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Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

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Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#41

Post by stingraycharles »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35
stingraycharles wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit's search really needs some work. It's practically useless for me unless I am using old.reddit.com/. I always thought that “Reddit search is bad” is pretty much as old as Reddit itself. I don’t think they ever seriously invested in that, for whatever reason. Here’s a post from 8y ago where people were already accepting that it has been like that forever, and it hasn’t changed a lot ever since. https://www.red…

I haven't seen a single social media or messaging platform where search didn't suck. Reddit search was bad, after redesign it's just hot garbage. Messenger search is unreliable and near-useless. Facebook search only worked well for the brief moment when they introduced "graph search", but that got quickly killed due to popular outrage. HN's bolted-on Algolia search is the least bad I've seen. And let's not even talk…

I think it’s a combination of “search is hard” and “witty comments / titles make it even harder to search for”.

I’d argue most of these sites would be far better off with just using Algolia or Google as their main search engine and calling it a day.

Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#42

Post by cpach »

grawprog wrote: post #21
WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #4

This is great and I wish this mentality was pushed earlier on reddit. There was a golden era of reddit right before the great Digg migration. Excellent comments, diverse opinions, and really great back and forth being shared of individual's experiences in almost every single subreddit. Today, it's definitely harder to find good commentary and exchange. It's also super heavily astroturfed by political groups in all th…

>Today, it's definitely harder to find good commentary and exchange. It's also super heavily astroturfed by political groups in all the subreddits I've found a lot of hobby specific subreddits or ones on niche topics tend to avoid that. Also, less popular niches or hobbies i've noticed tend to have more people that are actually interested in having decent conversations about said topics or hobbies.

Indeed!

Example: The other day I had a question about Exchange Server client compatibility. I wanted a discussion about pros and cons, i.e. not a good fit for Stack Exchange since there’s no obviously correct answer. So I googled for ⸤exchange server subreddit⸣. And of course, there was an Exchange Server subreddit. Asked the question there and got lots of high-quality answers, zero bullshit. That’s Reddit at it’s best.

PS. In order to save one’s sanity, I encourage all redditors to use https://old.reddit.com/ exclusively.

Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#43

Post by lt »

What I did to improve my reddit experience:

1. unsubscribe to all the big default subreddits, like askreddit, funny, etc (don't worry, you can still check them out if you want).

2. go to r/all and use the filter feature to block the most annoying content or popular stuff that you absolutely don't care about. I blocked politics subreddits, some memes, anime, communities for popular youtubers, some of the worse default ones. Just look at the current /r/all listing and block whatever you don't care about that appears in the first few pages, refresh and do it again a few times. I go back every once in a while to repeat the process.

3. subscribe to specific things you care about. smaller communities are better, some of the large ones are better moderated than others.

4. favorite a few (3-4) subreddits that are about things I want to check often.

My home feed is mostly tailored to my interests, even if there's some fluff. Smaller subreddits I don't check often and appear there. Then I check my favorite subreddits for specific things, and there's r/all for the popular stuff.

I find that general topics like tech, music, sports are usually bad, but more specific, not necessarily niche, are better (a sub about a specific framework, maybe, or about your hometown, favorite band, or favorite team). Moderation style helps a lot.

Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#45

Post by covercash »

user00012-ab wrote: post #20

People keep saying how great Reddit is, but I tried signing up to a bunch of my "Niches" and all the posts where just low quality junk; for example every other post in the 3dprinting subreddit is just "MY FIRST PRINT!" or "I BOUGHT A THING!" and for some reason people think it's cute so they upvote it. EDC? here is another picture of my gun! Tech reddit; "here is a link to a medium post that you can't see unless you…

Those topics are still too generalized which tends to indicate the sub has a lot of casual and beginner members. Larger communities also mean they’re a target for low quality/repost material that accounts can use to significantly increase karma in a short amount of time.

If you check the sidebars, you can usually find more niche related subreddits. r/3Dprinting actually made a multireddit with all of the subs that relate to them: https://old.reddit.com/user/Devtholt/m/3d_printing?utm_sourc...

Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#46

Post by DeanWormer »

This is a fun idea. I thought of a slightly different spin. Combine what Million Short does with search results (omits the top million results to help find things beyond the usual top results) with Reddit.

Better discussions happen in the smaller subreddits, so I'd love a Million Short for Reddit that filters out the top subs and only leaves the more productive ones.

https://millionshort.com/

Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#47

Post by xeromal »

user00012-ab wrote: post #20

People keep saying how great Reddit is, but I tried signing up to a bunch of my "Niches" and all the posts where just low quality junk; for example every other post in the 3dprinting subreddit is just "MY FIRST PRINT!" or "I BOUGHT A THING!" and for some reason people think it's cute so they upvote it. EDC? here is another picture of my gun! Tech reddit; "here is a link to a medium post that you can't see unless you…

That's a pretty broad brush. Check out /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians for some heavily moderated subreddits. Not all need that level but they produce almost all quality posts.

Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#48

Post by caddemon »

godelski wrote: post #38
WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #4

This is great and I wish this mentality was pushed earlier on reddit. There was a golden era of reddit right before the great Digg migration. Excellent comments, diverse opinions, and really great back and forth being shared of individual's experiences in almost every single subreddit. Today, it's definitely harder to find good commentary and exchange. It's also super heavily astroturfed by political groups in all th…

I think a big issue is inflation. As we have more users a niche forum turns into a more general forum. There's some good and bad to this. This has even happened on HN. But there's another problem. If a forum is too small then it doesn't serve its purpose of connecting the right people. I wonder if anyone knows the optimal size/range, or if such a metric exists (under certain criteria of course).

This is what makes subreddits such a good idea IMO. Theoretically Reddit can be a massive community, while each subreddit can still remain niche. Then people can be connected to others across a number of topics without "polluting" spaces they are not interested in.

Of course if you are interested in discussing a broad or popular topic like politics or the NBA, you will probably have to actually just find a smaller group to get higher quality discussion. There's not really a way around the inflation issue in those subreddits, as far as I can tell.

The other problem is that Reddit seems to increasingly emphasize the generic popular subreddits in its UI and how the site is marketed/presented. There are still good, active subreddits for certain hobbies and communities, but I do worry that the more Reddit is viewed as just another large social media site, the fewer such subreddits there will be.

Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#49

Post by plutonorm »

What I want is a big 5 personality test and test about my interests. Then I want to be shown where on the internet there are like minded people interested in what I am interested in. I want people who are highly agreeable, highly open and totally not conscientious and who want to discuss philosophy or mathematics or social change or whatever. Where are my people? Don’t you want to find your people? Build my app for me. I don’t have the time...

Re: Show HN: Find Subreddits for Your Niche

#50

Post by 1_player »

xeromal wrote: post #47
user00012-ab wrote: post #20

People keep saying how great Reddit is, but I tried signing up to a bunch of my "Niches" and all the posts where just low quality junk; for example every other post in the 3dprinting subreddit is just "MY FIRST PRINT!" or "I BOUGHT A THING!" and for some reason people think it's cute so they upvote it. EDC? here is another picture of my gun! Tech reddit; "here is a link to a medium post that you can't see unless you…

That's a pretty broad brush. Check out /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians for some heavily moderated subreddits. Not all need that level but they produce almost all quality posts.

That's the exception that proves the rule. /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians have heavy handed moderation to keep quality much higher than the rest of Reddit.

I don't know how one can disagree with the fact that most of Reddit is quick engagement posts (images, memes, even if they don't fit the subreddit) and witty one liners voted to the top. There's good stuff, sure, the point is that it's hidden behind a ton of crap.

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