Hacker News has better moderation and content grooming than the big subreddits (r/programming and the like). The smaller topic-specific subreddits tend to be be

Hacker News has better moderation and content grooming than the big subreddits (r/programming and the like). The smaller topic-specific subreddits tend to be better, but you'd have to subscribe to a lot of them to match the variety of subjects that are covered on HN, and there's frequently more depth than I want on a regular basis. I like to see discussion of interesting new Rust features, for instance, but I don't necessarily want to read about it every day. In short: HN is a more controlled, limited experience, which is preferable for me because I neither need nor want to spend the time necessary to craft my own out of the raw materials of Reddit.