[tikhonj]

One thing to consider is that some people don't use "Reddit the site" but instead essentially use it as free hosting for a forum. The Haskell sub-reddit is a good example of this: it's a popular forum for talking about Haskell and somewhat central to the community, so there are people who use it but don't care at all about Reddit in general.

Since HN doesn't have anything like sub-reddits, this doesn't happen here (or at least not as overtly). While having something like Reddit is great, I think the fact that HN doesn't do this is good for HN as a site.

[lsc]

>I think the fact that HN doesn't do this is good for HN as a site.

I think that this adds constant tension between the people who want to discuss mainstream news / moral panics / mainstream politics and those of us who don't. I... think that this inability to allow "those people" (And I recognize that to certain other folks, I am "those people") to sandbox themselves off means that hacker news needs way above par leadership to avoid turning into slashdot.

I mean, hacker news has that way above par leadership, at least for now, but... as far as the social dynamics go, reddit is much more sustainable.