Comment by chime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chime | Hacker News Reader

I love browsing through a tons of different subreddits that have now matured and grown very interesting. In decreasing order of interest to me:

http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/

http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/

http://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyofScience/

http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/

http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/

http://www.reddit.com/r/math/

http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/

http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/

http://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/

http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/

http://www.reddit.com/r/shamelessplug/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Freethought/

Not all of these subreddits are busy but it doesn't matter. I have over 50 hand-selected subreddits and even though I removed all of the popular subreddits (reddit.com, politics, pics etc.), I always see very interesting articles. And the number of comments in each article is usually between 10-50, kinda like HN.

If any of the subreddit starts to get too popular and mainstream, usually 2-3 new subreddits popup that are more specific and interesting. Once a week I spend a few minutes looking for new interesting subreddits. http://www.reddit.com/r/newreddits/ helps with that too.

If you really want to start a web-community, just ask for mod permissions on a few subreddits that interest you. I'd much rather click once to join a subreddit and view its articles during my regular reddit browsing than go to whole another site. I wish HN was available as a subreddit. I would never have to go to another news site.

http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade+longtext+programming+...

This will aggregate all of those subreddits in to a single view.

wow this looks surprisingly like hacker news, good choice, chime!

If any of the subreddit starts to get too popular and mainstream, usually 2-3 new subreddits popup that are more specific and interesting.

Bingo! I think this is the solution to the eternal September effect on communities.

You get a super nice place like reddit when it was new and shiny and over time it gets taken over by trolls. So you move on to startup news, then hacker news, but soon that is filled with generic crap and shallow discussions as well.

So you move on to an individually selected group of sub-reddits and then just keep moving, like a nomad always moving away form the trolls. (Or not even necessarily trolls, just too much popularity which brings shallowness if no actual trolling.)

I strongly encourage everyone to try this. Keep in mind the default reddit includes subreddits like pics and WTF which basically equals 4chan, so quickly edit your settings.

A subreddit's moderators can make all the difference in stopping trolls and keeping content on-topic.

Indeed, that could be known as the Slashdot approach.

My reddit experience improved dramatically once I started to discover the smaller subreddits that relate to my interests and unsubscribed from the most popular default ones that have low signal:noise (/r/pics, /r/politics and /r/reddit.com come to mind).

Here are some more that might be of interest to the HN crowd:

http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/ (replace haskell with your language of choice, it's bound to exist)

http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/

http://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/

http://www.reddit.com/r/coding/ (a replacement for /r/programming, which has suffered due to its popularity)

I just started a subreddit for solo founders:

http://www.reddit.com/r/solostartups/

I'm going to start posting my "Not quite formal enough for HN" stuff there, since I tend to be self conscious when posting stupid questions related to working on my startup alone to the general HN audience. It's not Hacker News' fault, I'm just to shy to put myself out in front of such a large audience most of the time.

Please consider posting on aysabtu. I'm also a single founder and I'd really like to get more self posts going.

We also have a semi-active Single Founders Braintrust going. Let me know if you want to join. Great place to discuss and get feedback on early stuff.

Email? If so, count me in.

Yeah, count me in too.

Me too

Along those lines, I've started a new subreddit exclusively for posts that help you learn important things.

http://www.reddit.com/r/learnit/

I've found the most useful time I spend online is reading good introductions to concepts/subjects I wish I knew more about, and I want to do more of it. Hence the subreddit.

"Once a week I spend a few minutes looking for new interesting subreddits. http://www.reddit.com/r/newreddits/ helps with that too."

It seems pointless to subscribe to new subreddits since you don't know whether they'll have traction. How can you find 'trending' subreddits?

Or am I thinking about this all wrong?

No negatives in adding subreddits that might not gain traction. Sometimes subreddits take a while to attract submitters.

I'm going to try that, thanks.

Or if you know exactly what you are looking for you can search subreddits with.

http://www.subreddits.org/

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