> 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.
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.