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Reddit has already been through that cycle. Reddit ca 2006, before subreddits, was not too unlike hacker news, in that it had inteligent posts with inteligent d
by alephnil 12y ago
Reddit has already been through that cycle. Reddit ca 2006, before subreddits, was not too unlike hacker news, in that it had inteligent posts with inteligent discussion. The seeds to what Reddit eventually became was certainly there, but they it did not yet dominate. I think subreddits actually made it worse, since the people interested in having online communities went to smaller and more specialized subreddits, and gave up on the default subreddits, not even trying to hold up the online community.
On hacker news, there are no "sub hacker news", and it seems to me like hacker news is deteriorating at a slower rate than reddit did. My guess is that the fact that there only is one hacker news, and no subcommunities is a partial reason for that.
- jacquesm 12y agoThat suggests that a very slow bifurcation my be a good solution to this problem. Not so fast that you end up with a ton of splinter groups that lose cohesion, not so slow that you end up diluting the community.
- TillE 12y agoReddit remained interesting right up until the Digg 4 migration in 2010. Not wonderful, but still a place where you could have a real discussion in a default subreddit. Where you would get actual answers in AskReddit, not just a stream of pathetic jokes.
- im3w1l 12y agoI wasn't there in 2006, so I have to admit I don't know what was lost. But really like what it is right now: An extremely easy way to set up your own forum for free.