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Comment by throw_m239339 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but you don't really build "communities" on reddit. On forum X or Z where there is like 3000 users max at some point you get to learn people. Often reddit posts are optimized for "karma" and "gilding", not for QA or being really helpful.

Also, for some reasons, reddit makes it really hard to find old content.

Reddit also couldn't replace Q&A such as stack overflow for instance.

There is a need for better, free and secure forum software though. I know Discourse tries to disrupt the market a bit.

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Got to disagree here, r/AskHistorians is a top-tier academically-minded Q&A forums, and their wiki is possibly one of the best resources on the current internet for layman interested in history. They are not necessarily the best Q&A resource (MathOverflow maybe?) but worth a mention. This is not to say AskHistorians is very forum-like, they now moderate the answers with the spirit of journal editor.

In general, there are good subreddits that sometimes develop community spirit. Unfortunately they are a fleeting phenomenon: either they grow too big, or die off (or in the rare case of AskHistorians, become something that can manage the flood), and if you don't find them by accident, it probable one heard about them because they are becoming too popular.

>r/AskHistorians is a top-tier academically-minded Q&A forums,

It's very nice for what it is, but it's not a counterexample to the problems with reddit because /r/AskHistorians achieves its famous reliability by outsourcing user authorization to the university system (you must be a historian to answer). This is not possible for any subreddit centering on a topic which is not famous enough to have entire departments of universities about it, such as, for example, Super Smash Brothers Melee for the Nintendo GameCube.

> This is not possible for any subreddit centering on a topic which is not famous enough to have entire departments of universities about it, such as, for example, Super Smash Brothers Melee for the Nintendo GameCube.

This was a fun thing when Starcraft 2 was new and it seemed like literally everyone on the /r/Starcraft reddit page was "high Diamond" league. (Diamond was still the highest league at the time).

Considering that only 25% of all players are in Diamond league and the game has no way of telling you whether you're low or high within the league, this was clearly bullshit. But everyone on the forum very desperately needed to validate their whining about "balance" by putting a veneer of being "skilled" on it.

Gonna have to disagree here, they made a great Q&A despite the software not being designed at all for Q&As.

> Yes, but you don't really build "communities" on reddit.

Reflecting on my forum days, I don't think this is true. It's plain and simple to see subreddit members have STRONGLY held convictions that their subreddit is a unique and important community, just as they used to. I grew up on forums of < 100 people had made similar stupid arguments about the norms and salience of the forum to whatever topic it was aligned to. Yes, now there's karma farming, but it's not like people didn't make zounds of forum posts for the intended or subconsiously intended purpose of accruing social credit by demonstrating in group mentalities.

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