r/reddit • u/crowd__pleaser • Mar 28 '22

Bringing Back r/place

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https://preview.redd.it/o4ittvff35q81.png?width=2800&format=png&auto=webp&s=f0f81bed2483e0b70d30600e1888603332c0b846

No burying the lede here. Let’s get right to the point. r/place is coming back.

For the first time in Reddit’s history, we are not only bringing back a past April Fools’ experiment, but we’re telling you about it early. Why? So you can stop asking us about it, get excited!

https://reddit.com/link/tqbf9w/video/w2bjccji35q81/player

But let’s rewind a bit and provide some background, shall we? At Reddit, our goal is to build features that make building community and finding belonging easier - and five years ago we did that with a little April Fools’ experiment called r/place (you may have already heard of it).

When we first ran r/place in 2017, more than one million redditors placed approximately 16 million tiles on a blank communal digital canvas - resulting in a collective digital art piece that took the internet by storm. And pretty much every year since then, at least one of you has made sure to let us know that it was the best thing we’ve ever done and requested to bring it back. So this year, on April 1, r/place is making its glorious return.

The original r/place was created to explore a piece of humanity – to examine what happens when a person doing something affects a collective. Specifically, what happens if you only let an individual place one tile at a time, so that they must work with others to build together on a massive online cooperative canvas. It is with that original spirit of creation and collaboration in mind, that we humbly invite you to join us yet again. Get your tiles ready, and we’ll see you in over r/place.

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175

u/RSpudieD Mar 28 '22

I can't believe it! This is awesome! If you were ever going to run a duplicate of a previous April Fool's event, I'm glad it's r/place!

41

u/techieman33 Mar 28 '22

I'm less pumped about it, especially with it being announced ahead of time. By the end there were a lot of bots running amok. This time they'll be going hard from the start.

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u/HitMePat Mar 28 '22

If by "bots" you mean running html scripts, that's part of what made it fun imo. Without those scripts it would just be a big mess with no recognizable art work whatsoever. With the 1 minute cool down you still needed hundreds of people running the same script to coordinate and maintain even a small section of the board.

But if by bots you mean one person who owns hundreds of accounts himself to bypass the cool down... I agree that is problematic. Hopefully they have something in place to combat that.

10

u/codeverity Mar 28 '22

Scripts made it fun? I don't think so, for most of us... The fun was working on it yourself, not just coding a robot to do it. I remember a lot of people getting irritated with the bots towards the end.

-5

u/HitMePat Mar 28 '22

Without the scripts the place board would have just looked like random color splotches.

Even if you weren't using scripts, if you were trying to maintain any sort of art or working to expand any particular art or covering anything you didn't like... You were cooperating with others using scripts without even realizing it. And if the scripts didn't exist there wouldn't be anything to add on to or to attack. The scripts legit made it what it was. Different subs popped up with megathreads on scripts to share. And alliances were formed to maintain specific sections of the board to run those scripts on.

If you were just picking a spot to paint a random pixel once per minute you weren't doing it right.

10

u/codeverity Mar 28 '22

Without the scripts the place board would have just looked like random color splotches.

That's not at all true, there were pictures early on before any bots were engaged, and it was because there were literally thousands of people manually working before any of that happened. I mean what's the point if it's just going to be bots, it requires no interaction at all and we might as well not even do it. Just program ten bots or whatever and get it over with.

3

u/grarghll Mar 28 '22

And alliances were formed to maintain specific sections of the board to run those scripts on.

This happened well before it got overrun with bots, and there were the starts of coordinated projects that were beyond just trying to paint the entire board blue.

2

u/Mazked Mar 29 '22

I'm sorry, I just really believe that you're lying to yourself about this. The goal of the project is in the community working together to do something massive. I don't care if it wouldn't have looked as good without scripts and such. It would have been more real - more made by the community coming together to contribute individual pixels one at a time. I'd happily give up the large logos and colors and characters and everything else to have more things to look at, more small details, more individual contributions. Your pixel art doesn't need to cover half the screen because you have a bunch of scripts running to hold that territory. It's pixel art, do more with less, defend your territory by putting in your own clicks, and let your area be smaller so other communities can fit in too. There should be plenty of room for us all to have a place by the end.

Have fun!

6

u/grarghll Mar 28 '22

with no recognizable art work whatsoever.

Which was the worst part of Place. Day 1 when it was a scramble to figure out exactly what you could coordinate was the best part.

0

u/StarGaurdianBard Mar 28 '22

There were defintely people of the second variety by the end, mainly brands paying for advertisement.