Data memo for October 26

The following are screen captures of some parts of MR, and a key explaining them.

A. The current logo for MR. By default, all subreddits' logo is the Reddit logo (a white and orange smiling alien), but this can be changed (and often is) by moderators. Currently, this one calls for acceptance of gay males' rights.

B. All subreddits default to the first tab, what's hot, which are based on user votes and popularity. The other tabs indicate other ways to filter the submissions. For example, controversial will lead to discussions that have been severely "downvoted," likely due to a controversial topic or stance that the submitter took.

C. This sidebar is customizable. Usually moderators will include a link to the FAQ, external links of interest related to the subreddit, and any other information they might find beneficial to the reader.

D. The arrows allow a registered user to "upvote" or "downvote" a submission. Their vote counts only once. The number between the arrows reflects the total number of upvotes.

E. A submitted link. The blue URL is the title that the submitter gave. The text in the grey is the referring site.

A screen capture of an expanded conversation. Clicking on "comments" under any submitted link on the main page will take one to the discussion section of the link.

Here, the top-voted commentator is also the original poster (OP) of the submission. You can easily see who is the OP of a topic by the blue highlighting around their username. At the end of his author line, one can see that he received 25 upvotes, and 2 downvotes for this comment. This adds to a person's "comment karma," an arbitrary system of measuring one's contributions (and assuming their popularity/wittiness/etc) to the site.

The OP quotes parts of the articles (indicated by the blue stripes alongside segments of text), then immediately follows the quotes with his own comments.