We did it, Reddit.
And when you are looking to solve a problem, particularly one in an area you are not an expert in, it’s just so good. Niche subs have a wealth of information, help and offers of direct messaging to help solve problems. When you hit a helpful sub it’s infectious too, and you find yourself passing on the support you received when you see someone struggling.
I used to live in Stack Overflow for help, but the closed and shut down questions just kills things. ‘Duplicate of...,’ ‘Off-topic,’ ‘Needs details or clarity,’ ‘Needs more focus,’ or ‘Opinion-based‘. I wasn’t even postings, as I was sure that the septic tone would become focused on me.
I do think a lot of it comes down to one's tolerance for internet n00bs, popularity by upvotes rather than personal connection, an respect for influencers -- whether in the intellectual, professional, or stylistic realm.
Different strokes, I guess.
For me the fire hose of trending topics was too much, even with the occasionally fantastic post among them. So I rarely go there.
Then there are the really large communities covering subjects that interest me. I do subscribe to them but rarely interact because it's still a fire hose - responses to comments are really sensitive to the time of day and since I'm at least half to a full day off the timezone of the average community member, trying to interact is futile.
Then there are the smaller communities, usually tech for me. There is no longer that fire hose, and individuals are genuinely interested in learning something new, or sharing something new, often created by them. Add a number of this type of community and your daily feed becomes transformative.
I wish the HN guideline was “there’s no upside for anyone mentioning Reddit from an often glass house” instead of specifically calling out comparisons of this site to that one. When this forum dumps on Reddit, it walks away with an impression of superiority that could not be further from the truth. Observe my sibling. All forums have their problems and HN is not blessed with immunity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23847195 is the main overall thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848397 is another including smug necros, and there are many others.
At the same time, I would rather HN have a false sense of superiority that sometimes keeps it from descending to the depths as people at least make the attempt sometimes to keep it better than that, rather than just accept that it's often no different, and thus excuse that behavior when it happens.
That is, having the perception of superiority is helpful in as much as it allows comments like yours to have weight. Your comment on Reddit might be met with "well, duh, it's Reddit." Hopefully here some people are instead thinking about what they want this forum to be and whether they helped or hindered that. That's a bit pretentious of me to say, but I also think it's true.
> When this forum dumps on Reddit, it walks away with an
> impression of superiority that could not be further
> from the truth.
Indeed. Because the cost of the deceased's apartment was mentioned, folks started grasping at straws, some assuming it's a politically motivated (with a vague implication that this may have been class warfare) killing.
And this site is way better than Reddit. In terms of maturity, intelligence, site rules, etc.
Though I don't really get what you seem to be upset about regarding the armchair detective work. The cops led with the same general theory. The victim actually _was_ american (correct me if I'm wrong here) but he did business in foreign countries.
* Downvoting is not available for everyone.
* No sub forums, so no fragmentation.
* Less known than Reddit meaning fewer trolls.
* No UI makeover :)
* Great admins.