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Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#311

Post by wott »

nerdponx wrote: post #181
kybernetikos wrote: post #12

Reddit does two things really: 1. Link Discovery 2. Discussion There are a few options for Link Discovery. I have a bunch of fora and sites hooked up to an rss reader (the old reader, since google shutdown reader) which does pretty well (although I'd like it to do a bit more). The link discovery thing is like the equivalent of having channels on your TV. You can stream any program (website) of a huge number but a cha…

I know Reddit search isn't great, but the ability to search at all is useful. Compared to e.g. Discord where threading is weak at best and searching is borderline useless because it's a chatroom, not a forum. Reddit is a low-effort replacement for traditional forums, solving several problems of traditional forums: 1. One account for all communities. Nobody wants to make 100 accounts, whereas it's really easy to just…

> Easy discovery of new communities

I never understood this point. Reddit provides zero discoverability.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#312

Post by deebosong »

lom wrote: post #274
deebosong wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't always the case, but I found that if I'm looking for a serious discussion, I gotta find the sub within the subreddit. For movies, there are a few that communicate they are about serious film discussion. But between the 2 or 3 subs on serious film talk, I found truefilm to be more in-depth than not. Even for cycling, there are about 8 subs that I'm on, and one out of the bunch is strictly focused on serious…

> Even for cycling, there are about 8 subs that I'm on, and one out of the bunch is strictly focused on serious fitness & performance discussions, whereas the rest are sort of free-for-alls loosely based on the subreddit's sub-genre. Would you mind sharing?

Sure thing. r/velo.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#313

Post by shagie »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #305
jacurtis wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an OG r/mtb subscriber and loved the content for years. I noticed more and more low-quality content slide in around 2017-2019 and I stopped frequenting it. It was one of my favorite subs back in the day. By the time COVID hit, that sub was a dumpster fire of low-quality posts it became a complete waste to even visit, I felt dumber after visiting it each time. It isn't just the quality of the posts that degraded…

There may be other factors too, not just popularity and user numbers. It could be coincidental but over the years HN has not deteriorated in the same way as forums like reddit have. I strongly suspect it's in part to due with moderation as well. The hackernews approach is very straightforward and sensible. They only act if really necessary, otherwise users do the housekeeping themselves by flagging and downvoting any…

There's also a few anti engagement mechanics that help run HN.

If the comments under posts become too active, it is downrated and disappears from the front page which reduces the rates of people commenting on it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089

You'll also note things like "when the comment is too deep the reply link disappears" which creates a bit more friction for carrying on what would likely be unproductive threads.

Things around controversial topics also get downranked (whereas on Reddit hot topics move to the top of the list).

There's a lot of automated tooling in HN that reduces the amount of manual moderation that is needed by making it harder to have posts that contain things that need moderation.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#314

Post by holler »

oehpr wrote: post #306
holler wrote: post #156

https://sqwok.im - All posts fully public and google indexed. - Built-in realtime chat rooms instead of threaded comments on all posts, complete with presence, @mentions, markdown support (check faq)(mobile & desktop web supported currently). - Trending based on chat activity and time decay. - Search, notifications, follows, themes, other settings like block a user. - Focus on simplicity, accessibility, usability. Pr…

Love this! Interesting direction with real potential.

Thank you! Appreciate it.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#316

Post by tmaly »

sharperguy wrote: post #44

I see reddit less as a website and more as a collection of communities. Each community has its own set of reasons for hosting itself on reddit vs other locations. Therefore I would predict that in the absence of reddit, not every community would move to the same place. I also noticed that in recent years many subreddits have increasingly been taken over by memes and other low quality posts and so users looking for mo…

/r/stablediffusion is awesome. That is one of the better subreddits. LocalLLaMa is another good one.

Facebook groups had a really great interface that I thought worked well.

There are still Forums out there running phpBB.

I think the ultimately a replacement if one is found should be easy to use and easy to find information in.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#317

Post by guerrilla »

squarefoot wrote: post #188
guerrilla wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was around long after Digg became a thing. It's downfall was being bought by Dice media.

Slashdot was rocking in the late 90s when Digg didn't even exist. I started reading it when it was published by Rob Malda as his personal blog on his own server in his own dorm room. Along with Usenet, webrings, blogs, the original BoingBoing and the Illiad strips at userfriendly.org (dead, search for archived pages on archive.org) it is among the places of yesterday's Internet that I miss the most.

You must have misread what I said; That it was around long before Digg is not mutually exclusive with that it was around long after Digg.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#318

Post by sheepishly »

runjake wrote: post #78
sebstefan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use https://raddle.me/ but it's small for now. They seem to have a much better approach to moderation; the moderation logs are open and admins don't let them go full authoritarian. But the API is lackluster. It's open source however so hopefully it should improve I always envisioned some kind of reddit where you could simply appeal moderation actions through a dedicated report system and if some mod goes above and…

I'll save a bunch of people some trouble. This is a politically-"leftist" site (top current thread is "How did you get into anarchism", along with something about ACAB). It's not really a general purpose Reddit alternative. So, if that's your thing, check it out. If it's not, probably not a good fit and the "better approach" to moderation probably won't go in your favor.

Thanks, you saved me a click.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#319

Post by triplepoint217 »

We don't have a community yet, but sift (https://sift.quest/) is aiming to be a comprehensive alternative.

We've got some new ideas around dealing with cross posts: * posts can have multiple tags and be findable from any of them * all posts to the same url map to the same backend node (so you don't get as many duplicates)

I'm actually most excited about what we're trying to do with regards to the low effort content and degradation of communities aspects.

At our core we're actually a reputation/trust/"how much do I want to see things from this person" graph that has recently pivoted to being a Reddit alternative. This means that (once we get the community going and our algorithms tuned up), we should be able to offer you much more ergonomic ability to choose how much of what kind of content you want to see (people who like memes can post them, but you can choose not to see them.

We're still in alpha and don't have much of a community yet, but we're adding features fast and will be very friendly and responsive to any feature requests you have.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#320

Post by lmedinas »

D13Fd wrote: post #167

What do you use Reddit for? The answer is going to be subject-matter dependent. For me, Discord has already replaced 95% of my Reddit use -- and not because I'm anti-Reddit, but just because community activity has migrated to Discord naturally. The remainder of my Reddit use is mostly "a search engine sent me there."

I really have a problem with Discord how to choose a discussion, find a link and stay on topic. I see Discord as a modern IRC tbh but far from Reddit. Perhaps im using Discord in the wrong way. May i ask which type of communities do you follow in Discord ?
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