| In my opinion the main differentiator is whether or not the platform's userbase is more or less like the population at large. This is important for two reasons: - If a website is full of normies - sorry for the word, feel free to suggest a more appropriate one - then mainstream cultural references, information sources, opinions and so on are bound to dominate the scene. This makes the community far less interesting, because mainstream sources necessarly aim for the lowest common denominator. Those communities also look very similar to each other, as though they were TV channels. - The community is prone to segment itself along the same lines that divide us in real life. Language, politics, education, etc. As harsh as it sounds, I have come to think that being exclusionary in at least some dimensions is necessary for any kind of community to be interesting. > I think HN is less affected by karma farming A very underrated feature that I have come to really like is how positive scores are hidden for everyone except yourself. That a comment is flagged or at -4 is useful signal (I might disagree with the signal but it's clear that other commenters really disliked that), but on the other hand not knowing whether a comment sits at +1 or +20 forces you to think about what the comment is actually saying. |
Knowing that something is a) spot on but ideologically inconvenient b) wrong doesn't really help if you don't have the subject matter familiarity to already know what's right and wrong. It just reduces your options to a binary choice.