Overview
The site is a collection of entries submitted by its registered users, essentially a bulletin board system. The entries are organized into areas of interest called "reddits." Historically, the front page was the main reddit, and other areas were "subreddits." There is now no main reddit, but the term subreddit persists as an informal name for an area of interest.
Registered users, especially those that post new entries, or post comments to entries, are called "redditors," a portmanteau of "reddit editor." Reddit itself is a portmanteau of "read/edit" and of "read it," i.e., "I read it on Reddit."
As submissions post to the site, redditors can vote for or against them (upvote/downvote). Each reddit has a front page that shows newer submissions that have been rated highly. Redditors can also post comments about the submission, and respond back and forth in a conversation tree of comments; the comments themselves can also be upvoted and downvoted.
Officially, votes are intended to indicate importance and relevance to the topic, and not popularity (i.e., a Downvote is not a Dislike, it merely indicates that the redditor thinks that the submission is not worthy of making it to the front page).
The home page of Reddit displays front page content from selected reddits. There is a default set, but registered users can customize their set.
Redditors can "friend" one another, which gives a redditor quick access to posting and comments of their friend list.
Postings are typically a link to an external source, with a title provided by the redditor who posted it. Some redditors use the site as a personal bookmark collection. Others, relying on the size and activity of Reddit, and on the crowd sourced ratings of links, use it as a news aggregator.
Reddit also allows postings that do not link externally. These are called "self posts" or "text submissions." Reddit encourages links over text submissions, by allowing redditors to accumulate points ("karma") for highly rated links, but not for self-posts. Redditors also accumulate karma for highly rated comments, on posts of both kinds.
The commenting system and friend system, along with a certain "Reddit ethos," lend Reddit aspects of a social network, though not to the extent of Facebook, Google+, and other websites aimed at social networking.
Front page rank, for both the general front page and for individual reddits, is determined by the age of the submission, positive ("upvoted") to negative ("downvoted") feedback ratio and the total vote count. Dozens of submissions cycle through these front pages daily.
As of June 2012, commentary on the site is particularly active, often running into the hundreds on some submissions. Popular comments have generated many 'memes' within the Reddit community.
Read more about this topic: Reddit