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I agree that small, focused subreddits can work quite well. Regarding the "toxic wastelands" - while there are plenty of those - my main pet peeve with subredd

I agree that small, focused subreddits can work quite well. Regarding the "toxic wastelands" - while there are plenty of those - my main pet peeve with subreddit growth is just the lower standards and decline in quality. A book/game subreddit with interesting discussions about themes, characters and plot changes into endless "look at this <blanket|cake|...> my <relative> made me for <holiday>". Technical subreddits go from low volume, high quality original projects to "hey look I just bought an arduino and blinked a led". Maybe I'm just a grumpy old fart but save that stuff for your Facebook wall. This can probably be fixed with strong moderation, but I've rarely seen that work.

munificent 5y ago
> my main pet peeve with subreddit growth is just the lower standards and decline in quality. I think that's just regression to the mean and inevitable as any community grows. For any small community to get traction, it must be particularly compelling to rise above network effects of existing entrenched communities. Small mediocre communities simply disappear. So every small community that grows starts out better than average. But as the community grows it attracts a wider range of members. The aggregation algorithms that determine what threads show up then optimize for lowest common denominator content that appeals to that wider demographic. And the members themselves, just by virtue of statistics, on aggregate end up less interesting or engaging than the small core that were so much better than average that they got the community off the ground. It makes me a little sad when communities get watered down as they grow, but I accept it as a natural side effect of growth and not some sort of moral failure of its participants. I do sometimes fantasize about trying to build some sort of social media thing that deliberately puts an upper limit on community sizes to see how that would effect quality.

munificent 5y ago

> my main pet peeve with subreddit growth is just the lower standards and decline in quality. I think that's just regression to the mean and inevitable as any community grows. For any small community to get traction, it must be particularly compelling to rise above network effects of existing entrenched communities. Small mediocre communities simply disappear. So every small community that grows starts out better than average. But as the community grows it attracts a wider range of members. The aggregation algorithms that determine what threads show up then optimize for lowest common denominator content that appeals to that wider demographic. And the members themselves, just by virtue of statistics, on aggregate end up less interesting or engaging than the small core that were so much better than average that they got the community off the ground. It makes me a little sad when communities get watered down as they grow, but I accept it as a natural side effect of growth and not some sort of moral failure of its participants. I do sometimes fantasize about trying to build some sort of social media thing that deliberately puts an upper limit on community sizes to see how that would effect quality.