[lumb63]

My girlfriend browses Reddit often so I’ve had the chance to see how a self-proclaimed heavy user interacts with the platform. After seeing that, it makes sense to me why the platform is how it is when compared to isolated forums or discussion boards.

Reddit has two types of users, more or less: browsers and posters. The browsers will probably never post anything, or will post so rarely that it does not warrant mentioning. The regular posters will dominate the discussion in a given subreddit, and probably eventually moderate it, so there is a very strong in-group effect. The only way as an outsider to penetrate that in-group is to make well-liked, popular quips which pander to the moderators and browsers.

On the contrary, a forum or discussion board typically has two classes of users, in my experience: active posters who contribute to discussions they want to, and lurkers, who are usually new, and are absorbing from current posters. There is an implicit assumption that users have probably been watching the forum for a while to get a lay of the land before posting and have read through a good amount of the site’s content, and when they post, they are accepted since they are aware of the conversation and can build on it.

The culture of lurking and the desire of viewers to discuss topics with others is what keeps forums strong, IMO. In their place, Reddit has casual browsers who happen to see content and upvote it (effectively deciding democratically what others will see). When a large portion of users who have no intention to engage with others can dictate what their fellow members are most likely to see, it quickly degenerates to a “who can make the coolest comment” club.

[paulmd]

The other problem is that forums are divided into threads that each progress in a linear fashion, while comment trees inevitably fragment into a thousand sub-discussions each regurgitating the same points and arguments over and over in slightly different form. It's certainly possible to be "jumped on" in a forum but if three people are making the same argument you can quote them all and make one reply which rebuts the point. It's effectively impossible for comment-tree discussions to come to any consensus except via mob-rule. There will always be someone else wading in with the same argument and someone else rebutting the point in the same fashion and being rebutted in turn.

Comment-tree discussions, especially gamified ones with "points" etc certainly are compelling, they're literally designed to be an endless quicksand for argumentation and gratification, which is why they've taken over. They're fun. But they are awful for reaching a consensus.

Also yes, suppressing dissident voices so that nobody can even read objections and counterarguments is the worst part about Reddit. That model barely even works here (politics discussions inevitably end up in a dogpile of flags and downvotes) with norms around not abusing your buttons, but it absolutely does not work in a mass-market social media site with hundreds of millions of users.