Right now, karma on Reddit is worth even less than it is on HN. Comment votes don't count towards your primary score!
That said, it's a weird position. HN is pretty much the same in structure as Reddit, only with (intentionally) worse UI. It doesn't make discussions shit. Yes, the common advice of "try other subreddits" is the key. Many topical subreddits have HN-quality discussions on them, and are frequented by experts in their particular domains. Those subreddits are probably one of the most trustworthy places on the Internet. You just have to check them out instead of judging everything in light of areas meant for the general population.
What happens on those subreddits when someone comes along, or whether anyone comes along, and leaves a pointless "+1" or "This." or a joke in the vein of 'Reddit humor'? I don't use Reddit so I'm curious what a proponent thinks. HN has been in decline for at least 5 years (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 -- it had a very high start) but it's still resistant to a lot of typical reddit culture. (As for bad UI I say a lot is just taste -- I think having all comments, and all comments expanded, is great. Maybe Reddit has a user preference for that though...)
Same thing that happens on HN - the comment gets ruthlessly downvoted and on some sunbreddits even outright deleted by mods. Three things most commonly discouraged: "+1" / "this" posts, typical Reddit jokes, and image macros. Often the latter are redirected to separate subreddits; i.e. for many /r/Something you'll have a corresponding /r/SomethingMemes, where the fans of laughing at pictures can vent out.
Different subs maintain different seriousness "set points" - for instance, to compare the two I hang out the most on, /r/SpaceX is almost HN-level serious. Stupid and low-effort comments get deleted, and you may get banned along with them. OTOH, /r/KerbalSpaceProgram is half-serious, half-silly (just like the game). It will upvote a joke, especially if it's good, but offensive and low-effort stuff gets downvoted to hell and then some. The community there likes to get some laugh, but is otherwise super-serious and super-kind.
One of the interesting things about Reddit is how easy it is to create a new subreddit. It's just few clicks away, and anyone can do that. So one of the effective ways of getting rid of particular kinds of comments and submissions is to just tell people to create a new sub for it. Like the /r/SomethingMemes I mentioned. /r/SpaceX has /r/HighStakesSpaceX, because people there like to bet way too much. /r/KerbalSpaceProgram has /r/HerbalSpaceProgram, because one day a popular YouTube video has spawned an unstoppable torrent of "dank" memes.
(OTOH if a subreddit goes beyond hopeless, people who long for higher levels of discourse sometimes restart it as /r/Serious... or /r/True..., and iterate as needed.).
I find it curiously amusing that EVERY online community is "in decline" at all times.
I discovered Usenet and IRC back in September, 1993. An epoch known in Internet cultural history as Eternal September (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September). The Internet has literally been in decline since I discovered it!
Back in the day, even in its prime, every other comment on Slashdot was a meta discussion of how badly Slashdot was declining.
Reddit started out as a site for top-level post content only. When they added support for comments, 10 years ago, the VERY FIRST comment in Reddit history was a claim that Reddit was going downhill! (https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/17913/reddit_no...)
I believe that the "sweet spot" for on online community is one to three months after you've discovered it. Just long enough to get comfortable with its internal cultural cues and quirks and in-jokes, and feel like an insider. Once that point is reached, familiarity immediately starts shifting into contempt. You're never quite able to recapture that novel feeling of initial discover and inclusion, and so it feels like decline whether it is or not.
Yeah, it's a meme as old as the internet (and decline is older still), but I still think it's true. There are the rare occasions I've seen though where you have long plateaus (years, not just a few months), sometimes even upswings (and not just from judicious ban-hammering), but you either die in relative high quality on those plateaus or live long enough to see yourself become a subreddit.
Comments
Right now, karma on Reddit is worth even less than it is on HN. Comment votes don't count towards your primary score!
That said, it's a weird position. HN is pretty much the same in structure as Reddit, only with (intentionally) worse UI. It doesn't make discussions shit. Yes, the common advice of "try other subreddits" is the key. Many topical subreddits have HN-quality discussions on them, and are frequented by experts in their particular domains. Those subreddits are probably one of the most trustworthy places on the Internet. You just have to check them out instead of judging everything in light of areas meant for the general population.
What happens on those subreddits when someone comes along, or whether anyone comes along, and leaves a pointless "+1" or "This." or a joke in the vein of 'Reddit humor'? I don't use Reddit so I'm curious what a proponent thinks. HN has been in decline for at least 5 years (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 -- it had a very high start) but it's still resistant to a lot of typical reddit culture. (As for bad UI I say a lot is just taste -- I think having all comments, and all comments expanded, is great. Maybe Reddit has a user preference for that though...)
Same thing that happens on HN - the comment gets ruthlessly downvoted and on some sunbreddits even outright deleted by mods. Three things most commonly discouraged: "+1" / "this" posts, typical Reddit jokes, and image macros. Often the latter are redirected to separate subreddits; i.e. for many /r/Something you'll have a corresponding /r/SomethingMemes, where the fans of laughing at pictures can vent out.
Different subs maintain different seriousness "set points" - for instance, to compare the two I hang out the most on, /r/SpaceX is almost HN-level serious. Stupid and low-effort comments get deleted, and you may get banned along with them. OTOH, /r/KerbalSpaceProgram is half-serious, half-silly (just like the game). It will upvote a joke, especially if it's good, but offensive and low-effort stuff gets downvoted to hell and then some. The community there likes to get some laugh, but is otherwise super-serious and super-kind.
One of the interesting things about Reddit is how easy it is to create a new subreddit. It's just few clicks away, and anyone can do that. So one of the effective ways of getting rid of particular kinds of comments and submissions is to just tell people to create a new sub for it. Like the /r/SomethingMemes I mentioned. /r/SpaceX has /r/HighStakesSpaceX, because people there like to bet way too much. /r/KerbalSpaceProgram has /r/HerbalSpaceProgram, because one day a popular YouTube video has spawned an unstoppable torrent of "dank" memes.
(OTOH if a subreddit goes beyond hopeless, people who long for higher levels of discourse sometimes restart it as /r/Serious... or /r/True..., and iterate as needed.).
I find it curiously amusing that EVERY online community is "in decline" at all times.
I discovered Usenet and IRC back in September, 1993. An epoch known in Internet cultural history as Eternal September (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September). The Internet has literally been in decline since I discovered it!
Back in the day, even in its prime, every other comment on Slashdot was a meta discussion of how badly Slashdot was declining.
Reddit started out as a site for top-level post content only. When they added support for comments, 10 years ago, the VERY FIRST comment in Reddit history was a claim that Reddit was going downhill! (https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/17913/reddit_no...)
I believe that the "sweet spot" for on online community is one to three months after you've discovered it. Just long enough to get comfortable with its internal cultural cues and quirks and in-jokes, and feel like an insider. Once that point is reached, familiarity immediately starts shifting into contempt. You're never quite able to recapture that novel feeling of initial discover and inclusion, and so it feels like decline whether it is or not.
Yeah, it's a meme as old as the internet (and decline is older still), but I still think it's true. There are the rare occasions I've seen though where you have long plateaus (years, not just a few months), sometimes even upswings (and not just from judicious ban-hammering), but you either die in relative high quality on those plateaus or live long enough to see yourself become a subreddit.