If you manage to look beyond irate commenters and festering trolls, the internet can be a friendly place full of people keen to help a brother out. Now, a study of Reddit reveals how people ask for favours online — and the best way to make them succesful too.
It’s an interesting phenomenon for sure, perhaps best exemplified by Reddit’s Random Acts of Pizza section, set up to “have fun, eat pizza and help each other out. Together, we aim to restore faith in humanity, one slice at a time.” In other words, it’s a sub-Reddit born to help people out with pizza if their needs seem to warrant it — assessed by redditors on a case-by-case basis, and judged on how compelling a user’s story is.
Well, Tim Althoff at Stanford University was so intrigued by Random Acts of Pizza that he arXiv Technology Reviewvia Technology Review]
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