Also, I find that searching Reddit with Google yields much more trustworthy information than just searching Google, which tends to return a bunch of sponsored results, ads, and SEO garbage. Folks on Reddit (especially focused subreddits) do a very good job of filtering all that stuff out already. It's not perfect, but it's often vastly better than Google alone.

The discussion is often very shallow, mostly aimed at "advanced beginners" because that's what appeals to the widest audience and anything else doesn't get traction, unlike in a traditional forum. This is very obvious if you're into a technical hobby like climbing or mountaineering.

Basically, if you don't fit the demographic / skill level mold, even niche subreddits (that aren't the dumpster fire that the large ones are) quickly lose their value.

In contrast, "I just bought X" typically is one megathread in a forum and not half the submissions.

However, I like trading (stocks and stuff) and the subs focusing on that are very... questionable at times. A ton of people that mistake pure luck for skill perhaps... every other day.

Its no use telling some of them that, yea you just made $1000 this week trading but if you don't test your strategies legitimately you could and will just as easily lose that $1000.

People really underestimate the randomness.

That's interesting, can you think of other examples besides climbing or mountaineering?

Don't get me wrong, great group of people in surveying- lots of stories about field work, current instruments, current products, etc - near zero interest (for the most part) in the deep technical aspects other than a certain passing "that's interesting | cool".

I'm not sure that's a strong criticism though, it's a social group, you can meet many people and occasionally bump into the few that actually write|develop instruments an software and then have all the off channel conversations you want.

My interest has been implementing numerics in no particular field; cartography, remote sensing, medical imaging, engineering modelling, financials, weddings, parties, anything, etc. I wander through a range of application areas and usually go deep on very dull specifics.

It's a common story - pick a domain area, there'll be a social group interested in that domain, with students, veterans, casual pass throughs, etc ; stories, yarns, classic photos etc are all popular but for the most part getting into the weeds on fine details will bore the pants off the bulk of that group.

Lots of people like to flex at the local climbing wall, few will ever bolt their way to the summit of Cerro Torre or cable ascend the Sydney Tower- this limits the discussion pools on portable generators and|or designing custom ascenders for cables and window washing tracks.

Each of these have non-Reddit counterparts where more serious discussion takes place

edit: I don't really get how my comment is any more sexist than saying it's only white men...

I'm not a Reddit user but a quick Google search confirms the ratio of males to females on Reddit is at least 2:1 and possibly 3:1.

There are also various other phenomena that suggest Reddit users of any gender or interest might see a disproportionate number of male posters, but we needn't go near those treacherous waters given the above numbers.

I think generality is more of a problem than size. The more general a subreddit's topic, usually the more of a cesspool it is.

The more specific and niche, the more likely it is to be focused, informative, and useful. Also the better moderated it tends to be, as the moderators are intensely interested in the topic and doing it as a labor of love.

All of the large subreddits are hot garbage. It's like Twitter intensified.

I would offer up the subreddit on liminal spaces or the video game Marathon as places for discussion that could not otherwise exist without Reddit.

Same here. For certain topics, I often get absolutely useless info on Google, but when I add site:reddit.com I suddenly get a lot of useful results.

I don't go to Reddit for content, I go for the community. That doesn't seem right because the perception is that Reddit is highly toxic, but it sustains a lot of life when you look closer.

There is a particular health-related sub-reddit that I discovered after a diagnosis and while it is highly imperfect it was a lifeline and something I spent a lot of time contributing back on. In about 20% of threads it spun off to PM threads and discussions continued over days. I see this pattern across the site, even though my bookmark goes to r/programming.

reddit makes money off rage.

I'd go so far as to say that politics is inherently destructive to online communities. It inevitably leads to people fighting over which team that they're on.

You can say it is addiction but I would say it is focused addiction. When I am reading about options trading, I am reading about options, investments, dividends and what not - usually there is a purpose and maybe a perceived benefit, and when I am reading about entertainment, it is to track reviews and user comments - same perceived benefit - I could go to IMDB but it is not the same.

it really isn't. it's bottom-quality content, everyone can have an opinion about politics, it's too easy. Every subreddit > 100000 has a politics problem because people have now been conditioned to see politics everywhere. It takes effort to keep things topical. And then, even the politics subreddits themselves are completely confused, e.g. r/libertarian is a mostly socialist sub now.

Not surprising when the libertarian candidates run on own borders and government enforced equality for the identity politic cultists.

Politics is fine if it's discussed like it is on HN†: level-headed arguments are debated, discussed, and, if a consensus isn't reached, we can agree to disagree. Reddit is polluted by absolute political drivel, except for a very small subset of subs. Low-effort "Trump is bad" posts that get massively upvoted just gets old after a while, especially when you see it every single day.

† HN has been historically center-libertarian (which is a bit of self-selection by entrepreneurial folks), but recently started leaning much more left, no doubt due to an influx of non-startup-founding users.

Yes, I'm one of those people that doesn't buy the "everything is politics!" mantra