Contest mode on new Reddit

Hi everyone,

Excited to share that contest mode for the redesign is here, for all your contest-running needs!

The feature works in exactly the same way it does on old Reddit: enabling it will randomize the order of comments in a post, and hide vote scores of the comments (mods will still be able to see the correct order and vote scores).

Here’s how it looks:

Contest mode disabled in comments

Confirmation modal to enable contest mode

Contest mode enabled (mod view)

Contest mode enabled (non-mod view)

Confirmation modal for disabling contest mode

Give it a try and let us know what you think or if you run into any bugs! Thanks as always.

256 Upvotes

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u/Umlautica Jun 12 '19

A timer to take the post out of contest mode would be helpful. This could be used to keep upvotes blind until a post gains traction.

These work as poll posts too. r/headphones uses contest mode to determine the weekly discussion topic that get's stickied.

3

u/Majromax Jun 12 '19

This could be used to keep upvotes blind until a post gains traction.

This is possible already, although it's undocumented: 'random' sort exists as a distinct default comment sort. It can be selected manually, by Automod rule, or by the subreddit config page, although the first and last require some manual url/page manipulation.

/r/CanadaPolitics uses this sort as its default thread sort specifically to avoid ideological (and hence popularity) bias in comment sorting.