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>I also noticed that in recent years many subreddits have increasingly been taken over by memes and other low quality posts and so users looking for more substa

>I also noticed that in recent years many subreddits have increasingly been taken over by memes and other low quality posts and so users looking for more substantial content have already moved elsewhere. It's incredibly frustrating to discover a potential new hobby, check out the subreddit, and go to the top posts all time, only to find pages on pages of low-effort crossposted memes that are often barely relatable. It's also super frustrating being in one of those hyperfocused niche hobby subreddits and getting memes, and people treat you like some sort of wet blanket if you voice any opposition to low-effort content.

vanilla_nut 3y ago
I experienced exactly this a couple of years ago in /r/espresso. Fortunately the low-quality memespam pushed me to look for alternatives, and I found Home Barista forums, one of the best quality web forums I've ever participated in. Something similar happened to me in the bicycle space, which turns out to have a lot of forum activity as well. Seems some of the oldguard never switched to Reddit in the first place in both communities.
- oplav 3y ago
  I had a similar experience. /r/turning had no memespam and good wood turning content, but I found the actual American Association of Woodturners forum to have very wide breadth and high quality information.
redmerchant2 3y ago
But what can you do beyond draconian moderation? One niche hobby sub I’m part of grew over 120x due to the pandemic. The mods cracked down hard but it had the side effect of suppressing quality conversations as well. I think they found a good balance but you forget how big the sub is now until some meme slips through the cracks, and has 10x the number of upvotes compared to usual posts.
- AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  Communities tend to end up with a memes allowed and strictly meme free version of the community once they grow to a certain size. It splits the community and the meme version will tend to have 100x the users but that's ok imho. You'll find the meme free offshoot will have the same feel as the early smaller community and will be much better if the topic really does interest you.
- tensor 3y ago
  Perhaps personal ai based filters that each user can train is an option. I know personally that there are topics or opinions that I just don't care to engage with or read and it would be lovely to be able to train my own filter to just censor all that out of my feeds. I currently use reddit user blocklist as a partial solution, but it's a rather crude tool.
- Levitz 3y ago
  Image posting should have never been added. This was called out from the get-go. From the very start people warned that it would water down content and replace thoughtful discussion, and so it did. It was great for engagement though, I guess.
deebosong 3y ago
This isn't always the case, but I found that if I'm looking for a serious discussion, I gotta find the sub within the subreddit. For movies, there are a few that communicate they are about serious film discussion. But between the 2 or 3 subs on serious film talk, I found truefilm to be more in-depth than not. Even for cycling, there are about 8 subs that I'm on, and one out of the bunch is strictly focused on serious fitness & performance discussions, whereas the rest are sort of free-for-alls loosely based on the subreddit's sub-genre. If there are no subs within the subs, might just gotta suck it up and scroll past the memes. Or start a discussion and find like-minded folks to branch off.
- lom 3y ago
  > Even for cycling, there are about 8 subs that I'm on, and one out of the bunch is strictly focused on serious fitness & performance discussions, whereas the rest are sort of free-for-alls loosely based on the subreddit's sub-genre. Would you mind sharing?
  - deebosong 3y ago
    Sure thing. r/velo.
robbyking 3y ago
I was a long time reddit user (I created my first account in 2007), and I eventually left for this reason. I moderated a cycling community (r/mtb) that grew to about a quarter million subscribers and I had a really difficult time keeping the low effort content at bay. When communities grow to a certain size they lose their niche audience, and lowest common denominator posts bubble to the top and drown out quality content.
- schwarzrules 3y ago
  Where do you find/engage with similar high-effort content now (if anywhere)?
  - robbyking 3y ago
    I haven't really had any luck yet. I was a Farker back in the day, but went to Reddit while a lot of other people were going to Digg. Back then I loved Reddit as a social news site, but now I really dislike it because it's mostly a meme and image aggregator. (IMO it was the memes, image macros (Advice Animals) and meta references that killed that site.) That said, I like PinkBike.com for MTB stuff and Hacker News for tech stuff. Those are really the only two forums where I actually leave comments these days.
- jacurtis 3y ago
  I was an OG r/mtb subscriber and loved the content for years. I noticed more and more low-quality content slide in around 2017-2019 and I stopped frequenting it. It was one of my favorite subs back in the day. By the time COVID hit, that sub was a dumpster fire of low-quality posts it became a complete waste to even visit, I felt dumber after visiting it each time. It isn't just the quality of the posts that degraded though. r/MTB for example hasn't gotten as spammy as most other subs. But the quality of the community has gone to shit, and thats almost worse because that was the main value it originally had. There really good gear discussions and technique help is gone. Most posts get 1-4 comments, almost all of which are "where this at?" or "what bike u hav?" that there is no community anymore. No discussions, which to me was the real value of the sub. There is one subreddit that I don't feel comfortable mentioning because it covers a deeply personal and sensitive topic. But I joined that community back when it had 5k subs (it now has 300k). That community saved my life in many ways and provided therapy and healing by discussing a sensitive topic and help with recovery for people who were going through a similar traumatic life experience that I was going through at the time. It was an invaluable support group. Many of us knew eachother (by anonymous usernames of course), and helped eachother cope through very tough life experiences.I even participated in a few IRL Meetups. People would write research and high-quality content on there that rivaled academic content available at the time, several actually went on to do PhD research in this previously-unresearched niche. It was such an exciting time and such a healing and powerful community. That community is 300k people now and a complete disaster. Way too many posts, most of which are off-topic. The remainder of the posts are non-constructive rants (which were previously banned). To make matters worse, there was a period of time where the community became unsafe and a mod from an opposing group had become a mod of our support group and was doxxing people in a way that ruined a few people's lives (I was luckily mostly no longer an active participant by this time, and mostly just lurking and providing occasional guidance). The community is now very rage-filled and is nothing like the quality support group/community that I was able to participate in. Reddit is all about the communities. But it has become so commercialized and mainstream now that it has lost its original value. I don't want to scroll through a feed of memes and low quality shit posts or reposts. I want discussions and q+a forums with people who are passionate about topics, hobbies, life experiences, and shared interests. I want real discussions, not another algorithm-driven social media network spamming garbage at my eyes.
browningstreet 3y ago
I wish we could divide forums into 101 and 202 (as in college levels) streams. Newbies need a place, but I don't want to be their guide (in most cases). Newbie/101 energy kills a lot of places.
- deepspace 3y ago
  Yes, I frequent subs like r/Electronics, r/Arduino and r/ElectricalEngineering. While I sympathize with newbies, the incessant “My First Blinking LED” posts get old really fast. Especially when said LED DOESN’T blink, and they post a Fritzing thing instead of a circuit diagram.
  - auxym 3y ago
    r/embedded feels like it has become 75% "how do I find my first job as an embedded programmer", which gets old after a while. AskElectronics is pretty good though, in large part thanks to Davide's moderation. Losing places like that is sad tbh.
    - docmars 3y ago
      Same with the various web development subreddits as well. Copious amounts of content from "My First Website", to "am I doing intro-level CSS thing right?", and "can I still get a React job?" There's certainly a place for these, as everyone needs to start somewhere, but having a better home for these would be welcome.
- triplepoint217 3y ago
  Sift (https://sift.quest/ https://sift.quest/) is working hard on doing exactly that. We don't have enough users to actually show it off yet, but at our core we're building around a user reputation/relevance graph that we think will let people curate streams like that. In our model, as soon as anyone you trust in our graph says "this is a 101 type post/comment" we can realize you are not interested in seeing it and de prioritize it in your feeds/comments while still showing it to other newbies or to people who have expressed an interest in engaging with that kind of topic.
mynameisash 3y ago
This has frustrated me incredibly in a few different subreddits I frequented. There was some really welcoming, high-quality content, but then there were also terrible, low-calorie memes. The people that enjoy the memes definitely seemed to scoff at any criticism. The easiest solution seems to be to allow filtering of content based on tags. In most cases, the memes were tagged as such. Had I been able to simply say, "Don't show content with the `meme` tag," I probably would have spent a good deal more time on reddit, browsing and contributing.
- shagie 3y ago
  'NOT flair:meme' For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/help/search/?q=NOT%20flair%3AAccess&restrict_sr=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/help/search/?q=NOT%20flair%3AAccess... You won't see any of the posts titled 'Access' in that search. On old.reddit a number of subs that I followed had those as quick links (e.g. a "click here to see /r/cats without posts flared 'mourning or loss'")

vanilla_nut 3y ago

I experienced exactly this a couple of years ago in /r/espresso. Fortunately the low-quality memespam pushed me to look for alternatives, and I found Home Barista forums, one of the best quality web forums I've ever participated in. Something similar happened to me in the bicycle space, which turns out to have a lot of forum activity as well. Seems some of the oldguard never switched to Reddit in the first place in both communities.

oplav 3y ago
I had a similar experience. /r/turning had no memespam and good wood turning content, but I found the actual American Association of Woodturners forum to have very wide breadth and high quality information.

redmerchant2 3y ago

But what can you do beyond draconian moderation? One niche hobby sub I’m part of grew over 120x due to the pandemic. The mods cracked down hard but it had the side effect of suppressing quality conversations as well. I think they found a good balance but you forget how big the sub is now until some meme slips through the cracks, and has 10x the number of upvotes compared to usual posts.

AnotherGoodName 3y ago
Communities tend to end up with a memes allowed and strictly meme free version of the community once they grow to a certain size. It splits the community and the meme version will tend to have 100x the users but that's ok imho. You'll find the meme free offshoot will have the same feel as the early smaller community and will be much better if the topic really does interest you.
tensor 3y ago
Perhaps personal ai based filters that each user can train is an option. I know personally that there are topics or opinions that I just don't care to engage with or read and it would be lovely to be able to train my own filter to just censor all that out of my feeds. I currently use reddit user blocklist as a partial solution, but it's a rather crude tool.
Levitz 3y ago
Image posting should have never been added. This was called out from the get-go. From the very start people warned that it would water down content and replace thoughtful discussion, and so it did. It was great for engagement though, I guess.

deebosong 3y ago

This isn't always the case, but I found that if I'm looking for a serious discussion, I gotta find the sub within the subreddit. For movies, there are a few that communicate they are about serious film discussion. But between the 2 or 3 subs on serious film talk, I found truefilm to be more in-depth than not. Even for cycling, there are about 8 subs that I'm on, and one out of the bunch is strictly focused on serious fitness & performance discussions, whereas the rest are sort of free-for-alls loosely based on the subreddit's sub-genre. If there are no subs within the subs, might just gotta suck it up and scroll past the memes. Or start a discussion and find like-minded folks to branch off.

lom 3y ago
> Even for cycling, there are about 8 subs that I'm on, and one out of the bunch is strictly focused on serious fitness & performance discussions, whereas the rest are sort of free-for-alls loosely based on the subreddit's sub-genre. Would you mind sharing?
- deebosong 3y ago
  Sure thing. r/velo.

robbyking 3y ago

I was a long time reddit user (I created my first account in 2007), and I eventually left for this reason. I moderated a cycling community (r/mtb) that grew to about a quarter million subscribers and I had a really difficult time keeping the low effort content at bay. When communities grow to a certain size they lose their niche audience, and lowest common denominator posts bubble to the top and drown out quality content.

schwarzrules 3y ago
Where do you find/engage with similar high-effort content now (if anywhere)?
- robbyking 3y ago
  I haven't really had any luck yet. I was a Farker back in the day, but went to Reddit while a lot of other people were going to Digg. Back then I loved Reddit as a social news site, but now I really dislike it because it's mostly a meme and image aggregator. (IMO it was the memes, image macros (Advice Animals) and meta references that killed that site.) That said, I like PinkBike.com for MTB stuff and Hacker News for tech stuff. Those are really the only two forums where I actually leave comments these days.
jacurtis 3y ago
I was an OG r/mtb subscriber and loved the content for years. I noticed more and more low-quality content slide in around 2017-2019 and I stopped frequenting it. It was one of my favorite subs back in the day. By the time COVID hit, that sub was a dumpster fire of low-quality posts it became a complete waste to even visit, I felt dumber after visiting it each time. It isn't just the quality of the posts that degraded though. r/MTB for example hasn't gotten as spammy as most other subs. But the quality of the community has gone to shit, and thats almost worse because that was the main value it originally had. There really good gear discussions and technique help is gone. Most posts get 1-4 comments, almost all of which are "where this at?" or "what bike u hav?" that there is no community anymore. No discussions, which to me was the real value of the sub. There is one subreddit that I don't feel comfortable mentioning because it covers a deeply personal and sensitive topic. But I joined that community back when it had 5k subs (it now has 300k). That community saved my life in many ways and provided therapy and healing by discussing a sensitive topic and help with recovery for people who were going through a similar traumatic life experience that I was going through at the time. It was an invaluable support group. Many of us knew eachother (by anonymous usernames of course), and helped eachother cope through very tough life experiences.I even participated in a few IRL Meetups. People would write research and high-quality content on there that rivaled academic content available at the time, several actually went on to do PhD research in this previously-unresearched niche. It was such an exciting time and such a healing and powerful community. That community is 300k people now and a complete disaster. Way too many posts, most of which are off-topic. The remainder of the posts are non-constructive rants (which were previously banned). To make matters worse, there was a period of time where the community became unsafe and a mod from an opposing group had become a mod of our support group and was doxxing people in a way that ruined a few people's lives (I was luckily mostly no longer an active participant by this time, and mostly just lurking and providing occasional guidance). The community is now very rage-filled and is nothing like the quality support group/community that I was able to participate in. Reddit is all about the communities. But it has become so commercialized and mainstream now that it has lost its original value. I don't want to scroll through a feed of memes and low quality shit posts or reposts. I want discussions and q+a forums with people who are passionate about topics, hobbies, life experiences, and shared interests. I want real discussions, not another algorithm-driven social media network spamming garbage at my eyes.

browningstreet 3y ago

I wish we could divide forums into 101 and 202 (as in college levels) streams. Newbies need a place, but I don't want to be their guide (in most cases). Newbie/101 energy kills a lot of places.

deepspace 3y ago
Yes, I frequent subs like r/Electronics, r/Arduino and r/ElectricalEngineering. While I sympathize with newbies, the incessant “My First Blinking LED” posts get old really fast. Especially when said LED DOESN’T blink, and they post a Fritzing thing instead of a circuit diagram.
- auxym 3y ago
  r/embedded feels like it has become 75% "how do I find my first job as an embedded programmer", which gets old after a while. AskElectronics is pretty good though, in large part thanks to Davide's moderation. Losing places like that is sad tbh.
  - docmars 3y ago
    Same with the various web development subreddits as well. Copious amounts of content from "My First Website", to "am I doing intro-level CSS thing right?", and "can I still get a React job?" There's certainly a place for these, as everyone needs to start somewhere, but having a better home for these would be welcome.
triplepoint217 3y ago
Sift (https://sift.quest/ https://sift.quest/) is working hard on doing exactly that. We don't have enough users to actually show it off yet, but at our core we're building around a user reputation/relevance graph that we think will let people curate streams like that. In our model, as soon as anyone you trust in our graph says "this is a 101 type post/comment" we can realize you are not interested in seeing it and de prioritize it in your feeds/comments while still showing it to other newbies or to people who have expressed an interest in engaging with that kind of topic.

mynameisash 3y ago

This has frustrated me incredibly in a few different subreddits I frequented. There was some really welcoming, high-quality content, but then there were also terrible, low-calorie memes. The people that enjoy the memes definitely seemed to scoff at any criticism. The easiest solution seems to be to allow filtering of content based on tags. In most cases, the memes were tagged as such. Had I been able to simply say, "Don't show content with the `meme` tag," I probably would have spent a good deal more time on reddit, browsing and contributing.

shagie 3y ago
'NOT flair:meme' For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/help/search/?q=NOT%20flair%3AAccess&restrict_sr=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/help/search/?q=NOT%20flair%3AAccess... You won't see any of the posts titled 'Access' in that search. On old.reddit a number of subs that I followed had those as quick links (e.g. a "click here to see /r/cats without posts flared 'mourning or loss'")