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Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

I hang out on a bunch of subreddits dedicated to hobbies and interests of mine. People shit on Reddit because the biggest subreddits can be toxic wastelands. But, like the web itself, the smaller communities are often absolutely wonderful.

I don't do chat or anything synchronous like that because it doesn't fit into the way my free time is sliced into small chunks by family commitments.

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same. looking at my reddit frontpage vs /r/all is like a totally different website. If you go to reddit and just start browsing big subs thinking you'll get good stuff you like automatically soon based on some algorithm, you're gonna be in for a bad time.

My only complaint about reddit is more about how some of the smaller hobby based subs just turn in to mini instagram's about the new gear someone got, or just random content with no discussion. My favorites are the ones where the comments are filled with discussions about techniques, how OP accomplished something, etc... /r/leatherworking was/is a great example.

You can see this difference in the subs for gamedesign and gamedev. Gamedesign has great consistent discussion whereas gamedev leans almost exclusively towards entry level devs asking "should I learn game dev" and experienced devs soft-marketing their upcoming game.

I agree that small, focused subreddits can work quite well.

Regarding the "toxic wastelands" - while there are plenty of those - my main pet peeve with subreddit growth is just the lower standards and decline in quality.

A book/game subreddit with interesting discussions about themes, characters and plot changes into endless "look at this <blanket|cake|...> my <relative> made me for <holiday>".

Technical subreddits go from low volume, high quality original projects to "hey look I just bought an arduino and blinked a led".

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old fart but save that stuff for your Facebook wall. This can probably be fixed with strong moderation, but I've rarely seen that work.

> my main pet peeve with subreddit growth is just the lower standards and decline in quality.

I think that's just regression to the mean and inevitable as any community grows.

For any small community to get traction, it must be particularly compelling to rise above network effects of existing entrenched communities. Small mediocre communities simply disappear. So every small community that grows starts out better than average.

But as the community grows it attracts a wider range of members. The aggregation algorithms that determine what threads show up then optimize for lowest common denominator content that appeals to that wider demographic. And the members themselves, just by virtue of statistics, on aggregate end up less interesting or engaging than the small core that were so much better than average that they got the community off the ground.

It makes me a little sad when communities get watered down as they grow, but I accept it as a natural side effect of growth and not some sort of moral failure of its participants.

I do sometimes fantasize about trying to build some sort of social media thing that deliberately puts an upper limit on community sizes to see how that would effect quality.

I'm on Reddit often, I'm subscribed to a couple of dozen niche subreddits, but I usually just browse r/all. I can honestly say, after 12 years being a member, the most toxic conversations I see actually happen in the SMALLER subreddits. If you ask a question in a typical hobby-related subreddit as a beginner, be prepared for the most upvoted comment saying something like "omg just search on the internet for the answer newb." And I'm not jaded from personal experience, I mod a medium-sized tech subreddit.

I do the same. I've just hit my 13th cake day on Reddit, and it's consistently been my favorite way of interacting with people on the web. The absolute key to enjoying Reddit is to get out of r/all, and curate your subreddits based on interests and quality of community.

Some of my personal favorite subreddits based on interests:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming

https://www.reddit.com/r/startups

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful

https://www.reddit.com/r/Aquariums

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck

https://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprint

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards

https://www.reddit.com/r/onewheel

https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricScooters

https://www.reddit.com/r/mechanicalpencils

https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens

https://www.reddit.com/r/mechanicalheadpens

Seriously, the quality of the subreddit is directly tied to the quality of the mods. I was a mod on my old hometown's subreddit, and it was a daily slog of removing shitposts, political content, and conspiracy theories. The end result was a relatively clean and useful subreddit.

Additionally, I'd recommend using an app like Apollo instead of the official Reddit app. It's just a better experience overall.

3 more years, your Reddit account will be able to drive and in 8 more years, vote ;)

I don't think the small ones are much better. It's all about signaling and politics everywhere.

maybe you're in the wrong small ones, it does not sound like we have the same experience.

you have to unsub from basically everything they shovel to your account by default and only sub to what you're interested in that isn't annoying.

My reddit homepage while logged in is COMPLETELY different from what it is while logged out. And I use multiple accounts to group interests/homepages and retain some anonymity.

I also use old.reddit.com because the new (or maybe not-so-new but newER) site is still so f***ing annoying.

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