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No, it's not. Sure _by default_ the frontpage is full of rubbish, but if you spend 10 minutes looking you will find a trove of useful stories and information ab

No, it's not. Sure _by default_ the frontpage is full of rubbish, but if you spend 10 minutes looking you will find a trove of useful stories and information about whatever you're interested in. As an example, my favourite Australian radio station (Triple J) has a great subreddit where things relating to music etc is discussed. Not a meme in sight. You can tune your frontpage as you please, so it's easy to have a great experience with reddit. But if you've got it in your hosts file (why?) you must really hate it, so I'm probably wasting words. But your post as akin to saying Hacker News is just full of "I'm a startup!" posts, which it's not.

jshen 15y ago
" so it's easy to have a great experience with reddit." I've tuned it, more than once, and it's still not a great experience. Maybe if I tried harder I could get it there, but it's certainly not easy. At this point the only way to make it better is to turn off sub reddits about topics I am interested in, but that misses the point doesn't it?
- muppetman 15y ago
  Interesting, this isn't my experience. Yes, turning off the subreddits you're interested defeats the purpose of Reddit. What subreddits do you find this with out of interest?
  - jshen 15y ago
    I haven't kept track, but let me clarify a bit. The links are pretty good on my homepage, it's the comments that usually degenerate into nonsense. I also get tired of all the stupid pics that get voted up to the top.
    - muppetman 15y ago
      Oh right, I find that usually the comments in the more obsecure subreddits are good. But yes, reddit comments that are silly/stupid will get upvoted. That is one of the reasons I love HN. Silly stuff is ignored and downvoted.
natesm 15y ago
The problem I have with the subreddit system is that it's an all or nothing thing. Let's say I like video games, and one of those games is Minecraft. If I subscribe to the Minecraft reddit, it seems that about 1/Nth of the posts on my front page will be about Minecraft (where N is the number of subreddits I have). I'm pretty conservative with subreddits (added linux and apple, removed politics and atheism, that's pretty much it), so suddenly I have a lot of Minecraft. Some sort of slider would make subreddits for specific games, programming languages, etc. much more appealing to me, so that I could say, "I really only want to see the best Python-specific stories, but I'll take all of the general programming stories".
- mitchty 15y ago
  > The problem I have with the subreddit system is that it's an all or nothing thing. Agreed. /r/programming used to have discussions much like HN does. But I've had to remove it from any subreddit I have as its just full of random programmish related stuff, barely. Out of curiosity, what does everyone on HN think of ways to fix the subreddit problem? Its obvious voting doesn't provide any sort of filter, and tagging would likely only end up with the same problem. Or are we just condemned to constantly have to flock to new sites for good technical discussions of things?
  - TruthElixirX 15y ago
    You fix the problem by realizing editors where in place for a reason. People like crap and without editors to filter bullshit we get a continuing stream of fecal matter. In theory moderators on Reddit should be some sort of quality control, but usually they just say "well if that is what the community wants..." and let the most ridiculous pandering submissions slide. Someone needs to blend user submitted stories with editors and find where the sweet spot between the two is. Until the two systems can be blended in an awesome hybrid, then yes, we will continue to flock to new sites as the old ones fall prey to eternal September.
qq66 15y ago
I also have Reddit in my hosts file but it's so addictive that I find myself using ca.reddit.com more often than I'd like to :)
fiblye 15y ago
The problem is that any and all reasonably active subreddits do get more than their fair share of comics and other crap that are dumped solely for karma. Reddit used to be a place where you could get news on any topic you could possibly imagine and discuss it, but now it's nothing more than a mere circlejerk and popularity contest. The few subreddits with a fair amount of activity that are still good tend to be ones that are primarily discussion with few outside links, like the gamedev and askscience subreddits. There's not much that fills reddit's initial niche, which was compiling news from all around the internet and talking about it.

jshen 15y ago

" so it's easy to have a great experience with reddit." I've tuned it, more than once, and it's still not a great experience. Maybe if I tried harder I could get it there, but it's certainly not easy. At this point the only way to make it better is to turn off sub reddits about topics I am interested in, but that misses the point doesn't it?

muppetman 15y ago
Interesting, this isn't my experience. Yes, turning off the subreddits you're interested defeats the purpose of Reddit. What subreddits do you find this with out of interest?
- jshen 15y ago
  I haven't kept track, but let me clarify a bit. The links are pretty good on my homepage, it's the comments that usually degenerate into nonsense. I also get tired of all the stupid pics that get voted up to the top.
  - muppetman 15y ago
    Oh right, I find that usually the comments in the more obsecure subreddits are good. But yes, reddit comments that are silly/stupid will get upvoted. That is one of the reasons I love HN. Silly stuff is ignored and downvoted.

natesm 15y ago

The problem I have with the subreddit system is that it's an all or nothing thing. Let's say I like video games, and one of those games is Minecraft. If I subscribe to the Minecraft reddit, it seems that about 1/Nth of the posts on my front page will be about Minecraft (where N is the number of subreddits I have). I'm pretty conservative with subreddits (added linux and apple, removed politics and atheism, that's pretty much it), so suddenly I have a lot of Minecraft. Some sort of slider would make subreddits for specific games, programming languages, etc. much more appealing to me, so that I could say, "I really only want to see the best Python-specific stories, but I'll take all of the general programming stories".

mitchty 15y ago
> The problem I have with the subreddit system is that it's an all or nothing thing. Agreed. /r/programming used to have discussions much like HN does. But I've had to remove it from any subreddit I have as its just full of random programmish related stuff, barely. Out of curiosity, what does everyone on HN think of ways to fix the subreddit problem? Its obvious voting doesn't provide any sort of filter, and tagging would likely only end up with the same problem. Or are we just condemned to constantly have to flock to new sites for good technical discussions of things?
- TruthElixirX 15y ago
  You fix the problem by realizing editors where in place for a reason. People like crap and without editors to filter bullshit we get a continuing stream of fecal matter. In theory moderators on Reddit should be some sort of quality control, but usually they just say "well if that is what the community wants..." and let the most ridiculous pandering submissions slide. Someone needs to blend user submitted stories with editors and find where the sweet spot between the two is. Until the two systems can be blended in an awesome hybrid, then yes, we will continue to flock to new sites as the old ones fall prey to eternal September.

qq66 15y ago

I also have Reddit in my hosts file but it's so addictive that I find myself using ca.reddit.com more often than I'd like to :)

fiblye 15y ago

The problem is that any and all reasonably active subreddits do get more than their fair share of comics and other crap that are dumped solely for karma. Reddit used to be a place where you could get news on any topic you could possibly imagine and discuss it, but now it's nothing more than a mere circlejerk and popularity contest. The few subreddits with a fair amount of activity that are still good tend to be ones that are primarily discussion with few outside links, like the gamedev and askscience subreddits. There's not much that fills reddit's initial niche, which was compiling news from all around the internet and talking about it.