[hnaccount2001]

It’s a lot bigger now and therefore has the same problems any big online community has (bad signal to noise ratio). I think this is made worse through the upvote system, but that’s purely my anecdotal take. The niche communities continue to be pretty good. I use askliterarystudies pretty often and get high-quality info.

In my experience even the most niche online communities begin to seem “dumb” after you’ve spent significant time on them, as the once-novel information gets rehashed endlessly.

[MetricExpansion]

The biggest loss will be the interesting subreddits like that one. Reddit killed off forums and became the empire that has had its dominion over most of the niche interests. Unfortunately, as Reddit has been growing bigger and bigger and tries harder to cater to the lowest common denominator, the rot seems to be trickling down to even the niche subs. For programming and the like, there’s HN. But for much of anything else, the alternatives are long dead.

The real question is not whether Reddit is rotting, but of where to go after it?