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Don't assume forums are somehow freer of group-think because they are less accessible. Once they get established, the existing user base tends to push out anyone that doesn't agree with their views.

Some subreddits are awesome, and some are way less awesome. And much of the best, most informative and technical information out there lives on subreddits.

Many people pine for the days when only the most savvy users knew about the forums, but I don't think there is any way to bring that era back.

Getting rid of anonymity would probably help.

The funny thing is that appears to makes it even worse - even with the attendent "fired for sparking controversy and making the company look bad" risk.

Does that solve the problem on Facebook?

I'm no troll, but I like to keep my fun/hobby life separate from my professional life. My customers don't need to be able to google me and get my "fan theories" about Westworld, etc.

IMO, groupthink is worse here than on Reddit, or at least the subs I visit. Divergent thinking is often celebrated. Here it's more about convergence to the most defensibly informed perspective. I may be wrong, and these differences are subtle in any event. Regardless, any discussion of groupthink on HN should include some critical self-reflection. Please downvote me!

I think it would be possible to limit the use of abusive down-voting as a censorship mechanism. You'd need a list of what kinds of posts can be down-voted, and enforcement where people who moderate badly lose the ability to moderate.

Everyone has a different perception on that. Sure, HN is big. Reddit is huge though, with tons upon tons of subreddits. What you perceived based on subreddit X or Y someone else felt different, or they also went to subreddit Z, or solely subreddit Z.

HN serves a rather specific goal, it is basically PG/YC's playground. This community will never be allowed to deviate much from their interests. That's a given you know pretty much when you sign up though.

At the very least Reddit is far more broad. So of course you're going to find a subreddit where you feel you belong. Some just might have to search further. In a way that's an easy statement to make though akin to "If you date enough people, you'll eventually find your soulmate."

Anyway, the comparison is moot due to the size difference. Its more fair to compare subreddits or groups of subreddits (how does that work?) with HN. Such as say startup-related subreddits.

All good points. The most interesting thing about Reddit to me (again, the tiny slice of it that I see, I always come in through the front door) is civility in the presence of anonymity, in 2018. "Come for the cats, stay for the empathy" is pretty right-on.

Real Name policies have failed to increase civility. If anything, the lack of anonimity has stripped the ability to speak out from those who are least empowered.

HN is closer to a very big subreddit than anything. Some subreddits are really good some are awful

This is exacerbated by the down-voting and flagging asymmetry by established members. I understand how it makes sense to weight those that successfully contribute more to have greater power since they (by some metric) are the community since they were here first and have successfully contributed more. However, it does create the effect that a dissenting viewpoint, if unpopular among those with power, can be effectively squashed. Exhibit A: A very cordial and constructive conversation that was flagged and buried. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17139934

Reddit has a different weighting on this stuff and as a result you get a different culture, and these even differ between sub-reddits, but have the signature of a different weighting system, and a greater ability for sock puppeting. I don't think one is better or worse, just that these trade offs are there and have to happen.

My guess is your comment (not the thread) was flagged because it contained a string of logical fallacies. Edit: This is not intended as a flame just an observation. You're free to disagree. Specifically straw man, false equivalency, conclusion doesn't follow.

Well, maybe. I obviously don't agree and would love to be corrected - hence the point of discussion. You need to see the parent comments to to get the full context of the comment. I'm probably taking a few poetic liberties in the groupings but thats not inflammatory.

It's not the only example though. In my comment history you will see another set of discussions that are essentially the same (but a few months apart) where I'm arguing that autopilot doesn't imply self driving. One was a discussion which seemed balanced by votes (I probably lost). The other descended into users calling me a "smug pedant" and a lot of bullying, about -35 karma (and ultimately my first banning). I was pretty disillusioned by the experience and couldn't really work out what was so different, and why I was banned for defending my point of view despite the other peoples behaviours.

I would never have interpreted your comment as a flame btw - such is the nature of robust discussion, but I appreciate you pointing it out. I think too often people take an intellectual assault on an idea as a personal assault. They are different, and I welcome them despite the pride I lose hopefully learning a lesson. I'm always genuinely grateful of the time a commenter takes to put me in my place, but usually it is just "pedant" and down vote.

If your topic touches YC's vulnerable underbelly in any way, they are very happy to ban you. Other sites are much less temperamental, but a good chunk of that is YC's benefactors have many skeletons in the closet.

It’s much worse. If you say something against the groupthink, especially about a hot button topic, dang will come and ban your account for “being inflammatory”. It’s impossible to discuss certain topics here thanks to the flagging system.

To his defense mods are more consistent than that:

AFAIK you can be punished even if you are part of the groupthink.

Which is good IMO.

> I also dislike reddit because it's hard to remember a name constantly. It's easier when there's a little profile picture next to the name. You go, "oh yeah, that guy. He's helpful." You remember those posters more often.

To me, personally, I like Reddit because this kind of association is more difficult. I like reading a comment and not having any bias towards the user.

I think it depends on the hobby/forum. The parent mentioned automotive forums, and I would agree that I would much rather remember certain posters. The best written posts aren't always right, for some reason there's a large subset of people who will write an informative-sounding post containing incorrect information. If I'm asking what valve lash specs are or which pin # on a connector is the + EGR solenoid, then I don't care how typo ridden the post is if the information is correct. On a Ducati forum I read, one of the most knowledgeable posters writes at roughly a 5th grade level (combination of being a mechanic and non-native speaker). Doesn't matter, I recognize the profile pic and know that it's worth parsing, the information is likely more accurate than the manual.

Hiwever,for a general discussion that is non-technical, then I would agree that a newb's opinion carrying nearly the same weight as a regular is a good thing.

I can definitely see where credibility is of importance. You point to a great example. What is nice about Reddit is that you do have that option to remember names so that you can do exactly what you describe. Sometimes, subreddits will also take care of that with verified flairs, or alternatively, the user can go out of their way and use RES to make note of users they trust.

> If I'm asking what valve lash specs are or which pin # on a connector is the + EGR solenoid, then I don't care how typo ridden the post is if the information is correct

Oh yeah, the classic Unregistered Hypercam 2, typing in Notepad, kid with a squeaky voice or barely comprehensible Russian or Indian guy Youtube video

Hey, I was working on an old Ural bike today, and damn if I wasn't appreciating those old siberian wrenches. They could at least tell me the proper amount of vodka for the job.

Outside of 3rd party tools (RES) that will allow you to mark users with whatever tags you want, mods can also give custom flair to posters.

I agree, and that's just like here; I primarily read the comments, don't often look at the names.

While it is true that sometimes valid, yet unpopular, opinions get downvoted and buried, most of the times the things getting downvoted and buried are simply comments or opinions that are worthless. They are either trolls, racist, or derogatory comments that I WANT to have hidden from my view.

I think the upvote/downvote system is what makes reddit so popular, since it acts to filter out the useless comments that often fill up other forums.

Unless you have VERY active moderators in those other forums, you will be inundated by useless comments.

Now, reddit's system is not perfect, but the hiding of some comments is certainly a feature and not a shortcoming of the platform.

Though it certainly isn’t a perfect solution for all use-cases, I think the comment system is so incredibly useful for the things it does well that it’s worth dealing with it’s issues. Key example for me is getting answers to questions without someone’s personal bias / agenda leaking through. Five years ago if I had a question about, say, which vitamin supplement brands are good quality, I would have googled it and imply clicked on one of the first few links. In all likelihood that would have led me to a blog post written by one single person making recommendations based on who pays them affiliate dollars. THese days though, I do the same search, but I append “reddit” to the end of the query. Invariably someone has already asked the same question in a subreddit, and the first comment is an answer that survived the onslaught of downvotes that come from spam, bias, etc.

It’s not a perfect system, but it’s loss better than the next best option.

“most of the times the things getting downvoted and buried are simply comments or opinions that are worthless.”

What is your basis for saying “most” of the time. This is very different from my experience and I find it difficult to measure as groupthink prevents discussion, so what do you measure.

I’ve watched many subs for hobbies I follow get boringer and boringer as mods try to enforce various rules and start moderating what’s appropriate or not. As a result, discussion kind of stopped. So I’m glad your experience is that mostly racists get banned, but I’ve seen discussions on /r/badhistory devolve into weird gender/race discussions that don’t really have a productive outcome.

>They are either trolls, racist, or derogatory comments that I WANT to have hidden from my view.

This view is pretty naive. I suspect you just don't hold any opinions against the groupthink of the subreddits you participate in.

I think when its moderated away, it often shows bias. But when its downvoted away, in subreddits which have constituency that shows proper reasoning skills, I tend to agree that its all about quality of the comment.

A controversial comment does in fact command a higher burden of proof. Thus the comment has to be of even higher quality. And when it is, I feel it survives the downvotes.

At least I've generally been able to go against the group think and survive downvotes. But generally you need a clear argument, have a real point, and not show bias.

Now, it won't always fly, but I think high quality controversial comments can.

Well they can't unless there are no other groupthink comments present. By definition a controversial comment isn't getting upvotes from a significant portion of the group so any regular "good" comment will quickly push it down to the bottom.

If the majority of your group is rational, a rational comment will not be controversial even if the view is unpopular. However, the vast majority of the population is not rational when it comes to reading unpopular opinions and that shows in every subreddit.

There are plenty of really shallow forums, and plenty of really close-knit and/or tolerant sub-reddits with good moderators. It's just that the big ones are the easiest to find, and tends to quickly become impossible to moderate in anything but very impersonal ways.

> I also dislike reddit because it's hard to remember a name constantly

There are tons of extensions/apps for Reddit that lets you annotate/tag users and the like. I do tend to agree with that to some extent, though - a more personal touch would make it easier to have conversations feel like they're with people rather than with handles.

Could anyone name any popular extensions other than RES?

Yup. Any hobby or interest I've had has a subreddit, but the quality of discussion and advice is terrible. There's so much that's plain wrong. Forums have plenty of misinformed people, but the density is lower.

Worth recognising that each subreddit is its own community, and like individual forums, will likely vary wildly by subject. My experience of subreddits for my interests and hobbies is the opposite to yours; information is correct and discussion useful.

I think Reddit skews really young, and therefore less experienced. I'll see way more technically informative posts by crusty old beards on subject-specific forums.

> To me, reddit seems a great way for a community to reinforce groupthink.

I think this is due to its utterly basic up/downvoting as well as its completely-unenforced TOS which state you should not downvote simply for disagreeing.

When you downvote, you should have to specify a reason (such as "offtopic") and one of the reasons should not remotely be "I disagree"

Some of the politics subreddits are the worst places for this. Anything that questions, disagrees or even states facts that go against the common grain, can quickly be downvoted into oblivion.

And the other side of that coin is possibly even more annoying: plenty of obviously dumb comments rise to the top, presumably because a lot of people agree with the sentiments they express. I think two-axis voting (see my other comment in this thread) might fail to save subreddits that have already sunk into all-consuming tribalism, but it could help others to avoid that fate.

Have any major forums tried a two-axis voting system -- something like Agree/Disagree and Good post/Bad post? I know some people would abuse this and hammer both downvote buttons out of mere disagreement, but I think it would improve the situation.

In most of the subreddits I've seen, it's clear that upvoting for agreement and downvoting for disagreement are both rampant, and I think this is self-perpetuating. When I read a quality post that I disagree with, I would like to stick to the supposed spirit of the voting system and upvote, but I'll think twice about doing so because I know it will be misinterpreted. Giving me a way to explicitly signal one thing and not the other would break this bind.

And even if the system was still abused by 50% of people, it would be possible to offer some interesting filter settings: for example, you could favour posts with a relatively high ratio of Good Post points to Agree points, on the theory that highly agreed-with posts will probably score more Good Post points than they deserve.

Well there are various forums with post rating/reaction plugins, and those separate them. But I'm not sure any larger sites use such a system, with most others with similar systems having no downvote/disagree (Facebook) or having it not agreement based at all (Slashdot).

I wish they would institute a more Slashdot-like moderation system (which is what I think you are describing).

BTW, I think the default downvote reason should be "disagree" because that's the majority use case for it despite what the Reddit designers intended. If a vote was accompanied by more information (offtop, funny, disagree, etc...) then I could tailor my experience better.

I find the purely time-based ranking in forums helps there a lot. Reddit basically forces repeats over repeats of "old" topics, where a forum could handle it in in one large thread. Those can get unwieldly on large forums, but in many ways I still prefer a 50 page thread over 50 different posts somewhere in the subreddit history, with different titles. Especially if the forum community is good at maintaining roundup posts.

HN has that issue too in some ways, with threads about company X always repeating the same arguments, which in a forum at least somewhat could be channeled in extra discussions.

Car-related subreddits are the most useless thing compared to a forum for that car.

You get the same dumb questions over and over plus the “hey guys just joined the club, what are some must-have mods” one picture posts, who never return.

I think it depends on the specific Reddit community and how it's moderated. I moderate a community with 80k+ subscribers, and I put a lot of effort into keeping it on topic and interesting. (And we have community flair so users can add something very similar to a profile photo.

> It's easier when there's a little profile picture next to the name.

I've been thinking about updating my GitHub profile photo, but this is what's stopping me. No one will know who I am anymore. :P

> I think it's okay to some extent but I find that forums definitely are a much better resource and controversial threads or posts in forums don't get buried or hidden by a downvote.

In many of my hobbies it's the other way around, controversial topics are censored or locked by overzealous forum admins but are visible on Reddit, which has a more laissez-faire attitude in terms of moderation.

But there is a giant subreddit for all BMW cars...

yeah, but sites like r3vlimited, rennlist, jeepforum are just better moderated, more friendly and have more helpful content (i.m.h.o)

Does it have dank memes?

OP complained that it’s basically a photo sharing sub.

subreddit flairs help with personifying, and you can tag people. Eventually you remember usernames of frequent commenters.

Subreddits and forums are fundamentally different.

Forums are linear and your are expected to have read all the post to post in one thread. There is also the old members who nag you into not creating a new thread but use the search tool to comment on an old one. There is forum local stars that control the discourse far more than on subreddits, and the photo + footer customization make them more prone starification and to group think.

On subreddit freshness is always welcomed even it is an old subject with a different spin. You are not expected to present you, there is no random subforum, you can be focused.

You must be frequenting very specific sub-reddits then. There are plenty that are similarly moderated than forums. And yes, if you ask the same question that has been answered 50 times before, you should accept the fact that it's your job to spend some amount of time to search, instead of just waiting till someone delivers you answers.

Reddittors' frequent insistence on no reposts and original content seems to contradict your assertions

I have a bunch of old folders full of funny images that I would love to post but I'm quite sure I will get accused of karma whoring, even though I just want to share funny pictures that are more funny than the current crop of memes

Which is ironic since Reddiquette encourages re- and cross-posting.

In my experience that tends to only be true in the larger subreddits. The (potentially) more niche subreddits I use don't have that same problem outside of maybe a 'read the FAQs before posting'