4 ms·
The best I've found is small subreddits. Which is not ideal, because discovery is a giant PITA. Much like the split between /r/trees and /r/marijuanaenthusias
by Baeocystin 8y ago
The best I've found is small subreddits. Which is not ideal, because discovery is a giant PITA. Much like the split between /r/trees and /r/marijuanaenthusiasts (the /trees subreddit was first founded by people who were talking about weed, and people who wanted to talk about actual trees were a little nonplussed at the whole thing, thus creating /marijuanaenthusiasts and using it for tree-talk) most of the better communities are using a name that is not immediately obvious, so that they aren't oversaturated from the get-go.
It's a difficult problem to solve.
- floren 8y agoThe bigger problem with reddit, in my experience, is that 95% of the comments on any given post are pure garbage filler. Joke chains as far as the eye can see.
- kps 8y agoReddit is structually doomed to be dominated by fluff. • Discourages long-running discussions by burying (and ultimately locking) older content • Discourages coversation in favour of fire-and-forget comments by making it impractical to continue where you left off • Gamification of content (not quite as bad as some sites that grant extra privileges for scores, though) • Numerically larger groups can bury content they would prefer others not see
- yesenadam 8y agoHN has every one of those features also.
- baroffoos 8y agoHacker news is 30x worse because you don't even see replies to your comments so the fire and forget mentality is very strong. Also very discouraging to reply to older comments because once it gets over a day old its likely even the person you reply to wont see it.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoMaybe of interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539 (HN comment reply notifier)
- Baeocystin 8y agoNot the person you replied to, but thank you for posting this- it's a feature I've missed greatly.
- detaro 8y agoHN is also quite bad to have long-term discussions about a topic, and suffers from the same constant rehashing of topics happening on reddit. It sort of works for news and random individual articles, where there aren't necessarily longer logical threads, but that's not what many communities need. E.g. a typical comparison between forums and reddit: A hobby forum often has a "I just bought X" megathread or two, where people post new things they've bought and want to share their excitement about, but that don't warrant a full thread. On hobby subreddits, a large amount of the threads can be "I just bought the thing everyone always recommends and everyone has seen 20 times this week, can't wait to use it!". Similarly, what would have been a single post on an old thread in a forum needs to be it's own thread on reddit, loosing context and making search harder (even if people try to link other relevant threads). Which in turn leads to more repeat questions etc.
- glenneroo 8y agoModeration is definitely key to dealing with that issue. For me, as with HN, I don't like the inherent stress of commenting on submissions before they fall off the front page. The earlier one comments, the higher the chances of getting eyeballs/responses. After that short ~24 hour window, people may still read the comments, but submitting new comments seems futile. As opposed to older "style" forums, even today, threads often stay open, allowing people to post months or years later to revive "dead" threads.
- Baeocystin 8y agoThe two-hour edit window and rapid falloff on HN are two of my least-favorite aspects of discussion on this site. It is almost a daily occurence I'll come across something interesting here, get ready to type a contribution to the conversation, then realize that it's too late, and it won't be read. It is a little demoralizing. I'm sure this approach also eases the moderation burden, and I'm pretty impressed overall with how dang handles things. So maybe it is a simple workload necessity. It does strike me that HN could be quite a bit more if these two restrictions were loosed.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoThe search is not great at Reddit but you can do a search and then look at which subs the "most relevant" comments appear in.
- justaguy1212 8y agoStackexchange sites are far better than subreddit if you're looking for more reasonable and constructive discussion.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoMost SO sites have too many moderators squelching any attempts at constructive, and deleting the unique as duplicate. Like Wikipedia it's become incredibly hostile to newcomers.
- Izkata 8y agoIf you're looking for discussion, the StackExchange sites are not where you should be looking. They're question/answer sites, not forums.
- CalRobert 8y agoI do frequent a couple of subreddits but I found the quality of discussion to be fairly poor. I might've been in the wrong ones though.