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Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

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101–110 of 126 posts

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#101
post #86

Its weird but Ive gone back to Digg. Really interesting articles without the twitter-like commenting. Ive gone full circle it seems.

I mentioned Digg to a friend of mine the other day and he said "Oh, is that still a thing?" I didn't realize that it was a thing to put Digg down. It and HN are the two sites I go to in the morning to pick up news. HN I also go to in the afternoon. Digg works really well for keeping me up to date on newsy things.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#102
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know - the "reddit disguised as work" site http://codereddit.com/ and the Android app Reddit is Fun have been running off the API for nearly a decade.

How long do you think the API will continue to exist? All of Reddit’s recent moves have shown me they finally realized that much of the DNA of the site (no account verification required, “questionable” speech being semi-tolerated, a dense UX that’s hard to cram ads into, portability, etc.) are what’s preventing them from monetizing. And they’re trying to monetize. This is exactly the transformation Twitter went throu…

> Frankly I think the community will hate it but because it’s really hard to move millions of individual communities, Reddit likely won’t lose too many users.

Is that really true? Didn't Reddit get big because Digg made some ill-advised changes and its userbase picked up and moved en masse to Reddit?

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slashdot and voat are full of the beardiest necks on the Internet. Quora is also showing signs of hardening of the arteries in its old age ... not really fun places to go to if you're not fully indoctrinated in the groupthink.

"Slashdot and voat..." Slashdot yes, but I would have to disagree on Voat being an old-timer hive.

You can have young neckbeards.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#104

Usenet. It's a shame it's been mostly abandoned. In so many ways it was reddit long before reddit even existed, and was superior to it in so many ways.

Yeah, it's mostly used for piracy now. It's a shame. alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die will never be forgotten.

> alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die

Thanks for reminding me of that.

That got me thinking that there should be a subreddit for old internet stuff. And, of course, there is: [1], though sadly this is almost all memes from the early web days, not pre-web. There's also [2] and [3], but they mostly seem to focus on current BBS and Usenet needs, not on the BBS' and Usenet of the pre-web days.

There's also:

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOldAsTheInternet/

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/

[3] - https://www.reddit.com/r/bbs/

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#105
post #33

Use https://i.reddit.com . It's basically the craiglist view of reddit built for mobile. Super fast and no fluff.

Made a quick url rewrite userscript: https://pastebin.com/A55FBKug

I still have to visit the www site sometimes because the compact one is missing a few features (like delete). They haven't done any maintenance on it for years.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#106
post #94

Reddit scrubs the identity out of many communities/topics. I have found much deeper and meaningful discussion on focused forums. For almost any topic with any significant interest there is a non Reddit forum or community that is deeper and more customized. Not always, but usually. Just support those communities and forums. Example, mtgsalvation is by far better to visit for meaningful MTG deck building and discussion…

Eh, I think a few of the replies explain why that may be true about certain subreddits, or more accurately the behavior of troublesome users, groups, or even mods therein, but can't say that's in any way backed up by the experience of many of the largest/regional/niche/meaningful communities either. Recommend against generalizing (which is good advice to apply to indie boards as well). I could just as easily say phpB…

Well, I had specific things in mind. Example: it is hard to share deck lists on Reddit, but easy on mtgsalvation. This has a big effect on how those communities can evolve. So I agree that the tooling does help define the community to an extent. On Reddit, some of the time the tooling fits a community well. Other times not so much. That was my more my point.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#107

* Voat.co * Quora.com * Slashdot.org

Slashdot and voat are full of the beardiest necks on the Internet. Quora is also showing signs of hardening of the arteries in its old age ... not really fun places to go to if you're not fully indoctrinated in the groupthink.

Every week I still get a Quora Digest email, and every week, if I glance at it, I find myself asking "seriously, are these really the best there is?"

I'm sure they're algorithmically picked, but it seems to be heavily polluted with things phrased as questions that are really just rants/complaints, political provocatism, naivete, bragging and showing off privilege (interestingly, frequently tied with seemingly being very naive); the ones that depress me the most are questions being asked by people who clearly must have been incredibly sheltered and repressed. For some of those, I am glad there's a place like Quora for people to actually get those questions answered, but Quora itself doesn't seem to be great at highlighting interesting questions.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#108

Reddit scrubs the identity out of many communities/topics. I have found much deeper and meaningful discussion on focused forums. For almost any topic with any significant interest there is a non Reddit forum or community that is deeper and more customized. Not always, but usually. Just support those communities and forums. Example, mtgsalvation is by far better to visit for meaningful MTG deck building and discussion…

Agree, centralization is not a good thing. There is a wealth of indepth information and informed discussion on many forums and online communities, some of which are now 10 years and older. That knowledge cannot be easily replicated. But many, perhaps focused on topics that young people would gravitate towards, are dying and it does seem newer generations prefer Youtube, Reddit and others over old style forums. But th…

There are still great software like discourse for building communities. I think focused communities built around forums have plenty of room to grow as long as people keep building tools like Discourse.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#109
post #78

It has quite a reputation from back in the day, but I find Something Awful to have a very high level of dialogue, probably because you have to pay a small fee for membership, and they aren't afraid to probate/ban people.

Paid forums are niche area, it will not be a reddit alternative: the "filter" you describe is not geared towards maximum quality, but to enrich the owners of the site.

They have financial incentive to ban at the slightest provocation, restricting everything to safe and predictable "high-level dialogue" that can't challenge the status quo.

Reddit thrives on multiple levels of "dialogue" segregated into their own communities. Its pro-growth vs SA pro-elitist stance. Thats why SA will never be a reddit alternative.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit?

#110
post #33

Use https://i.reddit.com . It's basically the craiglist view of reddit built for mobile. Super fast and no fluff.

My favorite is https://ns.reddit.com ... and I use the Redirector Firefox addon to redirect all reddit links to this domain ... but of course that probably won't work for much longer
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