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>The community is the loveliest on the internet I hope you're being sarcastic. reddit's been a sordid mix of conspiracy theorists, political extremists, and 4

by endtime 16y ago

>The community is the loveliest on the internet I hope you're being sarcastic. reddit's been a sordid mix of conspiracy theorists, political extremists, and 4chan users for the last year or two.

ericflo 16y ago
This whole notion that Reddit is one personality is ridiculous. Reddit has idiots, philanthropists, rapists, and startup founders. And those probably overlap.
jonursenbach 16y ago
Reddit's community is dependent upon what subreddits you're part of.
- endtime 16y ago
  I agree. But surely "the [reddit] community" without qualifiers refers to the entire community, not some subset thereof.
  - mkr-hn 16y ago
    It's a good place on average with a few loony subreddits.
    - endtime 16y ago
      Well, if in "a few" you include most of the largest ones, including /r/reddit.com, /r/politics, and /r/worldnews.
      - mkr-hn 16y ago
        Happens when any community gets big enough.
    - sudont 16y ago
      Would you consider reddit analogous to a country, and the sub-reddits to states? Can we raise the dixie flag of /r/circlejerk and rabble rouse for states rights to stupidity?
      - mkr-hn 16y ago
        I'm not going to defend the south broadly, but there are little pockets of sanity here.
acgourley 16y ago
If you consider the size of the community, it's relatively miraculous. But you're of course right in an absolute sense.
- MrFlibble 16y ago
  This is a key consideration. Reddit is pretty frakkin big and yet still remains relatively well balanced depending on your subreddits. What I've been impressed with on many occasions is the community keeping in check the over-the-top commentators who are just being douches, regardless of which side of the debate they are on. The community really does moderate itself quite well considering its size. If you hang out in r/wtf or some such, you kinda get what you would expect, but select your subreddits well and you can be part of some pretty interesting discussions and occasionally learn some really cool things. Reddit ftw in my opinion.
vaksel 16y ago
I think he was talking more about all the feel good reddit stories...i.e. all the money they raised for all the different charities, having that girl who got bullied get a all you can buy day at a toy store etc.
mahmud 16y ago
Reddit raises money for people in need. They might dabble in their fun kiddie pool subreddits, but they have consistently walked the walk when and where it matters. Let me say that I have only yesterday signed up to reddit, for the first time, under my own name. And that I would happily go elsewhere for intelligent feedback. But if I was wronged by a bigger adversary (government, business, etc.) Reddit would be the first place to air my grievance. Even in their most sordid humor, they're both clever and humane. I just get the feeling they're nice people. People post pictures of their kids, their pets, their hand-drawings, hobbies, even their own private parts (if you know where to look.) I think Reddit covers the whole spectrum of the human experience .. if all humans were charitable, fairly well educated, suburbanite, closet-Marxists with short attention span (which I emphatically identify with :-)
- heed 16y ago
  No, some people on a website called reddit.com raised money for people in need. 'Reddit' isn't a person, it is a thing.
- endtime 16y ago
  There are nice people on reddit, of course. You might be able to say that some subcommunity of reddit maximizes `lambda subcommunity: f(subcommunity.size) * g(subcommity.loveliness)` over all possible subcommunities of all community websites (and for some reasonable weighting functions f and g), but if you're generalizing to the entire reddit community then I can't help thinking you're mistaken.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    If this was reddit, someone would take your pseudo-math prose and come up with a formal system in Coq. But the highest ranked comment would be about a cat with proper table manners.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Maybe you haven't noticed how reddit treats the users who espouse ideas they don't like. /r/atheism redditors have launched invasions on /r/christianity multiple times now, and go in and totally destroy threads that contained nothing especially provocative; they've downvoted all the Christian viewpoints and upvoted all the mocking viewpoints. I expect most other religious subreddits have encountered similar intimidation. Even isolated within subreddits, it's hard to get someone who is at odds with the ideas of most of reddit's userbase to visit a friendly subreddit when they visit the main page and see a bunch of f-bombs, nsfw links, militant atheist and liberal content, etc. My parents, for instance, would be offended by something on the main page at almost any time you captured it. Things are better now that /r/atheism is off the front page, but it's still not good. Reddit changes its logo site-wide to celebrate same-sex marriage victories. Any time the Salvation Army is mentioned on reddit 100 redditors jump to write about how the Salvation Army opposes pornography so nobody should ever donate to them. And so on.
krakensden 16y ago
You obviously haven't been to much of the internet then- it really is one of the better communities.
- rick888 16y ago
  "You obviously haven't been to much of the internet then- it really is one of the better communities." "better" is relative. To me, HN is one of the "better" communities. Reddit is comprised of 1% people that are actually smart, 20% kooks, 15% political nutjobs, and the rest are early 20-something pseudo-intellectuals that feel that anything against the US, religion, or corporations makes them more intelligent and witty in the eyes of the world. I also get the feeling that people there have very little experience beyond a keyboard in their parent's house. When I look at any HN article, most of the comments are sane, well-articulated, and thought-out. It's quite refreshing, actually. Reddit to communities is what Craigslist is for dating.
  - aerique 16y ago
    Sometimes the same articles get much better comments on Reddit than they do on HN. Also, for some reason, the Apple and Microsoft fanboys don't seem to be as rife there, or at least they're properly downvoted.
    - mahmud 16y ago
      It's easy to point out fanboys we disagree with. A better mental tool might be reflecting upon yourself and finding out what you might be a fanboy of, what are you irrationally attached to that you will defend vehemently, even when at odds with reason? Once you discover the object of your irrational affection, try to sympathize with those irrationally at odds with it (i.e. haters, detractors, bashers, the Other fanboy, etc.)
      - aerique 16y ago
        I'm totally zen, or Neutral Neutral if you will, and not attached to anything. Not even Common Lisp, Emacs and Linux... nope. Seriously, there's a disproportionate amount of irrational pro-Apple and -Microsoft posts here on HN that get upvotes.
mkr-hn 16y ago
Only if you venture in to those subreddits. That's the nice thing about it. You can select which sections of the community appear on the top bar.
davidmurphy 16y ago
I used to love Reddit, but lately I've gotten some abusive and hurtful replies to stuff I posted there. Definitely seen the ugly/shameful side of the internet.

by endtime 16y ago

>The community is the loveliest on the internet I hope you're being sarcastic. reddit's been a sordid mix of conspiracy theorists, political extremists, and 4chan users for the last year or two.

ericflo 16y ago

This whole notion that Reddit is one personality is ridiculous. Reddit has idiots, philanthropists, rapists, and startup founders. And those probably overlap.

jonursenbach 16y ago

Reddit's community is dependent upon what subreddits you're part of.

endtime 16y ago
I agree. But surely "the [reddit] community" without qualifiers refers to the entire community, not some subset thereof.
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  It's a good place on average with a few loony subreddits.
  - endtime 16y ago
    Well, if in "a few" you include most of the largest ones, including /r/reddit.com, /r/politics, and /r/worldnews.
    - mkr-hn 16y ago
      Happens when any community gets big enough.
  - sudont 16y ago
    Would you consider reddit analogous to a country, and the sub-reddits to states? Can we raise the dixie flag of /r/circlejerk and rabble rouse for states rights to stupidity?
    - mkr-hn 16y ago
      I'm not going to defend the south broadly, but there are little pockets of sanity here.

acgourley 16y ago

If you consider the size of the community, it's relatively miraculous. But you're of course right in an absolute sense.

MrFlibble 16y ago
This is a key consideration. Reddit is pretty frakkin big and yet still remains relatively well balanced depending on your subreddits. What I've been impressed with on many occasions is the community keeping in check the over-the-top commentators who are just being douches, regardless of which side of the debate they are on. The community really does moderate itself quite well considering its size. If you hang out in r/wtf or some such, you kinda get what you would expect, but select your subreddits well and you can be part of some pretty interesting discussions and occasionally learn some really cool things. Reddit ftw in my opinion.

vaksel 16y ago

I think he was talking more about all the feel good reddit stories...i.e. all the money they raised for all the different charities, having that girl who got bullied get a all you can buy day at a toy store etc.

mahmud 16y ago

Reddit raises money for people in need. They might dabble in their fun kiddie pool subreddits, but they have consistently walked the walk when and where it matters. Let me say that I have only yesterday signed up to reddit, for the first time, under my own name. And that I would happily go elsewhere for intelligent feedback. But if I was wronged by a bigger adversary (government, business, etc.) Reddit would be the first place to air my grievance. Even in their most sordid humor, they're both clever and humane. I just get the feeling they're nice people. People post pictures of their kids, their pets, their hand-drawings, hobbies, even their own private parts (if you know where to look.) I think Reddit covers the whole spectrum of the human experience .. if all humans were charitable, fairly well educated, suburbanite, closet-Marxists with short attention span (which I emphatically identify with :-)

heed 16y ago
No, some people on a website called reddit.com raised money for people in need. 'Reddit' isn't a person, it is a thing.
endtime 16y ago
There are nice people on reddit, of course. You might be able to say that some subcommunity of reddit maximizes `lambda subcommunity: f(subcommunity.size) * g(subcommity.loveliness)` over all possible subcommunities of all community websites (and for some reasonable weighting functions f and g), but if you're generalizing to the entire reddit community then I can't help thinking you're mistaken.
- mahmud 16y ago
  If this was reddit, someone would take your pseudo-math prose and come up with a formal system in Coq. But the highest ranked comment would be about a cat with proper table manners.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
cookiecaper 16y ago
Maybe you haven't noticed how reddit treats the users who espouse ideas they don't like. /r/atheism redditors have launched invasions on /r/christianity multiple times now, and go in and totally destroy threads that contained nothing especially provocative; they've downvoted all the Christian viewpoints and upvoted all the mocking viewpoints. I expect most other religious subreddits have encountered similar intimidation. Even isolated within subreddits, it's hard to get someone who is at odds with the ideas of most of reddit's userbase to visit a friendly subreddit when they visit the main page and see a bunch of f-bombs, nsfw links, militant atheist and liberal content, etc. My parents, for instance, would be offended by something on the main page at almost any time you captured it. Things are better now that /r/atheism is off the front page, but it's still not good. Reddit changes its logo site-wide to celebrate same-sex marriage victories. Any time the Salvation Army is mentioned on reddit 100 redditors jump to write about how the Salvation Army opposes pornography so nobody should ever donate to them. And so on.

krakensden 16y ago

You obviously haven't been to much of the internet then- it really is one of the better communities.

rick888 16y ago
"You obviously haven't been to much of the internet then- it really is one of the better communities." "better" is relative. To me, HN is one of the "better" communities. Reddit is comprised of 1% people that are actually smart, 20% kooks, 15% political nutjobs, and the rest are early 20-something pseudo-intellectuals that feel that anything against the US, religion, or corporations makes them more intelligent and witty in the eyes of the world. I also get the feeling that people there have very little experience beyond a keyboard in their parent's house. When I look at any HN article, most of the comments are sane, well-articulated, and thought-out. It's quite refreshing, actually. Reddit to communities is what Craigslist is for dating.
- aerique 16y ago
  Sometimes the same articles get much better comments on Reddit than they do on HN. Also, for some reason, the Apple and Microsoft fanboys don't seem to be as rife there, or at least they're properly downvoted.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    It's easy to point out fanboys we disagree with. A better mental tool might be reflecting upon yourself and finding out what you might be a fanboy of, what are you irrationally attached to that you will defend vehemently, even when at odds with reason? Once you discover the object of your irrational affection, try to sympathize with those irrationally at odds with it (i.e. haters, detractors, bashers, the Other fanboy, etc.)
    - aerique 16y ago
      I'm totally zen, or Neutral Neutral if you will, and not attached to anything. Not even Common Lisp, Emacs and Linux... nope. Seriously, there's a disproportionate amount of irrational pro-Apple and -Microsoft posts here on HN that get upvotes.

mkr-hn 16y ago

Only if you venture in to those subreddits. That's the nice thing about it. You can select which sections of the community appear on the top bar.

davidmurphy 16y ago

I used to love Reddit, but lately I've gotten some abusive and hurtful replies to stuff I posted there. Definitely seen the ugly/shameful side of the internet.