Hacker News Reader

How many users subscribe to those subreddits you've mentioned? I have made a similar the observation, I have a few subreddits that are very niche with only a few subscribers -- discussions are very much on point and civil. Usually, the quality and decency of discourse on a subreddit seems to be inversely related to the number of people engaging in it.

View on HN

Good point. Larger averages and higher numbers will increase noise to signal by sheer mathematical outcomes. I'm on nothing extraordinary, so between 100k - 3M users per forum on reddit. They are heavily moderated, so anything less than on point, is for good and for worse removed / moved to other subreddits.

I do suspect many might be subscribing to forums that invite a bit wider discussions, and that this brings out more commenters but also less technically viable comments. I mainly use reddit / HN for RSS filtering, so is more interested in the news, but always check comments for interesting counterpoints and tips.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com