But when you're searching for a quick answer (rather than browsing/debating) there's nothing better than upvote sort (see also: stack exchange) which far exceeds any chronological sort forums have.
Whatever needs some human knowledge and thought I add a `site:reddit.com` to my search and try to gauge from there.
Product reviews are also much more trustworthy (and sometimes more in-depth) from a collection of reddit posts than anywhere else on the internet.
I think its also a symptom of google searches just not being that great and dominated by people that play the seo game well instead of actual good sources. But thats a rant for another time...
HN just avoids the worst of it by being very small on average.
> I think a part of this is how forum members tend to populate avatar/signature/location/etc and the interface shows it prominently. On reddit you just see a username and occasionally some flair, so you rarely even realize that what you're reading was written by someone you've read from before.
I don't think that's it. I'd probably attribute the anonymity more to size and the deliberate lack of friction for someone to move between subreddits.
To get a sense of community, you need a space where you commonly interact with the same people over and over, not a fire hose of different ones.