The interface and the approach by the site owner makes a difference. I hated looking at threads on Microsoft or Intel's forums. Many replies to postings were c

The interface and the approach by the site owner makes a difference. I hated looking at threads on Microsoft or Intel's forums. Many replies to postings were clearly level 1 outsourced agents in India or some other faraway place reading from a script. It was plainly obvious because many times their response would not have much to do at all with what the OP was asking after, and all it did was just aggravate people because they felt they were not being heard. Lots of noise, no signal. On reddit, one doesn't have this infestation of script-reading call-centre agents and can often find the information you need. Of course, reddit is not perfect either. Rules are arbitrarily interpreted by many mods, and there is no avenue for review or appeal to a higher authority. That said, I do like classic web forums. They're great, everything is subject-specific. But one downside to them is that you have to travel to them to view them as opposed to being on an aggregator like reddit where people are already there and might have subscribed to a sub. A lot of companies use Facebook for their customer interactions because they don't need to do much.. the business page template is pre-defined.