Perfectly viable technique, though if they are written in SASS/LESS/whatever, the author could refactor the icons to mixins with a parameter that sets the scale, so the values themselves are "true".
From Google Fiber's FAQ on "Why have you chosen this list of cities?"
> These cities are led by people who have been working hard to bring faster Internet speeds and the latest technologies to their residents. We believe these are communities who will do amazing things with a gig. And they are diverse -- not just geographically, but in the ways they’ll give us opportunities to learn about the wide range of challenges and obstacles that communities might face in trying to build a new fiber network.
So it sounds like a combo of local government initiative & geographic diversity. But yeah - unfortunate in the respect you said
A developer could do the parsing of the data better, but who's to say his spreadsheets (with I'm assuming graphs, color codes, etc) aren't providing the data visualization that makes the actual decision making clearer.
I don't know about putting him out of business, but I bet I could put myself in business with him.
I've always thought the user flow that a lot of newsfeed apps use would work well for reddit. (ex: show a list/grid of communities/topics, check the ones that interest you, maybe show some recent posts from them as a preview).
Given that new signups are plopped right back to the home page after registration I can see how they don't immediately get it. Hell, even redirect to /subreddits (which, I suppose IS what I described above, but less guided/interactive) after signup could help people get into the curation part more.
