with a r after the reddit.com address, such as reddit.comrpolitics.

Upvote - A positive vote on a submission or comment. It is displayed as an orange up arrow.

Downvote - A negative vote on a submission or comment. It is displayed as a blue down arrow.

AMA - Ask Me Anything. Although this is an entire subreddit by itself, the term is used across the site to indicate to other users that they can ask questions of the original poster. For example: I work at Google, AMA.

OP - Original Poster. Refers to the user who originally submitted the content or made the first comment.

Thread - The collection of comments on a particular submission.

ITT - In This Thread. Used to reference something happening in the chain of comments. For example, “ITT, everyone is talking about the wrong event.”

Karma - When a post is submitted or a comment posted and other users vote on it, the resulting votes are added to a user’s “karma.” Karma is meaningless other than indicating how active a user is. There is post karma (for submissions) and comment karma (for comments).

NSFW - Not Safe For Work. Used to indicate that the post may contain inappropriate material not suitable to be viewed in public.

Repost - Indicates that the submission has already been posted previously. Users are quick to point out reposts and often downvote those posts.

Cross Post (X-Post) - Indicates that a post is being made in multiple subreddits for increased visibility. For example, a post about a new law involving computers may be posted in the “politics” subreddit and cross-posted in the “technology” subreddit.

TIL - Today I Learned. Indicates something interesting the user has just learned.

Throwaway - User accounts are easy to make on Reddit, so many users make a new “throwaway” account when posting NSFW or personal information so that their identities are not revealed.

TL;DR - Too Long; Didn’t Read. Used to summarize a long post.

There are many more terms that you will come across, some that are only used in certain subreddits, but I will do my best to describe them as they arise. 3 Getting Started Your First Account Now that you have enough information to understand what Reddit is at a high level, let’s get started. Head on over to reddit.com. You may want to bookmark this page, as it is quite addicting and I’m sure you’ll be spending a lot of time on the site.

The Reddit Homepage

At the top right, click “register” above the search box. The registration window will appear. At this point, I want to take a moment to talk about usernames. Usernames on Reddit are quite varied; some people use their own names (not recommended) while others user puns or random strings of characters. Your username is completely up to you; however, I do not recommend using a name that can be connected back to you, either in real life or online through other accounts. Redditors are notorious for tracking people down in real-life, and you don’t want a comment you make on the site to cause someone to attempt to find out who you are.

You do not need to enter an email address unless you want to have a way to reset your password in case you lose it.

Reddit User Registration Page

Be sure to create a strong password, and then click “create account.” Congratulations, you now have a Reddit account and can be called a “Redditor.”

Let’s now take a look at the various places you can go throughout the site. User Account Page Once you log in, you will notice that your username, followed by a (1) is located at the top right-hand corner. Clicking on your username will take you to your account page.

User Account Page

On this page, you will (soon) see a collection of all of your posts and comments made throughout the site. Since you have not posted anything yet, it is currently blank. On the right side, your link karma, as well as your comment karma are listed. Your trophy case contains special “awards” for various achievements such as being a member of the site for one year (the one year club).

At the top of the page, you can see several tabs that will take you to comments you’ve made, posts you’ve submitted, your posts which have been “gilded” (essentially, there is a concept called “Reddit Gold” which is a special token that can be given from one user to another in response to an extra helpful, insightful, or funny post. When gold is given, the post is considered “gilded”), and posts you’ve liked, disliked, or hidden.

The user account page is a great place to see an overview of all of your activity on Reddit. As you become more active on the site, it will fill up quickly. If you need to refer to a post or comment you’ve made in the past, this is the place to do it. The Inbox At the top right of the page, there is a small envelope next to your username. Sometimes, especially after you’ve submitted a post or made a comment, you will notice that it is orange instead of white. Clicking on it will take you to your inbox.

User Inbox

Your inbox is where your messages appear. Messages could be direct messages from another user who wanted to send you a private message or comments on a submission you posted. The messages remain unread until you click on them individually.

There are a few other pages on Reddit you should be aware of, but we will come back to those later. The Default Subreddits When you first create an account, Reddit chooses a number of subreddits to which you are automatically subscribed. Being subscribed to a subreddit means that submissions posted to that category are automatically added to your homepage. Typically, your homepage consists of a number of subreddit submissions mixed together in one giant list. These default subreddits cover a variety of topics such as “technology,” “news,” “world news,” etc. However, with its diverse user base, these topics do not always suit every user. For that reason, I’ll walk you through the process of selecting your default subreddits. Personalizing Your Default Subreddits The easiest way to setup your default subreddits is to visit the subreddits page and manually subscribe and unsubscribe to every topic in which you are interested. This page is located at: http://www.reddit.com/subreddits/ when you are logged in.

Visiting that page will give you a long list of subreddits, sorted by the number of subscribers. Keep in mind that it would likely take you days to scroll through the complete list, and much smaller communities with fewer subscribers appear towards the bottom of the list. Massive subreddits, such as rfunny, appear at the top. As you scroll through the list, click the “subscribe” and “unsubscribe” button to customize your experience to your liking.

Keep in mind that you can always edit this list later. On every page containing a subreddit, there is usually an unsubscribe or subscribe link which will allow you to configure your homepage as your browse. Subscriptions Page

Once you are finished, return to the Reddit homepage at http://reddit.com and you will now notice the new content from your updated subscriptions. 4 Participating Voting One of the core aspects of the Reddit experience is voting. Users vote on every submission and comment on the site which causes these submissions and comments to rise to the top (for highly rated content) or fall to the bottom (for poorly rated content) of the page. On each submission on the homepage, you will notice small up and down arrows to the left. These arrows indicate whether you like or dislike a post. By default, your vote is neutral; you haven’t impacted the submission in any way. However, pressing the upvote button will cast a positive one vote. The opposite is true for the downvote button.

Casting an Upvote Casting a Downvote Notice the color change between an up and down vote. These colors are used throughout the site to indicate positive or negative votes for both submissions and comments.

Voting on comments is done the same way as voting on submissions. Simply click one of the arrows to the left of the comment. Commenting Commenting is one of the easiest ways to engage with the Reddit community as a whole, as well as a specific subreddit community. Every submission to Reddit has a page where users can comment on that submission. In the case of news- related submissions, these comments often relate to the article; however some submissions simply ask users to comment in answer to a specific question or prompt. For example, a submission may ask users to share their favorite joke. Remember that when posting a comment it will be voted on by other members of the community.

To post a comment, first locate the comments page for the submission. Under each submission, there is a link called “comments” with the number of comments the submission has received so far.

Comments Link

This submission has received 202 comments so far. Clicking on the link takes us to the comments page where you will find a threaded hierarchy of comments. Each comment has a number of replies, sub-replies, and so on, beneath it. There is also other information about the comment, including the user who posted it, the time, number of votes it has received, etc.

At this point, I want to point out that some subreddits have chosen to style their pages differently than the main site. This means that each page may look slightly different; however it should still follow the same general style.

If you want to add your own voice to the discussion, you can either create your own top-level comment or reply to someone’s comment left previously. To create your own comment, simply click inside of the textbox near the top of the page and enter your text. When you’re finished, click submit and your comment will be added to the list.

Submission Comment Page

Note that if you comment on a popular submission long past its submission time, it is unlikely that anyone else will see your comment due to the sheer volume of comments already posted. If you want your comments to be noticed, it is best the comment early and often.

Entering a Comment

Commenting is an integral part of the Reddit experience, so I have included a full chapter on comments later on. Submitting Posts One of the easiest ways to get involved in a community on Reddit is to submit content that you think will benefit that community. Subreddits tend to be very particular about the content they accept, so make sure you read the rules on posting first. For example, some groups disallow the posting of animated images, or GIFs. Others only allow links to certain sites while others forbid certain domains. Only post content that you think is interesting (or funny in the case of some subreddits) and worth other users’ time. If you post content that violates the guidelines, you risk being banned.

One final thing to note is that almost every subreddit values original content (content that hasn’t been posted previously) over reposts, as well as giving credit to the original author. This means that if you come across a blog post by an independent blogger, don’t take a screenshot of it, post it elsewhere, and submit a link to that. Always link back to the original author if you can.

Now that you have some background, let’s make our first post. I’ll continue using the subreddit raww as an example. Say you’ve come across an adorable picture of a puppy on a blog. First, copy the link to the page. Next, head over to http://reddit.comraww/submit and paste the link into the “url” textbox.

In the title section, give your content a title that is accurate, eye-catching, and relatively short. Content on Reddit lives and dies by its title, so coming up with the perfect title is imperative. Oftentimes two posts linking to the exact same content are voted up and down differently depending on the title.

Make sure that the “subreddit” section lists the “aww” subreddit. At the bottom you can choose to have replies (comments other users make on your submission) sent to your inbox (the page we visited earlier). You may be presented with a “CAPTCHA” asking you to prove you are not a bot. Enter the letters and numbers and then click submit.

Submitting Content

Once you click submit, you’ll be redirected to your post. It will also appear on that subreddit’s “new” page for some time until users vote it up or down. If users like your content, you will likely see comments added to the page, as well as “upvotes.” If you don’t, and instead users are “downvoting” your submission, don’t worry. Redditors are notoriously picky about the content they accept on the site.

Now that you have a basic understanding of how you can participate on Reddit, I will be moving on to some slightly more advanced topics. 5 Multireddits Introduction Subreddits are an excellent way to organize submissions by topic. However, many subreddits follow a similar theme or cover a similar topic. To address this, and allow users to categorize their subreddits, Reddit introduced a feature called “multireddits.” A multireddit is essentially a collection of subreddits. For example, a multireddit called “news” could include the subreddits rnews, rworldnews, rtechnology, etc. Getting Started Reddit has collected a number of multireddits that you can browse before creating your own. To see these, head to http://www.reddit.com/r/multihub and browse through the posts. Feel free to sort by “top” to see the most popular groupings.

Multihub Homepage

Once you find a multireddit you’re interested in, click on it, and click “create a copy” on the right-hand side. This will add the group to your multireddit sidebar on the left. Once you give it a name and save, you can also add additional subreddits to the list via the suggestions box.

Creating a New Multireddit As you create more multireddits, they will appear in the sidebar on the left. Keep in mind that you do not need to subscribe to every subreddit in a multireddit that you are subscribed to. Your subreddit subscriptions are just for your front page. Public Multireddits If you create a multireddit you are interested in sharing, you can make your list public by going to the multireddit’s page and selecting “public” on the right side.

Sharing a Public Multireddit Your Own Multireddit Now that you’ve subscribed to an existing multireddit, it’s time to create one from scratch. To do this, first click on “create” in the sidebar on the left under “Multireddits.” Enter a name and then click “create.” You should now be redirected to your blank multireddit where you can begin entering subreddits that will comprise it.

Creating a New Multireddit Add each subreddit until you’re satisfied with the collection. Once you’re finished, you can either share it as described above, or keep it private. 6 Comments This will be a semi-short chapter regarding comments on Reddit. Each comment has a number of options available, including how it appears, the ability to edit it, and the ability to delete it. Formatting Reddit has a number of special symbols it uses to format its comments, all of which you can use throughout the site. On most subreddits, the formatting options are available by clicking “formatting” beneath the comment box.

Reddit Comment Formatting Help This chart shows the basics of formatting your comment. For example, using double asterisks around a set of words causes them to be **bolded**. Be sure to match the formatting exactly or you will end up with odd characters in your comment. Editing Comments If you’ve posted a comment and then realize you want to change it for some reason, it is easy to go back and edit it. Simply click “edit” under your comment, make the changes, and save. Keep in mind that all comments that are edited are marked with an asterisk to indicate when users change their comment after other users have replied to it. Additionally, it is considered proper “reddiquette” (more on that in the next chapter) to explain why you edited your comment by including “EDIT: some reason” at the end of your changes. Reasons typically include spelling or grammar corrections. Deleting Comments If you wish to remove a comment you’ve made from the site, simply click “delete” under it. However, please be aware that other users could have quoted your comment, saved it, or copied it, so it may never truly be “gone.”

Deleting a Comment

7 Reddiquette As you browse on Reddit, you will notice a number of unspoken rules. These rules are developed by the site's users and are primarily used to keep the conversation civil. While it is impossible to list every rule here, I will do my best to explain the general principles. Reddit maintains a wiki of the most popular suggestions that you can refer to as well: http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette.

The summary of these guidelines is to avoid being confrontational, be polite to other users, and follow the general style rules of the site. Additionally, Reddit requests that you avoid sharing the personal information of others, posting links to user’s social media accounts, and exposing users who post under a certain username. Ultimately, the goal of Redditquette is to help users get along with one another while maintaining the quality of the site.

In regards to posts, the most popular Redditquette guidelines are to avoid reposting content, give credit to the original author, and avoid use of all capitals in titles.

For comments, the general rules are to avoid sharing personal information, avoid starting petty arguments with others, only downvote for unrelated information (not information you disagree with), and to be respectful of other commenters.

Reddiquette is not a mandate, but rather a grouping of suggestions to help everyone maintain a more respectful and helpful community. Some subreddits may be more strict with their guidelines than others, so it is important to always read the rules of an individual subreddit before participating.

8 Reddit Enhancement Suite As Reddit has grown, so has the demand for various features on the site. To answer this demand, a browser extension known as “Reddit Enhancement Suite,” or “RES” has been developed (by a third-party). The extension is very popular among Reddit users and can change a variety of settings on the site. For example, RES can add “unlimited scrolling” to a page so that the next set of submissions load automatically as you scroll down the page. Another example is “night mode” which inverts the colors of the site for more contrast.

RES can be downloaded at its official site: http://redditenhancementsuite.com/

Be sure to download the correct version for your browser, whether it is Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or Safari. Once the extension is installed, visit Reddit and you’ll be greeted with a popup with a number of settings.

Reddit Enhancement Suite Control Panel

You can access this new settings window at any time via the gear icon at the top right of the page.

Feel free to scroll through all of the available options and toggle them one-by- one to see how they can improve your browsing experience.

One particularly beneficial feature is the ability to hide NSFW (Not Safe For Work) posts. This is helpful if you’re browsing in a public place or just not interested in seeing that kind of content. This setting can be enabled via the “Filters” tab by marking “NSFWfilter” to “on.”

NSFW Filter via RES

If you are interested in keeping up with development of RES and being notified of new features or releases, be sure to subscribe to the rEnhancement subreddit which is managed by the extension’s developer. 9 Reddit on Mobile Reddit can be quite addicting, so to make the experience seamless on mobile devices, there are almost limitless ways to access its content. I’ll cover a few of the most popular options here. Native Mobile Site The easiest option for accessing Reddit on the go is to just use the native mobile website. You can access it by going to http://i.reddit.com on your device.

Reddit Mobile Site

Reddit Is Fun If you prefer apps that you can install over using the web browser, “Reddit Is Fun” is one of the most popular Reddit applications. It is available for Android only (for the time being) and has over one million users.

Reddit Is Fun Android App (Screenshots via ) If you use iOS, the go-to application is Alien Blue. It has been continually updated to support both iOS and Reddit changes and has received 4 stars in the App Store.

Alien Blue App (Screenshot via the Apple App Store) Additional Options There are no shortage of Reddit apps for Android or iOS. Other apps include: BaconReader, Reddit Now, Reddit Sync, Reddit News, and Reddit Pics. Many of these are available for both iOS and Android, although some are platform- specific. 10 Safety and Security While Reddit is certainly a very active and engaging place to share stories, converse with other users, and find articles on almost any topic, it does have a darker side. Just like any website on the Internet, you never completely know who the user is that is posting from behind a username. Reddit is particularly noteworthy because signing up for an account is incredibly easy (we did this earlier in just a few steps). For this reason, I will outline a number of safety tips, many of which are applicable anywhere online.

Never post personal information in a submission, comment, or elsewhere. Redditors are particularly good at finding out who a user is by browsing through his or her posting history.

Posting in too many very specific subreddits can help narrow users down considerably. For example, if you post in your hometown subreddit, your school’s subreddit, and several other subreddits for particular hobbies, it wouldn’t be difficult for someone with enough time to locate you.

Your username should not be used anywhere else online for your accounts. It is incredibly easy for someone to search “gamerGuy50” on Google and find your YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.

Do not harass other users. While this is certainly part of the guidelines for the site, it also contributes to your safety as other users have less incentive to single you out for targeting.

Always check the links you see posted before clicking. While Reddit does a good job of filtering spam, it is possible, especially on smaller subreddits, that spam or malware links will make it through. If the link has very few votes (or has many downvotes), chances are it is spam.

Never agree to meet users on the site unless you’re confident in your ability to arrange a common meeting place.

Use a different password for Reddit than you use on other sites. This applies to passwords for all of your online accounts as well.

Never copy and paste commands from Reddit to your computer without thoroughly understanding what they do. Users are notorious for posting prank commands or even malicious commands that could harm your computer.

Finally, just use common sense. While it sometimes feels like a very small, homogenous community, Reddit is amazingly diverse, spanning the entire globe. When you post comments or submissions, you are essentially presenting them to the world forever.

11 Conclusion If you have followed this guide closely, you should now be well on your way to posting, commenting, and voting on Reddit. Hopefully you have setup your homepage with your favorite subscription topics, as well as searched through the various multireddits that are available for almost any interest.

As you continue to use Reddit, don’t forget that it may sometimes alter your views and perception of events. Don’t forget to balance out the viewpoints with one another, especially if you only subscribe to subreddits from a particular ideology.

Additionally, remember that there are always new and interesting subreddits forming. Be sure to browse the list of subreddits occasionally to ensure you aren’t missing out on the latest ones.

Finally, have fun, and build your Internet karma!