The behaviors differ as the rewards differ. There is no punishment, on HN, to distracting away to a side conversation so long as that tangent is informative and

The behaviors differ as the rewards differ. There is no punishment, on HN, to distracting away to a side conversation so long as that tangent is informative and logically connected to the primary conversation. Even if this were punished there is a maximum ceiling to that punishment: 5 down votes. Reddit, on the other hand, is an echo chamber. Conformity is king dictated by populism of votes subdivided by subjective criteria into subreddits. There is no ceiling there to the maximum punishment for defiance of the populism.