[dkonofalski]

AKA the Reddit Effect. Everyone on Reddit posts as if they know what they're talking about when, in reality, they only have a cursory knowledge of it and yet the entire site is somehow treated as a curated collection of high-quality, factual information.

[malshe]

This is right! I think there is another, perhaps unrelated Reddit effect. Blogs and some news sites pick up on Reddit and then feed them what they know will be popular on Reddit. The cycle continues. That's why Reddit is so good for astroturfing.

[garmaine]

Don’t think HN is any different.

[dkonofalski]

For whatever reason, HN is different to me because, when discussions center around the things that I actually have expertise in, the information tends to be mostly correct. Every now and then some nonsense slips in but, for the most part, keeping people from being able to downvote and upvote everything eventually leads to a pretty informed view of whatever the topic is. Even in instances where I disagree with something, there's usually a well-reasoned response that includes some support whereas, with Reddit, it's just a bunch of unfounded statements with no backup whatsoever.

[garmaine]

HN is generally correct about established computer science and tech stuff. Anything frontier or controversial (e.g. bitcoin) or outside the narrow domain of typical Silicon Valley startups gets the exact same ignorant herd response. The point is that when the topic aligns with the expertise of the community you get quality, whereas when the topic varies you get ignorance and BS spoken just as authoritatively. Always be aware of the latter outcome!

[dkonofalski]

Good point. I think it's probably the case when a community is self-selected vs. when it's open for anyone to both create and contribute.

[jcranberry]

I saw AskHistorians and thought that it was exactly that. I thought I would put together a small collection of subreddits that produce similar quality content. Little did I know that the rest of the website is memes and the same flavor-of-the- month jokes recycled on every post...