zlacker

As someone who did a lot of debates in philosophy, most casual commenters are hilariously bad at discussing something. It’s like a wheel that wobbles from its axis and the wheel quickly comes of the axis. It’s not always a bad thing, some threads are just that, casual.

If the purpose for you is to get a dopamine hit and not true interest (exaggerating here) it might tune you out from the matter at hand.

For me it is the aspect of a more eclectic crowd, with a host of opinions, yet often still respectful that I like. Most threads give insights that are lacking in more general, less well moderated places. You get more interesting in depth opinions and knowledge sharing what makes HN great to me.

>>prox+(OP)
You know out of curiosity I just now logged into reddit for the first time in a while and made some posts on /r/changemymind just to see if I could get some good debate, and I don't know if it was always like that over there and I just didn't realize it (bringing that type of rhetoric here might be why i'm rate limited on HN lol), or if it just got worse over the last year of my "reddit break," but holy shit is it WAY better over here. I was very skeptical when people describe HN as "insightful" or "well moderated" or "in depth" but compared to other places on the internet it's certainly true.

Dare I venture back to 4chan and see how my detoxxed brain sees it now...

>>komali+Sq
My gauge is how predictable it is - I can predict how a Reddit thread will go 90% of the time it seems, maybe even a 4chan thread 80% of the time.

The value of a community is in the unpredictability and HN has a good percentage of that, and I can choose to ignore the threads that will be predictable (though it can be fun to read them sometimes).

>>bombca+0C
That’s mostly the default subs tho, like worldnews, funny and so on. The first three comments are whatever the previous three comments where in the previous thread on the same topic. Subs like r/askhistorians has a brutal moderation where the only parent comments are well sourced informed ones.

But in general I agree on its predictability.

>>prox+oE
Yeah the upvote/karma system in general leads itself to "easy" replies, which quickly become recycled jokes and memes.