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It is a good platform for hobby communities, because it is: 1. Pseudonymous 2. Location-agnostic 3. Comments are structured as a tree instead of a flattened

It is a good platform for hobby communities, because it is: 1. Pseudonymous 2. Location-agnostic 3. Comments are structured as a tree instead of a flattened list, and nodes at the same level are sorted by popularity Old-school message boards met the first two requirements, but I think the third characteristic is a huge improvement over trying to pick the discussion out of the multiple simultaneous flamewars with which it was interleaved on comp.lang.lisp or any of the old phpBB. On a hobby subreddit generally the top reply and its highest-ranked comment chain are on-topic and informative. Its biggest competition now is probably something like Facebook Groups, but Facebook is constantly trying to push you towards real-name-focused, location-aware stuff, and its implementation of a comment tree is pretty half-assed because at the end of the day it wants you scrolling a feed, not lingering on a heavily-ramified comment tree. At the moment my wife and I use Facebook for neighborhood groups and Reddit for hobby subreddits (and memes).

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
3 is absolutely terrible for discussion of topics with even the slightest amount of complexity and nuance to them or topics where the discussion would occur over more than a short time. You get unique top level comments but the up-voted stuff is just lowest common denominator and the tree below that initial first level winds up highly replicated. Then there's the inherent fake consensus problem of the upvote/downvote system.
- neutronicus 6y ago
  I don't really think flat forum threads scale any better than a tree for replication. You'd see the same point on page 3, 5, 9, 10, 17, where people would just read the first and last pages. There would be multiple parallel quote-reply arguments with people saying the same thing. I also just don't think your average hobby forum topic is something requiring much nuance or complexity. It's not a philosophy journal, it's someone asking a bunch of internet strangers if they've ever tried using an Arduino for hydroponics and how it went.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

3 is absolutely terrible for discussion of topics with even the slightest amount of complexity and nuance to them or topics where the discussion would occur over more than a short time. You get unique top level comments but the up-voted stuff is just lowest common denominator and the tree below that initial first level winds up highly replicated. Then there's the inherent fake consensus problem of the upvote/downvote system.

neutronicus 6y ago
I don't really think flat forum threads scale any better than a tree for replication. You'd see the same point on page 3, 5, 9, 10, 17, where people would just read the first and last pages. There would be multiple parallel quote-reply arguments with people saying the same thing. I also just don't think your average hobby forum topic is something requiring much nuance or complexity. It's not a philosophy journal, it's someone asking a bunch of internet strangers if they've ever tried using an Arduino for hydroponics and how it went.