Comment by mynameisvlad
2 years ago
> Imgur would almost certainly be cheaper to run due to the simpler nature of the site. Imgur would just need checking the overall site for content.
> Reddit would be checking each of the subreddits for content and aggerating it. Which would be more complex and more expensive to run.
Did you even take a second to look at Imgur before confidently saying something so incorrect? The homepage clearly references tags, with individual posts a la subreddits.
Also, it's not like each subreddit is an individual database table or something. You're making it seem like aggregation is a substantial cost when it's just a different DB query.
> Did you even take a second to look at Imgur before confidently saying something so incorrect? The homepage clearly references tags, with individual posts a la subreddits.
They have tags. Not subreddits. Tagging systems are completely different from how a subreddit works. In my experience a tagging system isn't that expensive to run. Comparing tags with sections seeems completely bonkers and very naive.
> Also, it's not like each subreddit is an individual database table or something. You're making it seem like aggregation is a substantial cost when it's just a different DB query.
In my experience, to make complex data like Reddit's highly available you need to do a whole bunch such as making subreddits separate buckets so to speak. The aggregation almost certainly has a substantial costs. This isn't some dinky MySQL database with few thousand posts. It seems absurd to compare a site with a single feed (Even if it has tags) vs a system that has a personalised feed.
I'm sure the team who build and maintain the feed mixer are happy to hear you could build it with just a database query. I'm sure they'll be reaching out so you can show them this database query.
It seems a lot of people want Imgur to be more expensive to operate therefore fair that it can be more expensive to use. While the reality seems to be the reverse.