There are several nice and tightly moderated reddits that are great. For example /r/askhistorians and /r/askscience and several others.
Reddit is different because people tend to chose subreddits that they care about, so the discussions are generally more positive.
For example, there are small subreddits about FirefoxOS or Jolla, that contain discussions about both topics, and are quite enthusiastic. On the other hand, any HN discussion about those topics is full of people who are doing nothing but complaining, putting (the thing) down and nay-saying.
By simple virtue of being on Reddit, regardless of subreddit, you are wasting your own time. It doesn't matter HOW good the top comment is, ultimately it's a gamble. How do you know if what you're reading is real?
Trust, I've been on the site for like 7 years now and I've been to nearly every sub deemed "worthy". Almost in every situation, I'd prefer an entirely new forum specifically dedicated to that topic.
By design, it's just a comment system without any features really, and that design promotes a certain behaviour, which plagues the intention of the poster in the first place, because it's not longer about sharing information, it's about sharing information in the context of it earning more upvotes, so the content becomes corrupt.
But that's the thing. There is no actual real reason to go on Reddit.
There's no actual real reason to do just about anything. But reddit is the best place for certain types of conversation.
Edit: The default front page really is a piece of crap.
> I'm posting about the main subreddits because that's the context of OP's post since her picture was posted in r/WTF.
Excuse me?
Yes, without a doubt.
"But that's the thing. There is no actual real reason to go on Reddit."
Something like r/AskHistorians is fantastic and I could never take in such a diverse array of knowledgable points by "picking up books by qualified authors" - I simply don't have the time, nor the niche interest to read every topic to that depth. AskHistorians is full of very knowledgable contributors, has effective and tight moderation, and it's generally fascinating.
I don't have a Reddit account, so I just visit that subreddit (and a few others - AskScience, NBA, an anthropology one, etc) directly. Sure, there's trash elsewhere but the same is true of almost everywhere, anonymous or not.
Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening.
The biggest problem with reddit is that you have to spend some time up front customizing your subreddit subscriptions. Once you've done that, the (custom) front page still has issues, and there is still bad discussion in the comments, but I can bail out of those easily by collapsing them out of view and moving on the the next comment.
Lots of people seem to want to state "I don't use reddit" lately like there is really nothing of value there. However, quite often in the comments section there are experts on the topic that provide some additional information that you likely wouldn't get by reading the same information elsewhere.
Edit: Many others have commented as I was typing this, and some responses seem to indicate that even staying in so-called quality subreddits isn't enough. I would just like to point out that in certain circles, people feel the exact same way about HN, and we're all here anyway.
I can't be the only one who just ignores others opinions about places and takes the good where I can get it.
> Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening.
How are you going to determine whether a comment is bullshit or not, especially on something super niche like some very specific question in r/Askhistorians?
You can't for the most part. I do agree you can find good content, but by design Reddit is flawed. The upvote system combined with anonymity is enough reason to be skeptical about everything you read.
How could I possibly be in a position to judge the truth of a post on a topic that I know nothing about? That's the problem.
Just the other day, a pointer to Knuth's Annual Christmas Tree Lecture [0] was shared. I wouldn't have found it as soon otherwise.
Boy, that sounds awfully familiar... like a very recent Bestof comment, originally posted in AskHistorians, about why reddit comments aren't useful sources for anything. Sounds like you're still reading the comments, despite your low opinion.
The best is pointing out that something is wrong and getting voted down for it.
It's either the comment is misinformed, upvoted by other people who are also misinformed, or it is just scraping the bottom of the barrel for that topic.
Oh come on, really?
I'm a hobbyist game developer. I frequent a few subreddits including /r/gamedev. It's a fantastic community and I've learned a lot there, and I've been able to use it for free promotion. It's been very valuable to me and I've enjoyed using it.
If your statement was "you don't stand to gain anything from /r/funny ever" I might agree with you, but this is just too broad a brush to paint hundreds or thousands of individual communities with.
I very strongly agree with this. When Digg did that "update-of-doom", I ended up on Reddit but I couldn't stay for longer than a year. There is way too much hate[1] on that site. And for those who say "Well, just stick with a subreddit you like" that doesn't work. Because of bitcoin, for the first time in like 3 years I went to /r/bitcoin & /r/litecoin. Didn't take me 10 minutes to run into a racist comment. For all the good deeds that happen on Reddit, I still consider it a negative net-value.
1. http://pando.com/2013/02/10/william-shatner-calls-out-reddit...
Why did you let yourself be so affected by something so measly?
Is it the racism, sexism, [insert-ism] that gets to you?
Now picture that, and then picture 1000 other people just like that upvoting a post, and the cycle repeats itself with every link on and on and on and on.
Again, it seems like you just went out of your way searching for things to hate.
The number of people who browse and contribute to Reddit while on the toilet I would wager is quite high, it is a toilet magazine.
Your vitriol against just Reddit is a bit over the top.
All of your complaints apply here too. Food for thought.
It's much easier to fling shit about a photo than it is about a very specific/complex product or technology. I can't exactly bullshit my way to top comment about something I don't know anything about on HN.
A lot of the users here, if you click their profile, you can find their startups, places of work, code they wrote, their blog, etc.
On Reddit it's a straight up free for all.
If you read negative hateful rubbish, it will rub off on you.
If you watch a lot of pron, you will develop a warped sense of what human relationships are about.
If you absorb a lot of politics from a biased (one way or the other) source, you will start to dehumanise your political opponents.
Balance and real human discussions are the key. Your time is precious. Your keystrokes are precious - you only so many of them - http://keysleft.com/ - don't waste your keystrokes of pointless ragefests.
Later, I remember being shocked to hear some co-workers who I considered kind of dumb, discussing reddit-this, reddit-that a few years ago.
I occasionally visit reddit these days, but it's more as a reminder that I live in a bubble and that there's all kinds of people. It's fascinating. People are just tragically stupid, and yet the world sort of works.
I wonder whether this is what the Eternal September felt like.
Granted, HN seems to have a more pretentious selection criteria - less-mature-sounding comments are discouraged. But it seems to me that HN has much less tolerance for diversity of opinion.
But I read both HN and Reddit, as well as the comments and articles in many other places, because even though I may not agree with the attitudes or opinions, they are different perspectives all the same, and I think it's a fallacy to think that some perspectives can be of lower quality than others.
But most of the default reddits, yeah, they can be complete trash and a waste of your time.
Unsubscribe from default reddits and pick the ones that really matter to you.
Yes, they really do. And no, the comments aren't always terrible. You can't simply make absurdly absolute statements and contrived caricatures and expect them to fly.
You seem to have a deep emotional investment in Reddit, as if you put unrealistic expectations in it and now you strike out like a bitter ex-lover (alternately that you go karma bombed, turning you into a one-man anti-Reddit squad).
Reddit is a large site with a lot of diverse people. Many subs are not my cup of tea (/r/wtf is the domain of teenagers), but many others make for an entertaining and often information diversion.
I enjoy it. So do a lot of other people.
The general rule I recommend for people new to reddit: When you sign up, you'll be automatically subscribed to a few default subreddits. Never, ever, ever read the comments on any of those posts. Unfollow the ones that might not be relevant to you (e.g. /r/gaming, /r/funny, /r/news, whatever), and then look for alternatives to the rest.
If you find the concept of Ask Reddit interesting, look at /r/TrueAskReddit for a moderated community of people answering real questions with real answers.
If you're a gamer, look for a more narrow community. Try /r/ps4, /r/wow, /r/steam, and so on. Instead of a reckless free-for-all of foul-mouthed teenagers, you end up with thoughtful, relevant, and moderated communities. For example, this post where top-level comments are restricted to mentions of the current Steam Sale games, with threads descending from those for discussions on each game:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1t9f6n/rsteam_should_...
There are local subreddits, like /r/Vancouver, but they're hit or miss; Vancouver's is generally a circle jerk of transit-hating, car-hating twits complaining about Asians buying up all the condos, so your mileage may vary.
If you get suckered into the 'hive mind' behaviour of 'what do we hate today?' then Reddit is going to make you a worse person, and I feel as though this is the general case for a lot of people on Reddit: it's where people go to let loose about things which they only hate because everyone else hates them too and it gives them something to feel a part of.
Reddit is a microcosm of the internet as a whole: your experience with it will depend on which communities and topics you're exposed to.
There are some great posts/comments in very niche subreddits, but when you compare that to the entirety of the website, it's a very very small outlier.
Read my comment as if you are only subbed to the defaults, since that's where OP's picture was posted, that's what I'm arguing.
The existence of a few rare good comments doesn't negate all the shit that Reddit generates.
I wish there was a site like Reddit/HN but on an invite/application basis only to consistently provide good content.
I truly believe after spending so much time on Reddit I became a worse person by being exposed to the same regurgitated/top voted opinions on things nobody should be talking about unless qualified (which you can't verify). I realized after a few years after taking an objective look at my life how much I had changed. If you dwell in a medium, you tend to absorb it, and that's the only medium I dwelled in. It's taken me quite awhile to get back to being a normal, nice, human being, sometimes I still slip up in real life. Every topic I've been exposed to ad nauseam on Reddit that I experience in real life, I have to consciously drop all my preconceptions on the topic that I developed online and look at it with a fresh mind, it's slowly helping.
It's a podium for anyone who has an unqualified opinion to suddenly voice it for no real reason. That, combined with the broken upvote system promoting terrible content is a recipe for disaster.
"Reddit: the front page of an on going Dunning-Kruger effect study".
You don't stand to gain anything from Reddit. The comments are largely terrible unless you visit very niche subreddits that are moderated and/or have verified users. You can argue that some smaller subreddits have really good content, but do they REALLY? Maybe you'll find a few cool links, some good comments, and an odd article or two.
The reality is, nobody who has a credible opinion on something is going to bother wasting time having in depth conversations on an anonymous message board, so how good can the content quality possibly get?
I realized how bad Reddit was when I started following comment threads and analysis on other websites on he same articles as Reddit. What was upvoted as total truth (top comment) on certain articles was just scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's basically: hunt for topic -> scrape some shit off the internet (be it wikipedia or whatever site) -> loosely compose it into some shit essay everyone will upvote with a strong ideal behind it -> top comment. This goes for every Reddit thread.
I'm mad and disappointed in myself for wasting so many years on it.
It's a shit flinging contest determined by fake points called "karma" that people, for some odd reason, REALLY REALLY care about, mitigating any hope for a quality discussion.
Great response OP.
edit: toned down the vulgarity of the original post
edit2: My comment is towards the default subreddits, not small niche subreddits that you have to hunt for yourself to find.