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> The amount of mindless "me too!" and "here's how that works /confidentlyincorrect" This is what gets me about all the people lately claiming that the only wa

by mvdtnz 3y ago

> The amount of mindless "me too!" and "here's how that works /confidentlyincorrect" This is what gets me about all the people lately claiming that the only way to get good Google results is to append site:reddit.com - I have spent enough time looking at Reddit threads to know I would never trust them for important information. People who post on Reddit are very often just completely wrong, and often that wrongness becomes a meme (in the original sense of the word) that propagates through the site for literally years. New users read the confidently wrong information, take it as gospel and spread it to other new users.

inquirerGeneral 3y ago
[dead]
MostlyStable 3y ago
1) Compared to what? It's really important to compare those reddit results to elsewhere and not the hypothetical "best" answer. Yeah, reddit answers are often not great, but in my experience, the rest of google search has, over the past 10 years, gone to complete and utter shit. If I don't already know where to look (and just want google to get me there faster), 99% of my results are going to be useless blogspam. 2) It's even more important to have an understanding of the _kinds_ of things reddit is good at answering, and which communities provide good answers to those questions. Reddit is so big that there are good and bad versions of almost everything.
- sieabahlpark 3y ago
  [dead]
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  1) As always it depends on the query. For categories like cars/engines, gardening/landscaping and DIY stuff I've found that a Bing search often outperforms Google because it returns a dedicated section for internet discussions that isn't focused completely on Reddit. Here's an example of that section from a search about manifolds for an old engine[0]. There is a TON of (actually good) community discussion on such topics on "the old internet" as long as it doesn't need to be timely. For topics that need more timeliness, I don't have a good answer. The internet in general is so enshittified that maybe Reddit is the only good answer when the alternative is AI-generated garbage. 2) In my experience, for factual information, it's just too much of a minefield. Try finding actually accurate information on Reddit about Roundup/glyphosate, for example. Compare what you find to the actual published research on the topic. It is very hard to find correct information on this topic on Reddit, and where you do see it, it will be downvoted to invisibility. [0] https://imgur.com/a/8NNcwTJ https://imgur.com/a/8NNcwTJ
  - nitwit005 3y ago
    For a subject like pesticides that is both emotionally fraught, and the subject of multi-billion dollar lawsuits, I'm genuinely not sure you can find accurate information anywhere. People are careful to say things like "not supported by credible science", because the industry has paid for some of the research.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > reddit answers are often not great, but in my experience, the rest of google search has, over the past 10 years, gone to complete and utter shit. Fascinating. I've read so many comments here about how people search reddit specifically in order to get better results, but I've never understood this. I don't find reddit to be better enough for that sort of thing to be worth going to reddit as a first choice. Perhaps this explains it? I stopped using Google search a few years back because I find it hard to get to useful sites using it. Are people comparing reddit-specific searches to general Google search results? That would be the explanation, because if I had to chose between the two, I'd go with a reddit-first approach, too.
  - jameson71 3y ago
    It's really good for home type technical questions too. Like a stack overflow for plex or handyman type things for people who want to scan text and not watch a half hour youtube. What are you using instead of google search?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      DDG, although I think I'll be switching to Kagi in the future. > for people who want to scan text and not watch a half hour youtube. I never use YouTube videos for that sort of thing because I don't really learn well from videos. I'm a text kind of guy. But even for those sorts of things, I never have a problem finding good resources on the web, so I have no reason to have to go to reddit for them. That's just me, though. It's not a criticism of reddit, just a preference. Reddit is just not my kind of place, so I like to avoid it when I can.
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    It really depends what you're looking for answers to. If you're looking for more trustworthy product reviews than the ones on an Amazon product page, or you're looking for how to fix an obscure problem with your 3d printer, it's damn reliable. Having the opportunity for open and anonymous conversation on these things increases the chance of meaningful discussion. For the former, Google search results are a hodge podge of bought-and-paid for "best of" sites, and for the latter dominated by ancient niche forum posts and shitty Quora answers. Half of the Internet is now soulless self promotion and devious attempts to advertise without you knowing you're being advertised to. So two cheers to Reddit, frankly. We could do a hell of a lot worse.
trts 3y ago
it's a fairly common and incredible experience for me to see people on reddit assert the most inane drivel that collect hundreds or thousands of upvotes and enthusiastic agreement. It makes me feel some combination of 1. Reddit is flooded with bots or brigades that seem to have cryptic agendas 2. My own reality is really far afield and the internet is bursting that bubble OR 3. The present young adult generation exists in a seriously orthogonal reality and absolutely sweeping societal changes are on the horizon (as may already be becoming evident) I still find a lot of pleasant discourse on the smaller subreddits. But it's an absolute shock to visit some of the larger communities sometimes.
- ttctciyf 3y ago
  > assert the most inane drivel Thank goodness that never happens here!
- castlecrasher2 3y ago
  I also avoid the larger communities. The value in reddit is having a number of doors to open and shut at will. Can I find a better place for discussion in a specific forum? Probably, but reddit is great for being able to visit and consult with many different groups.
  - smackeyacky 3y ago
    This is the crux of the problem and why free moderation doesn't scale. Communities simply can't exceed a particular size without attracting chuds, and smaller communities self regulate because "being a member" of something useful is valuable. Online discussions communities since Usenet always suffer the same problem. They become useful, attract too many users of the wrong kind and die. Reddit will be no exception.
- andybak 3y ago
  I’m 52 and frequent a mix of large and small subreddits. Can you elaborate?
- soundsgoodtome 3y ago
  4. Most people are idiots. The older I get, the more I go with #4
dmichulke 3y ago
I use reddit to search for a diverse set of options (= many possible solutions), not for facts (wikipedia), code (stackoverflow) or how-tos (YouTube). Google only gives you a million times the same top n solutions iff your keywords are unique enough.
xapata 3y ago
> People who post on Reddit are very often just completely wrong, and often that wrongness becomes a meme (in the original sense of the word) that propagates through the site for literally years. Isn't that just a microcosm of the internet and society in general?
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  The internet I came from (in the days of discussion forums) didn't suffer this problem because there were no internet points attached to posts, and posts were ordered oldest to newest. Incorrect information was called out. On Reddit, the "right kind" of incorrect information is upvoted and boosted to the top, and anyone calling out this misinformation is downvoted.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Internet points are fine but the sort by votes order messes up any interesting discussion if people use downvotes as disagree buttons.
  - itairal 3y ago
    The worst part to me is the binary nature of internet points. Up or down. No difference between something one simply doesn't agree with vs utter and complete bullshit. On the other hand I am not sure what the old internet forums I loved would look like if you scaled up the users 100X and then linked all these random forums together so one username interacted across message boards. That would have basically been a disaster and internet points would not have been the major problem.
cityhall 3y ago
One thing it's still useful for is getting user reviews that actually tell you if a product is junk or has recently been replaced with an inferior version. Store sites and review pages make it too easy for companies to get negative reviews hidden.

by mvdtnz 3y ago

inquirerGeneral 3y ago

[dead]

MostlyStable 3y ago

1) Compared to what? It's really important to compare those reddit results to elsewhere and not the hypothetical "best" answer. Yeah, reddit answers are often not great, but in my experience, the rest of google search has, over the past 10 years, gone to complete and utter shit. If I don't already know where to look (and just want google to get me there faster), 99% of my results are going to be useless blogspam. 2) It's even more important to have an understanding of the _kinds_ of things reddit is good at answering, and which communities provide good answers to those questions. Reddit is so big that there are good and bad versions of almost everything.

sieabahlpark 3y ago
[dead]
mvdtnz 3y ago
1) As always it depends on the query. For categories like cars/engines, gardening/landscaping and DIY stuff I've found that a Bing search often outperforms Google because it returns a dedicated section for internet discussions that isn't focused completely on Reddit. Here's an example of that section from a search about manifolds for an old engine[0]. There is a TON of (actually good) community discussion on such topics on "the old internet" as long as it doesn't need to be timely. For topics that need more timeliness, I don't have a good answer. The internet in general is so enshittified that maybe Reddit is the only good answer when the alternative is AI-generated garbage. 2) In my experience, for factual information, it's just too much of a minefield. Try finding actually accurate information on Reddit about Roundup/glyphosate, for example. Compare what you find to the actual published research on the topic. It is very hard to find correct information on this topic on Reddit, and where you do see it, it will be downvoted to invisibility. [0] https://imgur.com/a/8NNcwTJ https://imgur.com/a/8NNcwTJ
- nitwit005 3y ago
  For a subject like pesticides that is both emotionally fraught, and the subject of multi-billion dollar lawsuits, I'm genuinely not sure you can find accurate information anywhere. People are careful to say things like "not supported by credible science", because the industry has paid for some of the research.
JohnFen 3y ago
> reddit answers are often not great, but in my experience, the rest of google search has, over the past 10 years, gone to complete and utter shit. Fascinating. I've read so many comments here about how people search reddit specifically in order to get better results, but I've never understood this. I don't find reddit to be better enough for that sort of thing to be worth going to reddit as a first choice. Perhaps this explains it? I stopped using Google search a few years back because I find it hard to get to useful sites using it. Are people comparing reddit-specific searches to general Google search results? That would be the explanation, because if I had to chose between the two, I'd go with a reddit-first approach, too.
- jameson71 3y ago
  It's really good for home type technical questions too. Like a stack overflow for plex or handyman type things for people who want to scan text and not watch a half hour youtube. What are you using instead of google search?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    DDG, although I think I'll be switching to Kagi in the future. > for people who want to scan text and not watch a half hour youtube. I never use YouTube videos for that sort of thing because I don't really learn well from videos. I'm a text kind of guy. But even for those sorts of things, I never have a problem finding good resources on the web, so I have no reason to have to go to reddit for them. That's just me, though. It's not a criticism of reddit, just a preference. Reddit is just not my kind of place, so I like to avoid it when I can.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  It really depends what you're looking for answers to. If you're looking for more trustworthy product reviews than the ones on an Amazon product page, or you're looking for how to fix an obscure problem with your 3d printer, it's damn reliable. Having the opportunity for open and anonymous conversation on these things increases the chance of meaningful discussion. For the former, Google search results are a hodge podge of bought-and-paid for "best of" sites, and for the latter dominated by ancient niche forum posts and shitty Quora answers. Half of the Internet is now soulless self promotion and devious attempts to advertise without you knowing you're being advertised to. So two cheers to Reddit, frankly. We could do a hell of a lot worse.

trts 3y ago

it's a fairly common and incredible experience for me to see people on reddit assert the most inane drivel that collect hundreds or thousands of upvotes and enthusiastic agreement. It makes me feel some combination of 1. Reddit is flooded with bots or brigades that seem to have cryptic agendas 2. My own reality is really far afield and the internet is bursting that bubble OR 3. The present young adult generation exists in a seriously orthogonal reality and absolutely sweeping societal changes are on the horizon (as may already be becoming evident) I still find a lot of pleasant discourse on the smaller subreddits. But it's an absolute shock to visit some of the larger communities sometimes.

ttctciyf 3y ago
> assert the most inane drivel Thank goodness that never happens here!
castlecrasher2 3y ago
I also avoid the larger communities. The value in reddit is having a number of doors to open and shut at will. Can I find a better place for discussion in a specific forum? Probably, but reddit is great for being able to visit and consult with many different groups.
- smackeyacky 3y ago
  This is the crux of the problem and why free moderation doesn't scale. Communities simply can't exceed a particular size without attracting chuds, and smaller communities self regulate because "being a member" of something useful is valuable. Online discussions communities since Usenet always suffer the same problem. They become useful, attract too many users of the wrong kind and die. Reddit will be no exception.
andybak 3y ago
I’m 52 and frequent a mix of large and small subreddits. Can you elaborate?
soundsgoodtome 3y ago
4. Most people are idiots. The older I get, the more I go with #4

dmichulke 3y ago

I use reddit to search for a diverse set of options (= many possible solutions), not for facts (wikipedia), code (stackoverflow) or how-tos (YouTube). Google only gives you a million times the same top n solutions iff your keywords are unique enough.

xapata 3y ago

> People who post on Reddit are very often just completely wrong, and often that wrongness becomes a meme (in the original sense of the word) that propagates through the site for literally years. Isn't that just a microcosm of the internet and society in general?

mvdtnz 3y ago
The internet I came from (in the days of discussion forums) didn't suffer this problem because there were no internet points attached to posts, and posts were ordered oldest to newest. Incorrect information was called out. On Reddit, the "right kind" of incorrect information is upvoted and boosted to the top, and anyone calling out this misinformation is downvoted.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Internet points are fine but the sort by votes order messes up any interesting discussion if people use downvotes as disagree buttons.
- itairal 3y ago
  The worst part to me is the binary nature of internet points. Up or down. No difference between something one simply doesn't agree with vs utter and complete bullshit. On the other hand I am not sure what the old internet forums I loved would look like if you scaled up the users 100X and then linked all these random forums together so one username interacted across message boards. That would have basically been a disaster and internet points would not have been the major problem.

cityhall 3y ago

One thing it's still useful for is getting user reviews that actually tell you if a product is junk or has recently been replaced with an inferior version. Store sites and review pages make it too easy for companies to get negative reviews hidden.