HN isn't very good, but it's a little better than the current state of reddit, which is like a middle school without adults. At least people try to be intellectual on HN.

It really depends where you look and what subreddits you subscribe to. Opening reddit this morning looked exactly the same to me as any other day, except for one thread because I'm subscribed to /r/subredditdrama.

Yeah, as bad as /r/all has been (though, I have to admit, I've been amused by the drama), my frontpage looks the same as any other day.

You could leave all the users behind and come visit http://skimfeed.com :)

Hacker news is consistently superior to reddit. I think we're just being difficult.

I have to agree. It's not like shitty stuff doesn't get posted here all the time, but on average, HN is definitely better than reddit.

I'd rather we all be intentionally snooty and arrogant and keep the unsuited at bay instead of succumbing. We can easily be silenced with a few keystrokes, at pg's command.

Moderators haven't touched this post. Upvotes and flags are in the usual tug-of-war that happens with controversial submissions.

> HN users consistently imply this place has better comments than Reddit

That isn't a big surprise, is it? If they thought otherwise, they'd be commenting on Reddit about how HN sucks :)

Reddit and HN have different audiences. I tried both and found HN suits me much better. If it's not your cup of tea, nothing wrong with that too.

Yes, HN story ranking is arcane and I wish there were better tools to track content I like. But it also has a lot of insightful people and great discussions while trying not to devolve into circus.

> will probably end up going to Voat.co like everyone else talks about.

Good luck with that. The users exiting reddit are precisely the kind of users you don't want on your website. The young, trolls, immature and racist/bigots. They're essentially filling their community up with 4channers. That site is already filled with reddit's /r/conspiracy users. They run many of the most popular subreddits.

That place is doomed to fail. And as far as I know, they've already begun banning users and blacklisting domains. So much for "free speech".

There are lots of normal, high-functioning and even helpful users having discussions daily on 4chan. This is something that is often glossed over by folks who don't understand chan culture: its chaotic neutral, not chaotic evil.

> I generally preferred Reddit to HN and will probably end up going to Voat.com like everyone else talks about.

correct url is https://voat.co!

> constantly I'd post on a thread here only to see it disappear with no explanation.

We surely don't have the same experience with reddit then, most big subreddits have a huge amount of rules and posting to them will just cause a bot/moderator to remove your thread and ask you to make changes

> cause a bot/moderator to remove your thread and ask you to make changes

He said "disappear with no explanation". Most of the time, bots will comment on why a post was removed. Not only that, the rules are indicative of why your post was removed. It serves as an explanation. Here on HN, you get nothing. Not even a list of rules which need to be followed.

Reddit also has an astroturfing problem

Astroturfing being present or not is simply a function of size and influence.

> Arbitrary curating means someone is arbitrarily imposing their values on discussions.

This has been bothering me about HN for some time. Maybe it's due to a smaller user base, but having stories disappear, specific user's comments always being weighted lower, and childish hellbanning is really discouraging. It does give the sense of a 'country club', where if you're not of the same bread and butter as those making the rules then you're not welcome.