5 ms·

University of Reddit

74 points by abijlani 14y ago

QuantumGuy 14y ago
Anybody else keep getting 502 Bad Gateway errors or is it just me?
- UnfalseDesign 14y ago
  Same here. I guess it couldn't handle the onslaught of HN. UPDATE: It is working but it is sloooow. Getting hammered, I guess.
  - ktsmith 14y ago
    It's also linked from the front page of Reddit via the official blog.
    - UnfalseDesign 14y ago
      Ouch. It never stood a chance. =)
      - thejournalizer 14y ago
        Nope. We knew this going into the day that the blog would kill us.
  - UK-AL 14y ago
    The onslaught from Reddit is probably more lethal than HN.
- mike-cardwell 14y ago
  https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A//ureddit.com/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3...
engtech 14y ago
Trend Microscan reports ureddit.com and it's favicon.ico as suspicious. URL Blocked The URL that you are attempting to access is a potential security risk. Trend Micro OfficeScan has blocked this URL in keeping with network security policy. URL: http://ureddit.com/ http://ureddit.com/ Risk Level: Dangerous Details: Verified fraud page or threat source
- pav3l 14y ago
  Same here. I'm currently on a bus and it is blocked by WiPipe (category: Proxy/Anonymizer). I remember trying to access it from work and it was blocked as well (I think we are using TrendMicro). Anyways... thanks Tor!
- engtech 14y ago
  MacAffee thinks it's ok http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/ureddit.com http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/ureddit.com
- thejournalizer 14y ago
  Can you access it through the https version?
  - pav3l 14y ago
    They don't seem to support https, so no.
    - thejournalizer 14y ago
      We do https://ureddit.com/ https://ureddit.com/
      - brokenparser 14y ago
        You attempted to reach ureddit.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as http://ureddit.com http://ureddit.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of ureddit.com. You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site.
unreal37 14y ago
So the number 1 complaint for this seems to be that most courses are abandoned mid-way through by the teacher for various reasons. If 80%+ of courses get only 2 lessons in before abandonment, this isn't going to really catch on as a learning medium. The UReddit teachers are volunteers from the reddit community, not vetted in any way. You're going to get a wide-range of quality of instruction. Some people might not even know the topic they volunteer to teach, and plan to teach themselves as they teach others. And it's a time-intense process creating interesting course content, and most people underestimate that up front. "Hey I'd love to teach a class on PHP" and then they realize it takes 20 hours a week to prepare each lesson... Uh oh.
- QuantumGuy 14y ago
  In that event there is always https://www.coursera.org/ https://www.coursera.org/ or https://www.edx.org https://www.edx.org if the university of reddit doesn't pan out.
  - dbh937 14y ago
    and http://www.udacity.com/ http://www.udacity.com/
    - unreal37 14y ago
      Udacity has some challenges as UReddit too. I took a "software testing" class recently, and you can tell the instructor ended the course earlier than planned. A 6 week class was effectively only a 3-4 week class. The first two weeks had embedded quizzes, and homework. By the end, it was watch this short video and no homework.
  - xmmx 14y ago
    Coursera is awesome. I'm 4 weeks into an introductory finance class and professor Kaul is doing such a good job of introducing concepts to us (I have no finance background).
    - 14y ago
guscost 14y ago
Pioneers!
rmason 14y ago
It says in the footer that it is not affiliated at all with Reddit or Conde Naste. Do you think that the lawyers at Conde Naste might have a problem with it?
- skeletonjelly 14y ago
  The reddit admin team (edit: the reddit community manager) just posted a blog about this today. I assume that means they have some kind of arrangement. http://blog.reddit.com/2012/08/university-of-reddit-explore-any.html http://blog.reddit.com/2012/08/university-of-reddit-explore-...
  - InformalRelief 14y ago
    He does not mention that topic at all in the blog post.
    - skeletonjelly 14y ago
      Right but this is coming from the horse's mouth here. Also Conde Nast no longer owns reddit, rather their parent company does.
christensen_emc 14y ago
I wish this had a dedicated team of paid developers working on it. It could go places I don't think Coursera would necessarily go. Some things I'd like to see added: - some sort of improved notification system for announcing new lessons and assigments and mass messaging your students. Perhaps something a little more prominent than the current OrangeRed messages? Having a separate alert for new lectures would be cool. - a well written guide and list of resources for lecturers. Step by step directions on how to do stuff like set up a wordpress blog or a subreddit or even a dropbox would probably be a good idea for non technical folks. The existing "Help" link is broken, so I'm not quite sure what is offered. - The ability to embed pictures, diagrams, equations and charts into reddit self posts would be cool. Markdown supports it but it doesn't seem like Reddit does. Maybe raise the character limit so that an entire lesson could fit into a self post on Reddit itself instead of forcing a lecturer to link to an external blog? Some sort of collapse and expand system on top of Markdown would be cool too! I'd love to help with this.
- thejournalizer 14y ago
  It's open source, so you are more than welcome to. If you want I can point you to Anastas, the one and only developer we have.
  - christensen_emc 14y ago
    That would be cool. My email is in my profile. I'm sure I could help out in some way.
tikhonj 14y ago
This sounds like a great idea. The main complaint seems to be that courses get abandoned by the teachers. Given that everyone is just doing this for fun, it's completely understandable, but still an issue. I wonder if this can be fixed by having more than one teacher to each course. This would not only halve the work each instructor has to do but would also provide additional motivation to stick to it. I know that I would be much more likely to keep on teaching a course if I knew somebody else was also invested in the projects--something like peer pressure, I guess. Coincidentally, my CS department is doing this with real professors in some of the real courses and it's going really well. Having multiple instructors switch off and present topics in different ways is rather effective. I certainly wouldn't mind teaching a course on something interesting that I know (a very narrow field, admittedly), especially if I had somebody else to teach with. Of course there are also questions about how much free time I will have this year :P.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

74 points by abijlani 14y ago

QuantumGuy 14y ago

Anybody else keep getting 502 Bad Gateway errors or is it just me?

UnfalseDesign 14y ago
Same here. I guess it couldn't handle the onslaught of HN. UPDATE: It is working but it is sloooow. Getting hammered, I guess.
- ktsmith 14y ago
  It's also linked from the front page of Reddit via the official blog.
  - UnfalseDesign 14y ago
    Ouch. It never stood a chance. =)
    - thejournalizer 14y ago
      Nope. We knew this going into the day that the blog would kill us.
- UK-AL 14y ago
  The onslaught from Reddit is probably more lethal than HN.
mike-cardwell 14y ago
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A//ureddit.com/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3...

engtech 14y ago

Trend Microscan reports ureddit.com and it's favicon.ico as suspicious. URL Blocked The URL that you are attempting to access is a potential security risk. Trend Micro OfficeScan has blocked this URL in keeping with network security policy. URL: http://ureddit.com/ http://ureddit.com/ Risk Level: Dangerous Details: Verified fraud page or threat source

pav3l 14y ago
Same here. I'm currently on a bus and it is blocked by WiPipe (category: Proxy/Anonymizer). I remember trying to access it from work and it was blocked as well (I think we are using TrendMicro). Anyways... thanks Tor!
engtech 14y ago
MacAffee thinks it's ok http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/ureddit.com http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/ureddit.com
thejournalizer 14y ago
Can you access it through the https version?
- pav3l 14y ago
  They don't seem to support https, so no.
  - thejournalizer 14y ago
    We do https://ureddit.com/ https://ureddit.com/
    - brokenparser 14y ago
      You attempted to reach ureddit.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as http://ureddit.com http://ureddit.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of ureddit.com. You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site.

unreal37 14y ago

So the number 1 complaint for this seems to be that most courses are abandoned mid-way through by the teacher for various reasons. If 80%+ of courses get only 2 lessons in before abandonment, this isn't going to really catch on as a learning medium. The UReddit teachers are volunteers from the reddit community, not vetted in any way. You're going to get a wide-range of quality of instruction. Some people might not even know the topic they volunteer to teach, and plan to teach themselves as they teach others. And it's a time-intense process creating interesting course content, and most people underestimate that up front. "Hey I'd love to teach a class on PHP" and then they realize it takes 20 hours a week to prepare each lesson... Uh oh.

QuantumGuy 14y ago
In that event there is always https://www.coursera.org/ https://www.coursera.org/ or https://www.edx.org https://www.edx.org if the university of reddit doesn't pan out.
- dbh937 14y ago
  and http://www.udacity.com/ http://www.udacity.com/
  - unreal37 14y ago
    Udacity has some challenges as UReddit too. I took a "software testing" class recently, and you can tell the instructor ended the course earlier than planned. A 6 week class was effectively only a 3-4 week class. The first two weeks had embedded quizzes, and homework. By the end, it was watch this short video and no homework.
- xmmx 14y ago
  Coursera is awesome. I'm 4 weeks into an introductory finance class and professor Kaul is doing such a good job of introducing concepts to us (I have no finance background).
  - 14y ago

guscost 14y ago

Pioneers!

rmason 14y ago

It says in the footer that it is not affiliated at all with Reddit or Conde Naste. Do you think that the lawyers at Conde Naste might have a problem with it?

skeletonjelly 14y ago
The reddit admin team (edit: the reddit community manager) just posted a blog about this today. I assume that means they have some kind of arrangement. http://blog.reddit.com/2012/08/university-of-reddit-explore-any.html http://blog.reddit.com/2012/08/university-of-reddit-explore-...
- InformalRelief 14y ago
  He does not mention that topic at all in the blog post.
  - skeletonjelly 14y ago
    Right but this is coming from the horse's mouth here. Also Conde Nast no longer owns reddit, rather their parent company does.

christensen_emc 14y ago

I wish this had a dedicated team of paid developers working on it. It could go places I don't think Coursera would necessarily go. Some things I'd like to see added: - some sort of improved notification system for announcing new lessons and assigments and mass messaging your students. Perhaps something a little more prominent than the current OrangeRed messages? Having a separate alert for new lectures would be cool. - a well written guide and list of resources for lecturers. Step by step directions on how to do stuff like set up a wordpress blog or a subreddit or even a dropbox would probably be a good idea for non technical folks. The existing "Help" link is broken, so I'm not quite sure what is offered. - The ability to embed pictures, diagrams, equations and charts into reddit self posts would be cool. Markdown supports it but it doesn't seem like Reddit does. Maybe raise the character limit so that an entire lesson could fit into a self post on Reddit itself instead of forcing a lecturer to link to an external blog? Some sort of collapse and expand system on top of Markdown would be cool too! I'd love to help with this.

thejournalizer 14y ago
It's open source, so you are more than welcome to. If you want I can point you to Anastas, the one and only developer we have.
- christensen_emc 14y ago
  That would be cool. My email is in my profile. I'm sure I could help out in some way.

tikhonj 14y ago

This sounds like a great idea. The main complaint seems to be that courses get abandoned by the teachers. Given that everyone is just doing this for fun, it's completely understandable, but still an issue. I wonder if this can be fixed by having more than one teacher to each course. This would not only halve the work each instructor has to do but would also provide additional motivation to stick to it. I know that I would be much more likely to keep on teaching a course if I knew somebody else was also invested in the projects--something like peer pressure, I guess. Coincidentally, my CS department is doing this with real professors in some of the real courses and it's going really well. Having multiple instructors switch off and present topics in different ways is rather effective. I certainly wouldn't mind teaching a course on something interesting that I know (a very narrow field, admittedly), especially if I had somebody else to teach with. Of course there are also questions about how much free time I will have this year :P.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]