UND’s subreddit, one of more than 6,000 active threads on social media site
reddit.com, was created in fall of 2010 and has attracted 285 readers seeking information about the university.

reddit.com defines “reddit” as both a noun — “a type of online community where users vote on content” — and a verb — “to take part in a reddit community.” Redditors vote on the importance of the stories and discussions, and the most popular are “upvoted” to the top of the site while the “downvoted” posts fall down the page.

The thousands of subreddits are communities created and moderated by volunteers who play passive roles, especially with the less active communities.

“This subreddit is pretty inactive, and reddit has a really aggressive spam filter, so all I really do is make sure peoples’ posts get approved correctly,” head moderator and UND alumus Eric Hobbs said. “I’ve never had to do any actual moderating or banning.”

Hobbs got the UND subreddit going during the fall of his sophomore year, and there wasn’t much motivating him to start it other than the realization that no one else had created one yet. Hobbs said it serves a variety of purposes.

“It’s really whatever people want it to be,” he said. “Want to post a classified ad? Go ahead. Want to discuss hockey or how cold you are? That’s fine. It’s a small enough community that you can post what you wish.”

Some incoming freshmen checked out the subreddit to see what they could find. One user didn’t see any usefullness.

“I just checked to see if there was one after my freshman orientation,” user eddiesax wrote. “Not many people post here, so as a result, it’s not very beneficial to those who use it.”

Another user was impressed at there being one for UND at all.

“I’m going to be a student there next year, so I just thought I’d subscribe and check things out to see if UND is reddit-friendly,” user Driv33r3 said.

One user subscribed to spice up his life in Grand Forks.

“(I joined) because I might meet some fun people,” PapaOscar90 said. “Grand Forks is already small enough.”

There are multiple posts regarding housing, two of which recently made it near the top of the page.

Although there isn’t a huge following yet, there are 24 comments on one housing post, with some giving advice and others agreeing or disagreeing.

The r/und subreddit is slowly growing, and Hobbs hopes it will continue to do so.

“More people and more activity would be my hope,” Hobbs said. “Being an out-of-state alumni, I can’t organize meet-ups or anything like that but, I would certainly be willing to help anyone who would want to spearhead that.”

Marie Monson is the multimedia editor for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].