Can any HN/reddit folks recommend some interesting and useful subreddits? Whenever I stumble across a link to reddit I am not impressed with the level discussions. I have tried a number of different subreddits across a wide range (this is a wide net: anything from Call of Duty to Woodworking to Security) of topics and I usually find inane chatter or comments with nothing more than a link to the latest animated gif of a duck expressing gratitude. Where are the gems I am missing?
I know its easy to hate on Reddit, but there is certainly some good content on a few of the smaller subreddits. I suspect that the majority of people in this 6% are only going to the front page and a few of the large sections.
I got on reddit around 2007, left in about 2011. The quality of discussion has fallen so badly that the site is unusable for comments. Before, it was irregular to see a sentance with less than 5 words, now, these quick comments rule the top karma ladders.<p>It is interesting to see how a community that is small, gains popularity over time and quality degrades. User generated media especially seems to normalize to a generic trend. Look at Digg, the same thing happened, and users went over to reddit.<p>This is actually one of my fears about hacker news, as currently the discussion is very intelligent and useful.
And that's of the population smart enough to use the internet... think about that the next time you are reading some of the stuff people write there.
I'm kind of surprised the number is that high, actually, and I've been an active member for 3 years. Outside of my tech/media circle, I know almost no one who uses Reddit. My local subreddit, r/nyc, could potentially be a good community board except that it's badly managed, though most of the local news sites skim content from it.