I mean ask yourself, why are you here in the first place? If you're claiming is that this is just Reddit, why are you here?
No, it's really not. It's much worse.
Reddit is not a single community. It's a collection of tens of thousands of communities (or hundreds even). Each subreddit is really a different community. Some are awful, others are good. And each one is focused on a certain topic.
>The main subreddits of those topics tend to have a lot more armchair types. One of the reasons I love HN is that the majority of users are more informed about the topics than the average person.
And this place doesn't have armchair types? Sure, for programming topics you'll find real experts here, but when it comes to some other type of science or engineering, the users here are know-it-alls who really don't know what they're talking about. Programmers are infamous for this kind of behavior; they think that because they know CS in and out that this also makes them an expert on civil engineering, biology, genetics, etc. People here may be more informed than the average person, but that's not saying much since the average person is a drooling idiot. But if you want to find thoughtful discussion on some engineering topic that isn't computer science or programming, this really isn't the best place for it. I've seen way too many examples of people making terrible arguments about things they really don't know about because it's not their field, and then defending these dumb arguments endlessly.
At least on Reddit you have a better chance of the people in that subreddit being actual experts in that field, instead of just a bunch of Silicon Valley programmers who think they're experts on everything.
Reddit has exactly the same problems as the ones you describe HN has, even in specialty subreddits populated with experts. People always think expertise in one field extends to expertise in others.
Well how about, "the community here is better than the community on Twitter"? That makes about as much sense. Who cares what Reddit's defaults are? How is that relevant to anything at all? If you want to see discussion of, say, bluegrass music, you're not going to find it on Reddit's defaults. But there's probably a subreddit for it.
> shallot_router 25 minutes ago | parent | on: Ask HN: Are there sites that are like HN, but for ...
How about "the community is better here than Reddit's default subreddits", then?
>Reddit has exactly the same problems as the ones you describe HN has, even in specialty subreddits populated with experts. People always think expertise in one field extends to expertise in others.
That's not true. Subreddits are narrowly focused on specific topics. Go to a genetics subreddit and you're not going to see any discussion of civil engineering, because it's irrelevant and off-topic. HN and similar programmer forums are different: they have all kinds of science/tech articles thrown together in one place. So the only time you'll see experts making ill-informed comments on Reddit is when some side discussion pops up, which just isn't nearly as frequent as on here where non-programming topics are discussed all the time as prime topics, or when non-experts (e.g. programmers with a side interest in that topic) join that group and join discussions.
The fundamental problem with HN (as well as similar sites like Slashdot and Soylent) is that they're general-interest forums, so they'll always have this problem. But I contend it's worse here (and those other two sites) precisely because programmers, due to their autistic nature, have a much worse problem than people in other fields in thinking they're experts in everything.
If you're as unimpressed with the community as it would seem, what's keeping you here at all? At the risk of sounding rude, I'd say your presence wouldn't be missed too much.
I'm here because 1) the programming discussions are generally excellent. (i.e., this site works very well for its audience's primary interest) And 2) even for the non-programming articles, this is a good place to see such articles (articles being separate from the HN discussion about them) in one place, where I might not see them otherwise if I don't have a big enough interest to join such a group on Reddit (for instance, various history articles). The discussion can also be interesting, because the people here are generally intelligent, but you have to take things with a grain of salt because of the tendency I complained of earlier. However, that's no different from many other sites like Slashdot.
Maybe you are confusing a direct communication approach in the responses with a know it all nature. My experience with individuals who are autistic is there is no fluff or filler in conversations. The tendency is to recite the facts as they know them, no more and no less. As such responding to things they have no level of expertise in just does not happen. At least that is my experience, yours may be different.
And your second point is on key to how I feel. And it isn't that HN doesn't have armchairs, but that I feel reddit is more publicly driven that informed driven. Yes, HN has problems with topics that aren't CS, but even in the engineering you can usually find someone that does work in the field. And they tend to be higher up in comments than the armchairs.
An interesting point is that communities are about people, not technology. However, it's the technology that sets the tone. Take for example how the discussion here is text only, which encourages more thoughtful responses (or at least less memeful). Or the monologues people are sending each other on whatsapp. Or the <= 140 character quips on twitter. Obviously, just having the option to upvote and downvote has an impact too.
I think that maybe the consolidation that's happening on the internet is hurting the formation of these organic communities and is limiting how we interact through technology. But anyway, to answer your question, did you try Quora? The format is more of a question and answer site, and the quality largely depends on whom you're following. For music for example you can try Ethan Hein and Hans Zimmer.
/r/AskHistorians is great perhaps even better than HN in signal/noise ratio but it only has "news" on Wednesdays (and that feature is not very popular).
/r/AskScience has a similar problem and /r/Science is getting too many jokes/memes/regurgitated press releases.
I don't even know where to start for music, /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/ ?
For music discovery, /r/listentothis is alright (although it has declined greatly since becoming a default). /r/listentous is sometimes much better and sometimes much worse, by the nature of the sub (elected recommenders). The real best places for discovery are the genre-specific subs however, i.e. /r/metal, /r/futurebeats, etc.
physics -
https://www.physicsforums.com/
photography gear -
We are launching our beta in the next couple of months, but until then you can sign up on http://shuffle.do to stay tuned. Happy to answer any questions.
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