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You are using reddit wrong. You don't have to use Reddit in default setting. Unsubscribe from everything and then select those subreddits that are nice. You don't have to look at comments if you don't like their contents.

There are several nice and tightly moderated reddits that are great. For example /r/askhistorians and /r/askscience and several others.

Not to mention, some of the arguments can be made about HN without changing a word.

Reddit is different because people tend to chose subreddits that they care about, so the discussions are generally more positive.

For example, there are small subreddits about FirefoxOS or Jolla, that contain discussions about both topics, and are quite enthusiastic. On the other hand, any HN discussion about those topics is full of people who are doing nothing but complaining, putting (the thing) down and nay-saying.

I was waiting for the conclusion "just like HN", but I guess they carry the same delusions about HN not being a trite hivemind that they once did for reddit.

But that's the thing. There is no actual real reason to go on Reddit. If I want to read something about the French Revolution, I'm going to pick up a book about it by a qualified author that I'll research before hand.

By simple virtue of being on Reddit, regardless of subreddit, you are wasting your own time. It doesn't matter HOW good the top comment is, ultimately it's a gamble. How do you know if what you're reading is real?

Trust, I've been on the site for like 7 years now and I've been to nearly every sub deemed "worthy". Almost in every situation, I'd prefer an entirely new forum specifically dedicated to that topic.

By design, it's just a comment system without any features really, and that design promotes a certain behaviour, which plagues the intention of the poster in the first place, because it's not longer about sharing information, it's about sharing information in the context of it earning more upvotes, so the content becomes corrupt.

I go to reddit for the curated links, it's obvious you used it to read comments.

I use reddit to discuss stories that only people in my town would discuss (r/stlouis) or to discuss things about the local sports team that only the people in my town would discuss (r/stlouisblues). Neither of those places are particularly toxic and there isn't really a better place on the web to discuss those things.

But that's the thing. There is no actual real reason to go on Reddit.

There's no actual real reason to do just about anything. But reddit is the best place for certain types of conversation.

Edit: The default front page really is a piece of crap.

I use it for small subreddits too once in awhile. I'm posting about the main subreddits because that's the context of OP's post since her picture was posted in r/WTF.

> Trust, I've been on the site for like 7 years now and I've been to nearly every sub deemed "worthy". Almost in every situation, I'd prefer an entirely new forum specifically dedicated to that topic.

> I'm posting about the main subreddits because that's the context of OP's post since her picture was posted in r/WTF.

Excuse me?

Excuse you.

"You can argue that some smaller subreddits have really good content, but do they REALLY?"

Yes, without a doubt.

"But that's the thing. There is no actual real reason to go on Reddit."

Something like r/AskHistorians is fantastic and I could never take in such a diverse array of knowledgable points by "picking up books by qualified authors" - I simply don't have the time, nor the niche interest to read every topic to that depth. AskHistorians is full of very knowledgable contributors, has effective and tight moderation, and it's generally fascinating.

I don't have a Reddit account, so I just visit that subreddit (and a few others - AskScience, NBA, an anthropology one, etc) directly. Sure, there's trash elsewhere but the same is true of almost everywhere, anonymous or not.

> Pretend like it doesn't even exist, because it shouldn't.

Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening.

The biggest problem with reddit is that you have to spend some time up front customizing your subreddit subscriptions. Once you've done that, the (custom) front page still has issues, and there is still bad discussion in the comments, but I can bail out of those easily by collapsing them out of view and moving on the the next comment.

Lots of people seem to want to state "I don't use reddit" lately like there is really nothing of value there. However, quite often in the comments section there are experts on the topic that provide some additional information that you likely wouldn't get by reading the same information elsewhere.

Edit: Many others have commented as I was typing this, and some responses seem to indicate that even staying in so-called quality subreddits isn't enough. I would just like to point out that in certain circles, people feel the exact same way about HN, and we're all here anyway.

I can't be the only one who just ignores others opinions about places and takes the good where I can get it.

That's not the point.

> Why not? I get a ton of useful content from reddit, and find that the discussions in the comments are often enlightening.

How are you going to determine whether a comment is bullshit or not, especially on something super niche like some very specific question in r/Askhistorians?

You can't for the most part. I do agree you can find good content, but by design Reddit is flawed. The upvote system combined with anonymity is enough reason to be skeptical about everything you read.

How could I possibly be in a position to judge the truth of a post on a topic that I know nothing about? That's the problem.

> How are you going to determine whether a comment is bullshit or not, especially on something super niche like some very specific question in r/Askhistorians?

Boy, that sounds awfully familiar... like a very recent Bestof comment, originally posted in AskHistorians, about why reddit comments aren't useful sources for anything. Sounds like you're still reading the comments, despite your low opinion.

What's not the point? I think you seriously underestimate the quality of participants on reddit. As an example, across just two subreddits I can bump up against Andrei Alexandrescu, Martin Odersky, Walter Bright, the STL maintainer at Microsoft, and many other great programmers who are working on the languages and libraries that I might use. Also, often videos from a conference talk will be posted by the author, who will then respond to questions in the comments. Where else do I get this sort of interaction? If there is somewhere else, I'm certainly missing out on it.

Just the other day, a pointer to Knuth's Annual Christmas Tree Lecture [0] was shared. I wouldn't have found it as soon otherwise.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW3vgJYYIok

Nobody is going to pop into r/programming thinking they're a know it all and then somehow getting to the top by just making bullshit up about very complicated and technical topics. They will get shut down very quickly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938377

Askhistorians have the policy that you have to be able to provide sources if requested.

I don't follow r/Askhistorians but is it really the case that factually incorrect comments are heavily upvoted with no dissenting one in sight ? I am not suggesting it's rare but I would like to see some examples as in subreddits I follow it's rarely the case (at least on things I am able judge myself).

I don't know about /r/Askhistorians, but I saw it happen all the time in other subreddits, when I still visited reddit.

The best is pointing out that something is wrong and getting voted down for it.

All the time, especially on any topic that is technical or requires actual knowledge.

It's either the comment is misinformed, upvoted by other people who are also misinformed, or it is just scraping the bottom of the barrel for that topic.

>You don't stand to gain anything from Reddit ever.

Oh come on, really?

I'm a hobbyist game developer. I frequent a few subreddits including /r/gamedev. It's a fantastic community and I've learned a lot there, and I've been able to use it for free promotion. It's been very valuable to me and I've enjoyed using it.

If your statement was "you don't stand to gain anything from /r/funny ever" I might agree with you, but this is just too broad a brush to paint hundreds or thousands of individual communities with.

You're better off going to a website entirely dedicated for that topic than sub section of a link aggregator. Why not just frequent http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html or conceptart.org or something?

But isn't HN just an aggregator too? Just lacking the subsections? When you get down to it, how much specialization do you want? Surely a dedicated objective C site would suit me better, or a dedicated Python site. This generalized site called HN is no good at all. I find, unsurprisingly, that reddit isn't something that is any one thing. There is some good, some bad (well, lots) and some excellent stuff (not enough though). For the record, HN provides lots of what I want, and heaps of what I don't, but with a signal to noise magnitudes higher than reddits.

The thing about HN is that you can verify a lot of users on here by going to their profile and seeing who they are (for the most part), a feature Reddit does not have.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938377

On some subreddits (including gamedev) your flair can say something personally identifying about you, like your Twitter handle. It's optional, but it's optional here too.

Sure, other options are out there, but why should I? I like Reddit. I was challenging the statement that it's impossible to derive value from Reddit. I do.

>> I hate Reddit so much, it's such an absolute shit hole. Pretend like it doesn't even exist, because it shouldn't. I truly believe after spending so much time on Reddit I became a worse person. I realized after a few years after taking an objective look at my life how much I had changed. If you dwell in a medium, you tend to absorb it, and that's the only medium I dwelled in.

I very strongly agree with this. When Digg did that "update-of-doom", I ended up on Reddit but I couldn't stay for longer than a year. There is way too much hate[1] on that site. And for those who say "Well, just stick with a subreddit you like" that doesn't work. Because of bitcoin, for the first time in like 3 years I went to /r/bitcoin & /r/litecoin. Didn't take me 10 minutes to run into a racist comment. For all the good deeds that happen on Reddit, I still consider it a negative net-value.

1. http://pando.com/2013/02/10/william-shatner-calls-out-reddit...

It's actually hilarious reading some of the top posts in r/bitcoin. 18 year old basement arm chair analysts giving their fantastic insight into the future of bitcoin based on: reading a few articles, reading bitcoins whitepaper, and reading other similarly misinformed comments.

If you have an extra liver lying around, take a drink every time someone posts, in complete sincerity, "It has no where to go but up!"

/r/bitcoin has gone to shit. Try /r/bitcoinserious

And then it's going to be /r/truebitcoinserious, then /r/seriouslyguysthisistherealbitcoinsubreddit, then /r/thefinalbitcoinsubredditsolution and so on and so on. It doesn't change anything. It just fragments an already shit community into a smaller shit community.

Sadly this is the way of online forums. You always need to run from the trolls.

or /r/buttcoin

LOL - what the hell man. I've used Reddit for about 7 years now, and I've never felt what you're describing. Reddit is a glorified RSS feed with turing complete ranking system :P

Why did you let yourself be so affected by something so measly?

Is it the racism, sexism, [insert-ism] that gets to you?

When I was young and I found this site, I thought it was the best thing in the world. In my head, I could throw out every other site because all the links are here first! Then I saw the comments, and it's very easy to feel like you're being informed on a topic when you see it has X upvotes (if it's this upvoted, it MUST be true!) when in reality, you have no position to judge the quality of a post because you don't know enough about the topic in the first place.

Now picture that, and then picture 1000 other people just like that upvoting a post, and the cycle repeats itself with every link on and on and on and on.

So the problem you have with Reddit is that the barrier of entry is too low? Join subreddits like /r/sciece or /r/askscience for hardcore 'truths' - they ban memes, etc.

Again, it seems like you just went out of your way searching for things to hate.

The fact you claim /r/science is for "hardcore 'truths'" kind of proves you aren't in a position to talk about this. :(

Thing about Reddit is that it is the lowest common denominator. The number of people on the internet that have an account on reddit is dizzying. There is no opinion originating in real life that doesn't make it there, so you see the same bottom feeding shit that you see all over the place. It may be heightened because real life is easier to moderate. You see people who have all the terrible opinions real people do and the same unwillingness to learn.

The number of people who browse and contribute to Reddit while on the toilet I would wager is quite high, it is a toilet magazine.

This is a better way to word my post.

I'd advise staying away from any sort of psuedo-anonymous discussion platform without moderation because they always end up the same. Slashdot. Digg. YouTube. Online gaming. Xbox Live. Hacker News.

Your vitriol against just Reddit is a bit over the top.

All of your complaints apply here too. Food for thought.

They do apply to HN, but HN is still very small compared to Reddit, and it's just one page dedicated to one (albeit) broad topic. The difference between Reddit and HN is HN has a reputation amongst a certain culture, so users fight to maintain their own reputation on here. How many times have I seen CEO's and founders of multi million dollar companies freely offer their insight on here? That's valuable, and for the most part, it's verifiable, and that matters to me, so I stick around here.

It's much easier to fling shit about a photo than it is about a very specific/complex product or technology. I can't exactly bullshit my way to top comment about something I don't know anything about on HN.

A lot of the users here, if you click their profile, you can find their startups, places of work, code they wrote, their blog, etc.

On Reddit it's a straight up free for all.

HN is what reddit was like 8 years ago.

reddit used to be great, but the level of discourse plummeted when it became popular. I read slashdot mostly for the comments, but I generally stay out of the comments on reddit unless I'm looking for an explanation of something that was posted. Even then, I often have to scroll through pages of idiocy and in-jokes before I find the information I'm seeking.

It used to be indeed. Wish they made it invite only.

Small private subs still are good. They're honestly the only ones that are, because a ban there actually means something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

;)

Honestly I think reddit has made me a slightly better person. But only because it serves as an aggregation of awful people who I strive to be as dissimilar to as possible.

You have hit upon a truth that many do not ever discover. What you take into your hands or eyes, you take into yourself.

If you read negative hateful rubbish, it will rub off on you.

If you watch a lot of pron, you will develop a warped sense of what human relationships are about.

If you absorb a lot of politics from a biased (one way or the other) source, you will start to dehumanise your political opponents.

Balance and real human discussions are the key. Your time is precious. Your keystrokes are precious - you only so many of them - http://keysleft.com/ - don't waste your keystrokes of pointless ragefests.

What do you want reddit for? Intelligent discourse, or links to entertaining content? I never went to it looking for the former, and I'm sure you'll agree it is consistently successful in the latter. The reddit population is a subset of the world, with an emphasis on pseudonymity and ignorance, much like almost any other public forum on the net. It's one fo the biggest communities, so it attracts the most assholes. They can't make you read, and they can't make you care, but apparently you have volunteered to do both!

Not going to lie I thought Reddit was the coolest and best site ever once I discovered it. Only after years of using it 24/7 have I realized how garbage it really is.

Reddit 8 years ago was like HN now. I would learn a lot from discussions, and there was no concept of subreddits.

Later, I remember being shocked to hear some co-workers who I considered kind of dumb, discussing reddit-this, reddit-that a few years ago.

I occasionally visit reddit these days, but it's more as a reminder that I live in a bubble and that there's all kinds of people. It's fascinating. People are just tragically stupid, and yet the world sort of works.

I wonder whether this is what the Eternal September felt like.

This is more or less the sentiment I have of HN, too. Basically it boils down to an echo chamber; the community selects what it wants to hear, and silences other voices.

Granted, HN seems to have a more pretentious selection criteria - less-mature-sounding comments are discouraged. But it seems to me that HN has much less tolerance for diversity of opinion.

But I read both HN and Reddit, as well as the comments and articles in many other places, because even though I may not agree with the attitudes or opinions, they are different perspectives all the same, and I think it's a fallacy to think that some perspectives can be of lower quality than others.

This post has such dense irony it cracked my monitor

It really depends on what you subscribe to. I subscribe to things to help improve me. Things like /r/personalfinance, /r/financialindependence, /r/frugal.

But most of the default reddits, yeah, they can be complete trash and a waste of your time.

Unsubscribe from default reddits and pick the ones that really matter to you.

I'm fond of my local town's sub. It doesn't get many posts, and of the posts it does get I do ignore many, but overall the SNR is plenty high and I've made some nice real-life connections there.

You make it sound like it's a fault of "reddit", whoever that is, but really it's a fault of your own. That is, you (and many others) took an entertainment website too seriously.

The trick with Reddit is to ignore all of the default frontpage subreddits and find the niche ones that interest you. There are some great communities buried under the crap.

And Hacker News is so much better? Any social site is going to have a mix of good and bad content.

what's reddit? ;)

"The comments are always terrible. You can argue that some smaller subreddits have really good content, but do they really?"

Yes, they really do. And no, the comments aren't always terrible. You can't simply make absurdly absolute statements and contrived caricatures and expect them to fly.

You seem to have a deep emotional investment in Reddit, as if you put unrealistic expectations in it and now you strike out like a bitter ex-lover (alternately that you go karma bombed, turning you into a one-man anti-Reddit squad).

Reddit is a large site with a lot of diverse people. Many subs are not my cup of tea (/r/wtf is the domain of teenagers), but many others make for an entertaining and often information diversion.

I enjoy it. So do a lot of other people.

My post was a bit emotional yeah, just wasted way too much time on it and it shaped me in a bad way.

There are some great posts/comments in very niche subreddits, but when you compare that to the entirety of the website, it's a very very small outlier.

Read my comment as if you are only subbed to the defaults, since that's where OP's picture was posted, that's what I'm arguing.

The existence of a few rare good comments doesn't negate all the shit that Reddit generates.

Each subreddit has a unique culture. Your comment just doesn't make sensw

To add to your point, I literally never go to "www.reddit.com" at this point (for reasons you outlined), but there's a lot of niche subreddits that I love on Reddit itself (/r/hiphopheads, /r/nba, /r/nfl, /r/mfa). The key seems to be heavy moderation and relatively small community size.

The key seems to be heavy moderation and relatively small community size.

I wish there was a site like Reddit/HN but on an invite/application basis only to consistently provide good content.

The site you're looking for is lobste.rs

I've come across some subreddits that are private. I'm assuming this is what your looking for.

http://www.metafilter.com

Set up your own private sub Reddit.

Example: r/redditgetsdrawn. Great place, great content, and obviously, great mods.

I'll second this.

The general rule I recommend for people new to reddit: When you sign up, you'll be automatically subscribed to a few default subreddits. Never, ever, ever read the comments on any of those posts. Unfollow the ones that might not be relevant to you (e.g. /r/gaming, /r/funny, /r/news, whatever), and then look for alternatives to the rest.

If you find the concept of Ask Reddit interesting, look at /r/TrueAskReddit for a moderated community of people answering real questions with real answers.

If you're a gamer, look for a more narrow community. Try /r/ps4, /r/wow, /r/steam, and so on. Instead of a reckless free-for-all of foul-mouthed teenagers, you end up with thoughtful, relevant, and moderated communities. For example, this post where top-level comments are restricted to mentions of the current Steam Sale games, with threads descending from those for discussions on each game:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1t9f6n/rsteam_should_...

There are local subreddits, like /r/Vancouver, but they're hit or miss; Vancouver's is generally a circle jerk of transit-hating, car-hating twits complaining about Asians buying up all the condos, so your mileage may vary.

If you get suckered into the 'hive mind' behaviour of 'what do we hate today?' then Reddit is going to make you a worse person, and I feel as though this is the general case for a lot of people on Reddit: it's where people go to let loose about things which they only hate because everyone else hates them too and it gives them something to feel a part of.

Reddit is a microcosm of the internet as a whole: your experience with it will depend on which communities and topics you're exposed to.

rebuttal: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheStopGirl