Reddit's a neat idea, but I had to abandon it. Had just hit five years of daily participation on the site, too.
If we look past all the controversy and all the other reasons most people point at the site as a negative, it boils down to one thing in my mind:
Base cynicism.
There's cynicism when someone else reposts something.
There's cynicism over imaginary internet points.
There's cynicism by, from, and to the moderators and site owners.
There's cynicism every time something with a brand name gets mentioned (zOMG it's an ad!)
There's cynicism among communities.
It just goes on and on and on. Never-ending negativity. Everyone always assuming the worst of the other person (rather than trying to have an understanding discussion) and taking snarky potshots at them (and then hiding their comments by -1's in a fit of pique, rather than any kind of thoughtful analysis of quality).
I'm quite happier (and not a little bit more productive) not participating anymore. Reddit is, IMO, the world's greatest concentration of negative, irreverent, straight-up dickhead behavior in one convenient place.
(feh, word filter plugin went a little crazy there, sorry for the unreadable comment earlier)
It's still better than Facebook, which groups you together with the people you know in real life, whether you share common interests or not. At least on Reddit you can sequester yourself to topic-related subs and stay away from the defaults. I've learned many useful things from the smaller, more specific subs, which are somewhat shielded from the cynicism of the larger subs (although there are still asshats, it is the internet after all).
One thing that I just can't wrap my head around is the "no participation" brigading rules. The site literally exists to share content for others to discover and discuss, but if you share anything remotely meta you get accused of brigading and are banned/shadowbanned.
That wasn't against the rules for the longest time, and people abused the hell out of it. There were (and still are, sadly) subreddits devoted to digging up comments they disagreed with and downvoting them, shaming them, and sending them hate mail. But even on regular subreddits, there were problems with meta content causing drama and downvote brigades.
The site would be better off with an outright ban on meta content.
Aside from one or two outliers like DepthHub, most instances of someone on reddit linking to something on reddit are a variation on "Hey, look at this stupid thing this person did, let's all point and laugh at how stupid they are".
I think hn needs a concept like r/bestof. It's the only way I get to find the really good user content in Reddit. There's no way I'd see most of that stuff otherwise.
In fact the main reason I read hn comments is the hope of finding comment gems posted by an expert in the field, someone with a unique perspective on an issue, or someone with a heretical but plausible idea.
That rule absolutely needs to exist. Harmony through balkanization.
You don't get it if you haven't experienced how tiresome it is to see long-running subcultural feuds shitting up whatever conversation you'd like to be having.
I was heavily downvoted for snarky and spiteful comments and ultimately hellbanned as I tryed to pack up my cynicism in elaborate arguments. The downvote privileged are pretty vigorous about protecting their privilege.
I don't think it's a trait of just large communities. Cynicism, negativity runs deep on just about any forum, comment sections and social media site connected to the Internet. The anonymity that the Web provides seems to reflect a widespread layer of angst (at least in western society) that's otherwise hidden/masked in the real world.
If we look past all the controversy and all the other reasons most people point at the site as a negative, it boils down to one thing in my mind:
Base cynicism.
There's cynicism when someone else reposts something.
There's cynicism over imaginary internet points.
There's cynicism by, from, and to the moderators and site owners.
There's cynicism every time something with a brand name gets mentioned (zOMG it's an ad!)
There's cynicism among communities.
It just goes on and on and on. Never-ending negativity. Everyone always assuming the worst of the other person (rather than trying to have an understanding discussion) and taking snarky potshots at them (and then hiding their comments by -1's in a fit of pique, rather than any kind of thoughtful analysis of quality).
I'm quite happier (and not a little bit more productive) not participating anymore. Reddit is, IMO, the world's greatest concentration of negative, irreverent, straight-up dickhead behavior in one convenient place.
(feh, word filter plugin went a little crazy there, sorry for the unreadable comment earlier)