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I feel like Reddit has replaced many niche forums, for better and worse. On the plus side, Reddit has a low bar to entry. It's super easy to find or create a f

I feel like Reddit has replaced many niche forums, for better and worse. On the plus side, Reddit has a low bar to entry. It's super easy to find or create a forum for a topic. You don't need to create a new account, and you can view threads from across your interests in a single view if you want. On the other side, Reddit has many issues: - Tree-style comments are not the best format for every type of discussion. - Upvoting encourages content that gets votes: groupthink opinions, short funny quips, generic memes, etc. These can bury deeper discussion or dissenting views. - Reddit as a whole has its own culture. If you don't like Reddit's culture, it's unavoidable. - The visual focus of Reddit's recent redesign means that many hobby subreddits turn into posts showing off gear instead of discussion. - Aggressive moderation on some subs makes it hard to post. Posts might be deleted for arbitrary reasons. Sometimes questions are sent to a generic 'Ask a Question' thread, which isn't great for finding questions later via search. - Your post history is public across the site, which carries privacy risks.

na85 6y ago
>I feel like Reddit has replaced many niche forums It assuredly has, but I think we're just now leaving the honeymoon phase where we are realizing that consolidating everything into Reddit hasn't actually improved the communities. I think/hope that in the next 10 years we will see a quiet resurgence of niche communities again. In fact I think we're already seeing that with Discord.
- Kalq 6y ago
  I don't know if the solution to silo'ing everything in Discord as opposed to Reddit is any better? The medium is different enough that small sized communities can be far more active than a similar sized one on a forum or subreddit, but on the other hand as a member of a few communities with a few hundred to a few thousand people it's a nightmare to keep track of the conversations and requires far more mental engagement throughout the day.
  - Talanes 6y ago
    I can't even try and be actively engaged with my Discord groups, there's just too much constant activity and no easy way to get caught up on what I've missed. All the Discord communities I join eventually end up on permanent mute and only occasionally checked.
u801e 6y ago
> Tree-style comments are not the best format for every type of discussion. I've found that they work well for discussions where there are several subtopics. Under what scenerio would this format not be considered the best format?
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Long-running discussions. The lifespan of a Reddit/HN submission is basically a day. Past that point and it's unlikely anyone will even read your comment. In such cases, a traditional forum's bumping system lets you pick up timeless conversations for new people to take part of. So many times an archived Reddit thread will show up in Google results and it's sad that I can't contribute to the discussion nor will anyone read it if I could.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Long while ago I noticed that on slashdot all the top rated comments by people with high karma were universally trash. And the best comments were made by some anonymous coward a few days after everyone else had moved on.
  - mft_ 6y ago
    Not sure I understand - in your example, isn’t it the archiving that’s to blame, rather than the tree/threaded format? In more traditional forums (e.g. VBB) one effectively replicates the tree format through quoting - just without the tree being so clearly displayed.
    - Sharlin 6y ago
      In tree-format discussion, new replies disappear into the depths of subtrees, whereas in a linear thread they're always at the bottom and easily marked as new. There should be a way to somehow switch between the formats.
      - mft_ 6y ago
        Fair point - thanks.
ciarannolan 6y ago
> Aggressive moderation on some subs makes it hard to post. Posts might be deleted for arbitrary reasons. Sometimes questions are sent to a generic 'Ask a Question' thread, which isn't great for finding questions later via search. This is my biggest problem with the site, and the reason I don't use it. Each community is at the mercy of a small number of moderators who are free to shape the conversation in any way they wish. There's also a small number of people that control what is posted and commented on in all the main, default subreddits (news, politics, technology, etc). Browsing reddit is just ingesting the information diet of a small number of ideological moderators.
- chungus_khan 6y ago
  A lot of forums also have tyrannical mods, but the key difference is that a forum doesn't have the same unique authority that a subreddit with the best name for the topic has. If a forum has bad mods, other forums are on a bit more equal footing as competitors. The discussion thread format is also less prone to bad moderation than reddit's link/image focused post threads are, and usually also forces the mods to actually participate in the community. Plus if someone breaks a forum rule other than one related to creating threads, other users can come scold them for it more easily (necroing is a common example). Reddit isn't built for community discussion and is getting worse at it as the admins try to turn it into instagram.
- stanford_labrat 6y ago
  I can only speak to the one (top 10 by subscriber count) subreddit I am a "mod" in, but they also routinely engage in vote manipulation to control what their front page looks like through a more "organic" approach (edit: rather) than simple thread deletion. I'm sure this goes on in all of the major ones. Not to mention rules are inconsistently enforced, rule breaking that aligns with moderator ideology tends to get shifted to the bottom of the priority stack.
  - blhack 6y ago
    Are you saying the mods of the subreddit are themselves purchasing votes from bot farms to influence the posts? Or am I not understanding you?
newsbinator 6y ago
Groupthink in recent years on Reddit has become a serious problem. Even in /r/television, people downvote discussion of television when they disagree with the commenter's basic opinion of a television show. The downvote button is not meant to be an "I disagree with your opinion" button, but it is that now.
- DenverCode 6y ago
  I have completely moved over to https://tildes.net https://tildes.net, HN, and http://lobste.rs http://lobste.rs.
  - robbyking 6y ago
    I've been trying to get a lobste.rs invite for years! It's a tough community to get into. I hadn't heard of Tildes before, but it looks cool, too. Reddit reached Eternal September a while ago, so the key is to find small (yet active) communities whose content doesn't make it to r/all. I moderate a cycling community there, but we're really strict about what type of content gets posted. It sucks that we as a mod team have to do that, but if we don't our community gets overrun with memes, image macros, and rage comics.
    - DenverCode 6y ago
      Shoot me an email - it's in my HN bio.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    I've been on lobste.rs a while. It's even worse than HN.
    - DenverCode 6y ago
      This is an honest question so I hope it doesn't come off in the wrong light. If you don't like it here? Why do you continue to visit and interact?
lmedinas 6y ago
for me the biggest problem of Reddit is the Toxic culture. More than a half of the subs I follow its flooded with useless comments, toxic and negativity towards a subjected and many direct answers to get upvotes. But i guess this is not very different from other social networks.
TrackerFF 6y ago
re: Tree-style comments are not the best format for every type of discussion. But it sure fixed some of the more infuriating aspects of classic / linear forums: - long (winded) conversations between posters in threads - off-topic discussions / people de-railing the threads - finding things from specific dates in very large threads. Some of those things are easily fixed with very active moderation - but self-moderation (via voting) sure works fine in most cases.
- pbuzbee 6y ago
  I don't think there's a one-sized-fits-all solution. Tree comments do solve many issues with linear threads, but they do introduce their own issues, especially when paired with voting. Many cases do work better for tree-style comments, but there are cases that work better for linear threads.
  - swsieber 6y ago
    I'd love to have a mix, sort of like facebook I guess.
blhack 6y ago
Reddit also has a pretty short amount of time that threads have before they're archived. Lots of times I'll come across an old discussion from a few years ago (or longer) and want to ask a question, or thank somebody for somee insight or whatever, but can't because it's no longer available.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Six months. Most discussions are effectively dead within 24 hours, often less.
  - AlchemistCamp 6y ago
    About 3/4 of Reddit threads I've seen and wanted to comment on have been locked due to that time limit. Sometimes the OP's original question is unanswered and I could have helped.
vernon99 6y ago
I hope this won’t be perceived as a shameless plug, since feels very relevant to the discussion. We at PeerBoard are trying to solve this problem with creating a robust discussion platform that can also be whitelabeled and used from any domain or even custom website. It’s available for free for all public interest based communities that are ok living on our domain. Trying to get the best from Reddit et al while fixing the worst. Edit: typo. Also, no ads without admin consent of course!

na85 6y ago

>I feel like Reddit has replaced many niche forums It assuredly has, but I think we're just now leaving the honeymoon phase where we are realizing that consolidating everything into Reddit hasn't actually improved the communities. I think/hope that in the next 10 years we will see a quiet resurgence of niche communities again. In fact I think we're already seeing that with Discord.

Kalq 6y ago
I don't know if the solution to silo'ing everything in Discord as opposed to Reddit is any better? The medium is different enough that small sized communities can be far more active than a similar sized one on a forum or subreddit, but on the other hand as a member of a few communities with a few hundred to a few thousand people it's a nightmare to keep track of the conversations and requires far more mental engagement throughout the day.
- Talanes 6y ago
  I can't even try and be actively engaged with my Discord groups, there's just too much constant activity and no easy way to get caught up on what I've missed. All the Discord communities I join eventually end up on permanent mute and only occasionally checked.

u801e 6y ago

> Tree-style comments are not the best format for every type of discussion. I've found that they work well for discussions where there are several subtopics. Under what scenerio would this format not be considered the best format?

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Long-running discussions. The lifespan of a Reddit/HN submission is basically a day. Past that point and it's unlikely anyone will even read your comment. In such cases, a traditional forum's bumping system lets you pick up timeless conversations for new people to take part of. So many times an archived Reddit thread will show up in Google results and it's sad that I can't contribute to the discussion nor will anyone read it if I could.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Long while ago I noticed that on slashdot all the top rated comments by people with high karma were universally trash. And the best comments were made by some anonymous coward a few days after everyone else had moved on.
- mft_ 6y ago
  Not sure I understand - in your example, isn’t it the archiving that’s to blame, rather than the tree/threaded format? In more traditional forums (e.g. VBB) one effectively replicates the tree format through quoting - just without the tree being so clearly displayed.
  - Sharlin 6y ago
    In tree-format discussion, new replies disappear into the depths of subtrees, whereas in a linear thread they're always at the bottom and easily marked as new. There should be a way to somehow switch between the formats.
    - mft_ 6y ago
      Fair point - thanks.

ciarannolan 6y ago

> Aggressive moderation on some subs makes it hard to post. Posts might be deleted for arbitrary reasons. Sometimes questions are sent to a generic 'Ask a Question' thread, which isn't great for finding questions later via search. This is my biggest problem with the site, and the reason I don't use it. Each community is at the mercy of a small number of moderators who are free to shape the conversation in any way they wish. There's also a small number of people that control what is posted and commented on in all the main, default subreddits (news, politics, technology, etc). Browsing reddit is just ingesting the information diet of a small number of ideological moderators.

chungus_khan 6y ago
A lot of forums also have tyrannical mods, but the key difference is that a forum doesn't have the same unique authority that a subreddit with the best name for the topic has. If a forum has bad mods, other forums are on a bit more equal footing as competitors. The discussion thread format is also less prone to bad moderation than reddit's link/image focused post threads are, and usually also forces the mods to actually participate in the community. Plus if someone breaks a forum rule other than one related to creating threads, other users can come scold them for it more easily (necroing is a common example). Reddit isn't built for community discussion and is getting worse at it as the admins try to turn it into instagram.
stanford_labrat 6y ago
I can only speak to the one (top 10 by subscriber count) subreddit I am a "mod" in, but they also routinely engage in vote manipulation to control what their front page looks like through a more "organic" approach (edit: rather) than simple thread deletion. I'm sure this goes on in all of the major ones. Not to mention rules are inconsistently enforced, rule breaking that aligns with moderator ideology tends to get shifted to the bottom of the priority stack.
- blhack 6y ago
  Are you saying the mods of the subreddit are themselves purchasing votes from bot farms to influence the posts? Or am I not understanding you?

newsbinator 6y ago

Groupthink in recent years on Reddit has become a serious problem. Even in /r/television, people downvote discussion of television when they disagree with the commenter's basic opinion of a television show. The downvote button is not meant to be an "I disagree with your opinion" button, but it is that now.

DenverCode 6y ago
I have completely moved over to https://tildes.net https://tildes.net, HN, and http://lobste.rs http://lobste.rs.
- robbyking 6y ago
  I've been trying to get a lobste.rs invite for years! It's a tough community to get into. I hadn't heard of Tildes before, but it looks cool, too. Reddit reached Eternal September a while ago, so the key is to find small (yet active) communities whose content doesn't make it to r/all. I moderate a cycling community there, but we're really strict about what type of content gets posted. It sucks that we as a mod team have to do that, but if we don't our community gets overrun with memes, image macros, and rage comics.
  - DenverCode 6y ago
    Shoot me an email - it's in my HN bio.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  I've been on lobste.rs a while. It's even worse than HN.
  - DenverCode 6y ago
    This is an honest question so I hope it doesn't come off in the wrong light. If you don't like it here? Why do you continue to visit and interact?

lmedinas 6y ago

for me the biggest problem of Reddit is the Toxic culture. More than a half of the subs I follow its flooded with useless comments, toxic and negativity towards a subjected and many direct answers to get upvotes. But i guess this is not very different from other social networks.

TrackerFF 6y ago

re: Tree-style comments are not the best format for every type of discussion. But it sure fixed some of the more infuriating aspects of classic / linear forums: - long (winded) conversations between posters in threads - off-topic discussions / people de-railing the threads - finding things from specific dates in very large threads. Some of those things are easily fixed with very active moderation - but self-moderation (via voting) sure works fine in most cases.

pbuzbee 6y ago
I don't think there's a one-sized-fits-all solution. Tree comments do solve many issues with linear threads, but they do introduce their own issues, especially when paired with voting. Many cases do work better for tree-style comments, but there are cases that work better for linear threads.
- swsieber 6y ago
  I'd love to have a mix, sort of like facebook I guess.

blhack 6y ago

Reddit also has a pretty short amount of time that threads have before they're archived. Lots of times I'll come across an old discussion from a few years ago (or longer) and want to ask a question, or thank somebody for somee insight or whatever, but can't because it's no longer available.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Six months. Most discussions are effectively dead within 24 hours, often less.
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  About 3/4 of Reddit threads I've seen and wanted to comment on have been locked due to that time limit. Sometimes the OP's original question is unanswered and I could have helped.

vernon99 6y ago

I hope this won’t be perceived as a shameless plug, since feels very relevant to the discussion. We at PeerBoard are trying to solve this problem with creating a robust discussion platform that can also be whitelabeled and used from any domain or even custom website. It’s available for free for all public interest based communities that are ok living on our domain. Trying to get the best from Reddit et al while fixing the worst. Edit: typo. Also, no ads without admin consent of course!