reddit and HN were very focused when they started out. Reddit was like 70% talk about lisp when it started. HN was very much about building business with VC mon

reddit and HN were very focused when they started out. Reddit was like 70% talk about lisp when it started. HN was very much about building business with VC money (which wasn't talked about all that much when it started). They were also completely intolerant of the nonsense you see in comments today. Inane jokes and poorly thought out statements would be downvoted to hell. The idea that dumb comments would be mocked is what made it so attractive in the beginning. Stack Overflow offered a better alternative to expertsexchange, which was fighting with google over how to show content (remember the scroll to the bottom of expert sexchange to see the non paywalled answers hack?)