Do you mean Hacker News vs. Reddit in terms of popularity? HN deliberately tries not to be as popular as Reddit.

A few years ago HN was featured in a relatively popular publication, (TechCrunch maybe? I forget) and we flooded the front page with stories about Haskell (I'm pretty sure, or some other esoteric topic) to drive away any would be newcomers from that piece.

HN is trying to appeal to a particular type of demographic - people interested in computer science / programming and start ups.[1] The more you try to be all things to all people, the more you end up with the blandest content with the broadest appeal, like many of the more popular subreddits.

[1] Contrary to some people's beliefs, I don't think this means there should be stories only about computer science, programming, and startups, just that the stories should be interesting to people who find those things interesting. Of course, even among a similar group of people not everyone is going to agree what other things are interesting, but that's what we have the voting for.

Which cannot be said of Reddit :D

https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews

>HN deliberately tries not to be as popular as Reddit.

No they/we don't. They might like to pretend that, because, after all, it's cool to be an "exclusive club". But this is just another internet forum that happens to have content you/I like.

See above about flooding the front page with Haskell stories. That was a real thing that happened. And yes there was a post from pg at the time actually asking people to make the site seem unappealing to newcomers until the traffic surge from TC died down. It is a very deliberate attempt to limit the growth rate to a manageable amount and maintain a certain type of culture.

It's not because we're an "exclusive" or "elite" club, it's just that with a broader community there would be a need to appeal to broader, more general interests that would eventually drive away the people who originally came here for the tech-business related content.

It was Erlang, not Haskell, but yes, pg asked user to do that, and they complied, a bit too literally (he meant Erlang as an example).

Apples/oranges?

Reddit caters to, essentially, everyone, by allowing users to create separate topic groups, while HN is a single collective forum for tech-y/science-y/thing-of-general-interest-y type news.

Reddit is shorthand for "subreddit or subreddits on this theme".

This place really doesn't look so different to r/programming+r/technology.

I think it's rare to see "Reddit" used to refer specifically to a subreddit. The two words are distinct for a reason, after all.

And I have noticed that there is a 1-3 day lag from the front page of HN to the front page of /r/programming+/r/technology. My guess is most of the frequent contributors there see the content here on HN then repost it.

This is basically just a subreddit with really complicated permissions

I agree that moderation in any online forum tends to be antithetical to the objectives it aims for. Stackoverflow is another good example.

When was the last time when you had a civil discourse (without trolls derailing, spamming and trolling) on a major subreddit?

https://www.reddit.com/user/gear54/ you are free to decide what's what

Now that I think about it, even if something is 'derailed' (and you're not into it, being all serious and stuff), that branch is simply hidden. Something you can't do here.

> on a major subreddit?

That you realise that that's a necessary qualifier implies the solution. Yes, you're not going to have good quality discussion on a major/default subreddit. Unsubscribe from them and ignore them. There are a lot (iirc ~10^6) of subreddits, including many perfectly civil communities in there for various niches.

I prefer Man United over Rory McIlroy