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Programming Reddit (Proggit) is more focused on programming (as opposed to politics, tech startups) and therefore, I would argue, is more likely to have the sor

Programming Reddit (Proggit) is more focused on programming (as opposed to politics, tech startups) and therefore, I would argue, is more likely to have the sorts of links you're looking for. But, in my experience, the quality of discussion is lower (though quite high in absolute standards) and you're more likely to have a good comment downvoted.

INTPenis 14y ago
If you take away the religious subreddits like atheism, politics and worldnews you can make your own reddit well worth its weight in neutrinos.
shardling 14y ago
r/math generally has a pretty high quality of discussion.
personlurking 14y ago
"and you're more likely to have a good comment downvoted." This has never made sense to me. On some subreddits that focus on disciplines (like AskHistorians among many others), you can easily get downvoted (ie "dissapeared") just by asking a question, let alone answering one. Other times you'll won't get upvoted nor downvoted when you've actually contributed to the discussion. In these instances I lurk even when I can contribute because it's just not worth it.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Reddit's voting system has two issues: (1) Lots of strategic downvoting. That's why no thread stays above 75%. It happens to comments as well as threads. Some of it is spammers trying to improve their own ranking, and some is probably just trolls. (2) "Stalker" downvoting, which is when a person retaliates to a comment by downvoting that person's contributions en masse. I wonder if they've put any machine learning muscle behind this. Is it easy to fix, or is it just a hard problem?
  - ampersandy 14y ago
    I feel like (2) isn't difficult, in absolute terms, but is simply computationally expensive. Reddit is _still_ crashing all the time. They certainly don't have the resources to throw a bunch of machine learning or algorithmic muscle into preventing downvote spam.
  - mirashii 14y ago
    Actually, (1) is the result of vote fuzzing by reddit. They intentionally manipulate upvote and downvote numbers to obscure from potential voting rings whether their votes are effective. There are also some small safeguards in place against (2). If you literally go to someone's user page, and start downvoting every post, reddit will start ignoring your votes towards that user in actual score calculations.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - zalzane 14y ago
    The entire concept of the downvote is flawed and is very likely to be the absolute worst part about reddit. In theory it may be a good idea, but in practice it's essentially a "CENSOR THIS POST" button that people use to get rid of content they don't agree with. I've also noticed that negative points on a post completely destroys credibility despite cited evidence or a well thought out argument. I've seen identical comments on similar posts in the past where the first few voters determined the post's fate in that if the first few voters voted it down, the post would receive flames and even more downvotes, but if it was initially upvoted, more people would upvote it and it would receive well thought out replies. Probably the most horrifying part of the downvote is that all it takes is 51% of voters to dislike your post to destroy it. For example, all it takes is 51% of viewers on the politics subreddit to turn the the /r/politics frontpage into a pseudo fox news where every single post praises democrats and slanders republicans. It strikes me as disgusting that some people actually consider reddit to be a good place to have a controversial discussion when it's so pathetically easy to censor opinions that you don't agree with.
    - theorique 14y ago
jacques_chester 14y ago
I quit proggit about a year ago because it was absolutely jammed with politics, tech startups and the like. To the point where I founded a circlejerk sub to mock it.
cabalamat 14y ago
r/ProgrammingLanguages/ is about programming lanugage design, although it doesn't get a lot of traffic.
k3n 14y ago
AskScience is also curated very well and can make for some interesting reading.
SkyMarshal 14y ago
I would suggest starting at /r/coding for pure technical/coding discussions: http://www.reddit.com/r/coding http://www.reddit.com/r/coding Then follow the sidebar links for related stuff.

INTPenis 14y ago

If you take away the religious subreddits like atheism, politics and worldnews you can make your own reddit well worth its weight in neutrinos.

shardling 14y ago

r/math generally has a pretty high quality of discussion.

personlurking 14y ago

"and you're more likely to have a good comment downvoted." This has never made sense to me. On some subreddits that focus on disciplines (like AskHistorians among many others), you can easily get downvoted (ie "dissapeared") just by asking a question, let alone answering one. Other times you'll won't get upvoted nor downvoted when you've actually contributed to the discussion. In these instances I lurk even when I can contribute because it's just not worth it.

michaelochurch 14y ago
Reddit's voting system has two issues: (1) Lots of strategic downvoting. That's why no thread stays above 75%. It happens to comments as well as threads. Some of it is spammers trying to improve their own ranking, and some is probably just trolls. (2) "Stalker" downvoting, which is when a person retaliates to a comment by downvoting that person's contributions en masse. I wonder if they've put any machine learning muscle behind this. Is it easy to fix, or is it just a hard problem?
- ampersandy 14y ago
  I feel like (2) isn't difficult, in absolute terms, but is simply computationally expensive. Reddit is _still_ crashing all the time. They certainly don't have the resources to throw a bunch of machine learning or algorithmic muscle into preventing downvote spam.
- mirashii 14y ago
  Actually, (1) is the result of vote fuzzing by reddit. They intentionally manipulate upvote and downvote numbers to obscure from potential voting rings whether their votes are effective. There are also some small safeguards in place against (2). If you literally go to someone's user page, and start downvoting every post, reddit will start ignoring your votes towards that user in actual score calculations.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- zalzane 14y ago
  The entire concept of the downvote is flawed and is very likely to be the absolute worst part about reddit. In theory it may be a good idea, but in practice it's essentially a "CENSOR THIS POST" button that people use to get rid of content they don't agree with. I've also noticed that negative points on a post completely destroys credibility despite cited evidence or a well thought out argument. I've seen identical comments on similar posts in the past where the first few voters determined the post's fate in that if the first few voters voted it down, the post would receive flames and even more downvotes, but if it was initially upvoted, more people would upvote it and it would receive well thought out replies. Probably the most horrifying part of the downvote is that all it takes is 51% of voters to dislike your post to destroy it. For example, all it takes is 51% of viewers on the politics subreddit to turn the the /r/politics frontpage into a pseudo fox news where every single post praises democrats and slanders republicans. It strikes me as disgusting that some people actually consider reddit to be a good place to have a controversial discussion when it's so pathetically easy to censor opinions that you don't agree with.
  - theorique 14y ago

jacques_chester 14y ago

I quit proggit about a year ago because it was absolutely jammed with politics, tech startups and the like. To the point where I founded a circlejerk sub to mock it.

cabalamat 14y ago

r/ProgrammingLanguages/ is about programming lanugage design, although it doesn't get a lot of traffic.

k3n 14y ago

AskScience is also curated very well and can make for some interesting reading.

SkyMarshal 14y ago

I would suggest starting at /r/coding for pure technical/coding discussions: http://www.reddit.com/r/coding http://www.reddit.com/r/coding Then follow the sidebar links for related stuff.