Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

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How you find the information on reddit though?

I'm going to take a leap and say it's not by typing reddit.com/r/binoculars or by using reddit search (which has been terrible since inception and shows no signs of improving).

I'd guess instead you use DuckDuckGo or more likely Google.

So what you say you really get from Reddit is a site that has a modicum of trustworthiness that it won't ruin your computer and that maybe there's an opinion here that reddit is the canonical place where all binocular enthusiasts will also participate.

Am I right in this assumption?

If I am, doesn't that completely break down the moment a decent chunk of communities decides it must not be on reddit?

As in, it's not really network effects, it's more "all or nothing" because anything other than everything brings doubt into the trustworthiness of the site/communities.

If there's a very popular and well known community (Linus Tech Tips for great example): then their forums are more trustworthy and have much richer densities of information. And you would find that information the same way as you would on reddit if I'm not mistaken.

> doesn't that completely break down the moment a decent chunk of communities decides it must not be on reddit?

Of course it does. We only search with Google and site:reddit.com because it works. But it works VERY well right now. Remove that site:reddit and you don't instead get quality content from lots of other community forums. Instead you get garbage and ads. Reddit's only "moat" right now is that I, as a rational human being, will add site:reddit.com if I want to find an answer to a question.

There are other specialized communities that I will search using site:xyz.com. And there will be many more if communities leave Reddit and setup elsewhere. Time will tell if this will happen.

> not by typing reddit.com/r/binoculars

That's exactly what I did. Most of those subs have either a pinned guide or a wiki with recommendations and considerations. And often I do use search, because it's fine for simple things like searching for model numbers.

> If I am, doesn't that completely break down the moment a decent chunk of communities decides it must not be on reddit?

That's the point of it being a network effect, right? Like, when people collectively start using Facebook in stead of Myspace, so Myspace died?

> Am I right in this assumption?

No, I don't exclusively use Google to search Reddit and when I do, I explicitly mention site:reddit.com.

> And you would find that information the same way as you would on reddit if I'm not mistaken.

So, no, you are mistaken. Because I didn't even know those forums existed and they don't seem to show up on Google often.

Recently, I was looking for a monitor for example. Say I'd want to know more about the 'G95SC' entering 'G95SC review' in Google shows mostly review sites like CNET. I want to see regular people's opinions so I look on Reddit and see those. And I can do the same thing for 3D printers, cars, brake pads, track tires, laptops, android car stereos and pretty much anything else. In stead of having to find the relevant forums.

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