Seconding both proposals (get rid of main, use tags instead of subreddits).
The defining difference between a subreddit and a tag chosen from a list of approved tags is that any particular article can belong to zero or more tags whereas it must belong to exactly one subreddit. I know that the way involving tags incurs a higher implementation cost, but if being like Reddit is as high as LW is going to aim, we might as well not bother.
I’ll add another proposal: which “bin”, subreddit or tag an article goes into should not be reflected in the URL. The current practice in which some URLs have /r/discussion in it while other articles do not is an example of what this proposal suggests we get away from doing.
Seconding both proposals (get rid of main, use tags instead of subreddits).
The defining difference between a subreddit and a tag chosen from a list of approved tags is that any particular article can belong to zero or more tags whereas it must belong to exactly one subreddit. I know that the way involving tags incurs a higher implementation cost, but if being like Reddit is as high as LW is going to aim, we might as well not bother.
I’ll add another proposal: which “bin”, subreddit or tag an article goes into should not be reflected in the URL. The current practice in which some URLs have /r/discussion in it while other articles do not is an example of what this proposal suggests we get away from doing.