One thing about product design: Defaults that cater to the majority, with tons of options for users who would use them to customize their experience.
The following lists (except the last one) are loosely ordered by importance.
- Dark mode.
- User created communities.
- Progressive Web App (PWA).
- UI preferences.
- Compact mode.
- Enable or disable infinite scroll.
- Choose which notifications to get.
- Set the Home page to one of Subscriptions page or All Posts page.
- Select font-size.
- Enable or disable thumbnails (including community and user profile icons).
- Change default feed sorting.
- Filtering:
- Filter out posts from certain communities on Home (which is our /r/all).
- Filter posts by topic (sports, music, movies, news, etc).
- An explore page (modeled after Youtube's Home page).
- Filter link-posts by URL or domain.
- For moderators:
- Pinned posts and comments.
- Lock individual comments (so they cannot be replied to).
- A single page for handling reports for users who moderate multiple communities.
- Temporary bans.
- User and community mentions (
@userand+community). - Image posts.
- Poll posts.
- Video embeds (Youtube, Vimeo, etc).
- Server side rendering (for SEO).
- Direct messages.
- Saved posts and comments (modeled after Youtube playlists).
- Multiple feeds (modeleted after Twitter Lists).
- Search.
- Moderation log.
- RSS feeds.
- Wiki pages for communities.
- Comment permalink.
- User profile pictures (with the option to disable them).
- Publicly show last seen on profile (do it like Goodreads, only showing the last month the user was active in).
- Log when a user joins/leaves a community (for keeping track of how long someone's been a member of a community).
- Option for moderators to hide vote count until x minutes.
- Hover username / community name info box.
- No downvotes until reaching x points in community: An anti-brigading feature. Helps a community keep its culture.
- Post page sidebar recommendations (with the option to disable them).
- User badges (displayed on profile page).
- Subscribe to a post to get notifications.
- Post drafts.
- History (viewed posts).
- Highlight new comments of a post since you last visited it.
- Post and comment (editing) preview.
- Colors for comment indent lines.
- 'Collapse' button next to 'Reply' button for comments (like on Substack and Hacker News).
- User profile: View comments and posts seperately.
- Full screen image view.
- Option to open post in large modal instead of going to page.
- View post's and comments one has upvoted.
- Something like Reddit's flairs to group posts within a community.
- Make community display name distinct from its handle name.
- Keyboard shortcuts.
- Filter comments by OP, Mod, Admin, or some particular user.
- Comments embedded plugin for third-party websites (like Disqus).
- Media tab (also Twitter style photos grid in sidebar).
- Image replies (good for meme communities; off by default).
- View top posts within a specific time window (go back in history).
- View top posts in a given day (like on Hacker News).
- Ways to restrict users for serious discussions (how to
keep the idiots, zealots, and children out).
- Have a quick, 5 mins test to join a community.
- Demote short comments.
- Have well known members ("Member for x years.", etc)
- Flagging system like on Hacker News.
- Disabling voting (or vote counters) altogether.
- Karma tracking per community: user x has y points from z community. To track well known members.
- Top comments page.
- "Appreciate" button (with a counter) on user profile (a metric of only positive values).
- No of users online in home page and community page.
- A way for users to boot mods collectively (by a popular vote, say).
- Point system (on user profiles) should end. Solely, to get rid karma farmers.
- Ability to filter different kinds of content.
- All content.
- Text & link posts only.
- Image posts only.
- By category: technology, news, sports, etc.
- Filter out specific communities.
- Memes only.
- Without memes.
- By country or region.
- Controversial ratio on profile (total upvotes:downvotes on user's posts and comments).
- The fluff principle: posts (and comments) that are the easiest to upvote (judge) will rise to the top.
- Most top comments would be early comments.