Who is credited with creating Reddit's r/place experiment?

Josh Wardle is credited with creating Reddit’s r/place experiment. Working as a Reddit product manager, Wardle conceived the collaborative project as a giant shared canvas that users could alter one pixel at a time.

The original r/place launched on April 1, 2017, as an April Fools’ event. Registered Reddit users could change the color of one pixel from a limited palette, then had to wait before placing another. Because individual users had limited power, communities had to coordinate to create flags, logos, characters, slogans, and other artwork.

The canvas became a huge experiment in cooperation, competition, and online identity. More than one million users placed approximately 16 million pixels in the 2017 event, while artwork from hundreds of Reddit communities appeared in the final image. Reddit revived the project in 2022 and again in 2023.

Wardle is sometimes confused with Reddit founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, or with Aaron Swartz, an important early Reddit figure. They were involved in Reddit’s broader history, but Wardle is the person credited with conceiving r/place.