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I don't have a Reddit account but I lurk there regularly, in my experience that only works as long as the subreddits are very niche and not well known. As soon

by simias 9y ago

I don't have a Reddit account but I lurk there regularly, in my experience that only works as long as the subreddits are very niche and not well known. As soon as they get popular since there's effectively no barrier of entry for the general Reddit population you effectively get the same community everywhere. Normally when people find a forum that interests them (like, say, HN) they need to bother creating an account, often validating an email etc... It only takes two minutes but that's enough friction to weed out the vast majority of the people who just stumble randomly on one of your posts. On Reddit once you have an account you just have to click a button to subscribe to any community you like. It's "eternal september" on steroids. 4chan had "lurk more", Reddit is "repost more". So your post sounds a bit to me like "Twitter is great if you know the hashtags to follow" and it's probably true but at this point is it really representative of the website? If you need to filter 99% of the content to make it usable, maybe there's a bit of a problem still? I just went to /r/all and had a look at the subreddits available there, I find 16 million accounts subscribed /r/gifs, 3 millions to /r/politics, 17 millions to /r/gaming, 18 millions to /r/pics etc... So yeah, I'd believe you if you told me that /r/common_lisp, /r/mongolia/ and /r/treepics/ are amazing communities but I don't think it's enough to redeem Reddit as a whole.

crowbahr 9y ago
/r/Polandball being a shining example to the contrary. There's a whole other discussion to be had about the importance of strict moderation and rules to improving a subreddit's quality.
- FeepingCreature 9y ago
  Note that this is how Reddit is fundamentally supposed to work - there's a reason that founders get full control over rules and banning.
  - crowbahr 9y ago
    It's just not how the majority of subs shook out, unfortunately. Oh well.
jessriedel 9y ago
> As soon as they get popular since there's effectively no barrier of entry for the general Reddit population you effectively get the same community everywhere. Strict moderation can still be effective once obscurity is lost. /r/SpaceX is an example of an excellent subreddit that has survived an explosion in popularity. > So your post sounds a bit to me like "Twitter is great if you know the hashtags to follow" and it's probably true but at this point is it really representative of the website? If you need to filter 99% of the content to make it usable, maybe there's a bit of a problem still? You're just making the observation that the majority of internet users aren't sophisticated intellectuals. Demanding that the website you visit are sophisticated everywhere is just a demand that they are hidden or ignored by most people. I don't see how this is different than having hidden/ignored hashtags, subreddits, or filters.

by simias 9y ago

crowbahr 9y ago

/r/Polandball being a shining example to the contrary. There's a whole other discussion to be had about the importance of strict moderation and rules to improving a subreddit's quality.

FeepingCreature 9y ago
Note that this is how Reddit is fundamentally supposed to work - there's a reason that founders get full control over rules and banning.
- crowbahr 9y ago
  It's just not how the majority of subs shook out, unfortunately. Oh well.

jessriedel 9y ago

> As soon as they get popular since there's effectively no barrier of entry for the general Reddit population you effectively get the same community everywhere. Strict moderation can still be effective once obscurity is lost. /r/SpaceX is an example of an excellent subreddit that has survived an explosion in popularity. > So your post sounds a bit to me like "Twitter is great if you know the hashtags to follow" and it's probably true but at this point is it really representative of the website? If you need to filter 99% of the content to make it usable, maybe there's a bit of a problem still? You're just making the observation that the majority of internet users aren't sophisticated intellectuals. Demanding that the website you visit are sophisticated everywhere is just a demand that they are hidden or ignored by most people. I don't see how this is different than having hidden/ignored hashtags, subreddits, or filters.