I find the format of the site hard on the eyes and it seems like a frenetic place where the 30-second attention span thrives. Do you use reddit? Why do you like it or not like it?

/r/linux_gaming is a great and relevant subreddit. The GamingOnLinux guy, Aspyr and Feral representatives, and the guy who just ported Stanley Parable to Linux all hang out there.

As for Reddit in general, I see it as the modern equivalent of Usenet's soc.* hierarchy.

I recently joined Reddit for two reasons: I had often seen references to them and they have BSD sections. After about a week I began to get annoyed, but managed to tolerate the site a little longer. I left about a month after joining. Why do I not like it? The system of up and down voting of posts combined with an overall adolescent mentality perhaps even worse than the Ubuntu forum.

Nothing I have ever seen or heard about Reddit has tempted me to visit it or use it in any way. Quite the opposite.

The trick to reddit as I've learned it is finding the small pockets of beauty and avoid falling into the big pits of stupid. That's pretty applicable to any forum, though. I also like the ease at which you can click on a name and start reading their other comments, because sometimes that's a great way to find ideas, reddits, or whatever that you hadn't considered yet. It's a cool place, but not really for any of the reasons you'd see on the front page.

I could see how linux_gaming might work as it's generic enough but the stuff I saw on others was really bad. The moderators have carte blanche to abuse their moderator privileges. Including, but not limited to, shameless and transparent favoritism toward brands, etc.

I would never call it an equivalent to Usenet. But maybe I'll give you the benefit of a doubt because you called it a "modern equivalent". The censorship on reddit is unbelievable.

The up/down voting is heavily abused. The moderators are more like censors with much favoritism going on too. The site says it is one thing but then the actions make be something much different.

There are also squatters that take subreddits private to basically kill the subreddit. And on and on.
I also kept hearing about it so I had a look and found out that the lowest common denominator is very, very low.

For what I was interested in I found mostly big pits of stupid.

Here's an example but it could apply in almost any subreddit.

Someone posts a picture of their pet.
Everyone says "oh" and "ahhhh"
But then someone comes along and says "You know your <pet> has the start of a disease there on its foot?"
That person will get downvoted into oblivion. That's a big problem.

Maybe not the best example but I've seen similar play out over and over. Complete idiots making comments when they don't know what they're talking about.

You will never get to experience "brigading". This is where a bunch of reddit clowns will gang up on a thread or another poster and downvote them into oblivion. Sometimes scouring the entire site and downvoting all of the victim's posts.

Group think at it's worst.

No.

Regards...

If you want something even worse that Reddit, look at Stack Exchange. (I believe that is the correct name.) After a member accumulates enough reputation, that person gains the power to edit posts (questions and answers)! And if no one is answering a question, one may offer a "bounty" to pay for an answer by transferring reputation points from the questioner to the answerer. I thought LQ's reputation system is abused, but that! Ludicrous.

I haven't a clue about it and have never visited the site, but when you mentioned those up/down vote "questions and answers" sites, that was enough...

I think forums like this one were a good step up from the old bulletin boards and mailing lists, but cannot ever replace them entirely. This new up/down vote "serverfault-style" software is something else entirely. It belongs on sites where those answering the questions are paid to service their customers - but nowhere else.

Sadly this is 'a Linux thing' - decades ago big corporations had to pay people to support their software which was probably some kind of proprietary UNIX or windows. Nowadays you have these sites populated by volunteers, essentially doing that job for free. linuxquestions, despite the name, encourages participation and exchange of ideas/knowledge rather than just random people competing for worthless points to answer a question - probably from some corporate employee who wants others to do their work for them for free.

At first I didn't think so but someone must've sent me a link that pointed to that because I already allow scripts to run for that and it also was in my recall buffer when I started typing. No, I don't visit that regularly, but if I were too, it would be for amusement, not news or information. The problem is there is so much varied information just on the main "hot" tab that I agree it is info overload. So right, I'd visit it for a quick joke and then forget about it. Mores the situation where someone else found a joke on it and sent me the link.

I understand the dynamic of "you compete for ..." but I do not agree with it in the context of a forum that is primarily meant to give advice. Opinions, as they say, are like noses: everyone has one, they're easy to see, but you might not always like what comes out of it.

I think that it's very nice that LQ has a "Did you find this post helpful?" feature, because at least it does give people a warm-and-fuzzy. But I don't want people to be able to say negative things about a post, and I don't want people to wind up "competing for" some status associated with that. Competition simply breeds "competition, itself," and it can bring out the very worst in people, when your objective is supposed to be "answering other people's questions while you ask some of your own." Negative competition is the worst.

As most of you know, I also participate at PerlMonks.Org, which, on the one hand, is (I think ...) the best site out there with regards to the Perl language ... and, in some ways, pragmatic computer programming in general ... (no offense, LQ), but I very regularly get beaten-up there with down-votes. (They also allow purely anonymous posts, which often facilitates "sniping.") This produces some very hostile social-dynamics there, which I feel is a detriment to the site, much of which dynamic I lay at the feet of these two things: downvotes and anonymity. H-o-w-e-v-e-r, if you've got a tough Perl question and/or you need some (fast!) guidance on how to construct a computer-program to address a difficult and maybe very-obscure task, it is (IMHO) a "go-to site" for doing that sort of thing. You'll get your answer, and a plate-ful of source code to go with it, sometimes in a matter of minutes. Therefore, it succeeds at its mission, in spite of itself.

(Note: I do not wish for this thread to veer-off into any sort of negative-discussion of PM. I use it only as an example drawn from my own personal experience.)

Reddit might have the same problem. "Usenet groups" (which still exist, by the way ...) of course never had voting of any kind, of which I am aware anyway. I rarely if ever bother with StackExchange or any of its brethren, since they have no focus-point at all. You literally cannot find (as in, "locate!") answers there.

Didn't know how those worked with the "bounty" thing. There is also one called stackoverflow. a.k.a. toiletoverflow

They have another wonderful feature where some censor comes along and decides that a question not in the right context for the site and they block everyone from providing answers. So the question comes up in a search engine, you go to the link and you find no answers for the exact problem you have. All because a censor decided it was a bad question.