L19 or Reddit?

[John Fairbairn]

Bit of an elephant in the room topic...

This forum is much quieter than, say, a couple of years ago. In that time the reddit go forum seems to have grown substantially. L19 users, both former and current, seem to crop up more and more on reddit.

Is there a connection? I personally feel that more stringent moderation on L19 gave reddit a boost and perhaps gave it critical mass. But maybe there are other reasons that escape me.

I think L19 has some real advantages, and the tone, style and format of reddit don't appeal to me. But I'm obviously on the dwindling side.

So, do we need to campaign more for L19 or just switch to reddit? Or just not care?

[dfan]

I think they have different (though overlapping) userbases and serve different (though overlapping) functions. I'm happy to have them both.

There are people who post on Reddit and not L19 who I'd be happy to have contribute here, but I certainly don't feel like the activity here has dipped below critical mass. And it's kind of nice to be able to read every post.

[Javaness2]

I think reddit is just hipper and its inate trendiness of today is tipping the scales in its balance. Balance of course, being very important in Go.

Moderation? I can't say I've ever noticed much here... Nothing but total extremism abounds.

[RobertJasiek]

Reddit has a childish interface, relies on the social bubble (dis)likes mechanism and has a range from 'total desinformation' to 'reasonable' as maximum quality of contents in specific threads. Hence I do not get any motivation to read there. I prefer a serious interface, a complete range of opinions and a reasonable range of quality of contents in every thread. L19 is very much better but far from optimal because it also has childish bits (smiley animations) and moderated restriction of allowed opinions. However, the childish bits are not all-dominating as on Reddit and moderation has much weaker impact than implied group censorship.

[Calvin Clark]

I do not want to move to reddit. I did check it out a couple of years ago and I really would miss diagram capabilities. I think of it as more for short chats and sharing, like Facebook. There are occasionally topics there that don't get cross-posted or covered here, and there are a couple of Reddit users who say very interesting things and make good posts. It is probably most convenient for users who read more than /r/baduk.

Also, it is really hard to find old posts on Reddit. Honestly, except for the upvote/downvote stuff which I don't value much, it is like the old red.games.go days...

[bayu]

I like the input of the old folks here. I doubt that they bother making an account on shiny Reddit. It's a different crowd. In my impression, people on Reddit are primarely interested in other discussions than the baduk one, which is only a sideline. I don't know whether many people from CJK are on reddit and post on r/baduk without having an account on L19. It would be an asset to have them in the go-discussion-community.

I suggest an experiment: post your next entry on both places and compare results. My bet is that you still get better quality answers here.

[Kirby]

I visit Reddit once in awhile. I like the scoring system for posts.

I prefer L19 overall, because it's more like I'm chatting with friends, if that makes any sense.

I don't think I learn a lot about go here (though, some of Bill's and Uberdude's posts are very educational), but that's not why I visit L19.

I like the personalities that have developed over the years, and it's nice for that social aspect. There seem to be a lot more random people I don't know on Reddit, but maybe that's because I know L19 better.

Anyway, without the personalities here on L19, the site doesn't have much to offer. But because of those personalities, L19 is one of three sites I visit on a regular basis when I'm using the Internet for leisure.

[BlindGroup]

I am a rather recent addition to L19, and I actively read both the Reddit and L19 feed. However, I strongly prefer L19. As Robert says, the interface is much more appropriate, but almost more importantly is that L19 feels more like a community. That might even be a positive aspect of the smaller number of contributors. Of the regular L19 contributors, I feel like I know them well enough to trust their suggestions because I've seen the other discussions in which they are involved. On Reddit, I find it hard to know whom to take seriously at times.

I also think I learn a lot more on L19 than Reddit. I've learned a few things on Reddit, but ironically, the ones that I remember most were made by regular L19 contributors like Uberdude.

Another way to look at it might be -- is there something that people feel is missing from L19 because of the smaller number of contributors?

[Knotwilg]

I came here because I was about the only one who hadn't moved from Sensei's Library yet

[jeromie]

I also read and post on the baduk subreddit, but I don't think switching over entirely makes a lot of sense. For the entire time I've read this site (3 and a half years now!), most of the content has been provided by a few high volume posters. It always feels like things are slowing down when one or two people take a break or slow down their posting rate.

Reddit is good for quick news posts, but I don't think it lends itself well to longer, more thoughtful content. The inability to produce inline diagrams really hampers discussion, and the upvote/downvote system tends to prioritize easily digestible, non-controversial topics. There are exceptions, of course, but I don't think you're likely to find the sort of content you value there, John, and I'm not sure that your contributions would find a wide audience. I could be wrong, though - I certainly think the go community can benefit from more exposure to your thoughtful posts. (To be fair, you may not find sort of content you appreciate here either. There aren't many people who can produce the same mix of go content and cultural insight that you contribute to the community.)

If you are not careful, the baduk subreddit is also a gateway drug to one of the most vacuous, time-wasting sites on the internet. The front page of reddit is a never ending string of interesting but empty fluff, the intellectual equivalent of junk food.

[Drew]

Bit of an elephant in the room topic...

This forum is much quieter than, say, a couple of years ago. In that time the reddit go forum seems to have grown substantially. L19 users, both former and current, seem to crop up more and more on reddit.

Is there a connection? I personally feel that more stringent moderation on L19 gave reddit a boost and perhaps gave it critical mass. But maybe there are other reasons that escape me.

I think L19 has some real advantages, and the tone, style and format of reddit don't appeal to me. But I'm obviously on the dwindling side.

So, do we need to campaign more for L19 or just switch to reddit? Or just not care?

Please don't switch to /r/baduk, John.

I drop in there from time to time because it's there and I use reddit for other topics and for no other reason.

Problems with /r/baduk:

• the site search is notoriously awful, so once topics are no longer trending they might as well be memory-holed
• there is no subject sorting whatsoever, so any meaningful discussions are adrift in a sea of "30kyu can't be arsed to search please spoonfeed me some knowledge" posts
• no support for diagrams, or any other in-line non-textual content for that matter
• site design actively discourages comments on older posts, since only the exact person replied to will receive a notification
• site design actively discourages discussion because for any given topic you will only receive notifications of replies to yourself, not for any other replies on the topic

Reddit is for sharing links and extremely shallow conversation. It is entirely unsuitable for Go/Weiqi/Baduk, the existence of a dedicated folder notwithstanding.

[pnprog]

As for myself, I am on both. Let's say I post more on L19 (it is less intimidating) but read more content on reddit (because much more content).

I think the killer feature of Reddit compared with L19 if that it is easily browsable from mobile phone. I use a dedicated app that only shows me /r/baduck and it makes it really convenient to check all world new go content in one shot from everywhere. If I remember what I read somewhere, 80% of reddit content is accessed thought mobile. Maybe this is something that L19 could think to improve, because browsing/reading/answering L19 from smart phone is pretty painful.

Or maybe I do that the wrong way?

Other aspect of reddit that may appeal to community members:

• Voting system, although I find it quite intimidating at time, a sort of ladder anxiety but for discussion
• The discussion tree inside the discussion - I like this one a lot

[Bill Spight]

So, do we need to campaign more for L19 or just switch to reddit? Or just not care?

I vote for not caring. The lack of diagrams makes it unlikely that I will post on reddit, but I think that we should welcome any platform for the discussion of go.

[Uberdude]

I've been active on r/baduk for about a year now (but not much else of reddit, I like jermoie's description of it as interesting fluff / junk food). Others have covered most of the disadvantages for me:
- no diagrams so it's hard to talk about Go moves (rather than pro news etc) on site, co-ordinates with a picture is unpleasant, so linking to an impromptu eidogo sgf is what I do. That's actually quicker to generate than diagrams, but you don't control the order of narrative and doesn't look nice in site.
- organisation sucks (no sub-forums), awful search (on L19 when someone asks a question I remember answering 3 years ago I can often find it to link), very last-few-days focused. (L19 is better but there's still a lot of room for improvement for explorability of all the quality content that's been generated here: SL's encyclopedia approach might be better long-term for that but is a lot of curation work). A good answer a day later can be lost (not upvoted) behind an earlier mediocre one.
- less polite/friendly/personal. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I find gratuitous swearing on the internet grating. Seems more common in the reddit demographic (I saw similar thing on OGS from an admin there, when I commented on it he complained I was a prude if I can't handle swearing on the internet). Then again apparently I was rude here for talking about players' gender/nationality .

Advantages:
- nested threading can be better on busy/independent discussions
- more people, plus it's not a dedicated Go forum so chances for outreach and being nice to casual visitors making them join Go community.
- some different content, e.g. there's a guy who translates a bunch of Chinese weiqi news (but he's also rather argumentative).

I wouldn't say I'm an L19 evangelist there, but I do sometimes link/recommend it where appropriate. If time constraints mean I have to give one up it'd be r/baduk, but maybe I should give both up and do some tsumego or practice games to prepare for my next title match!

[sparky314]

I prefer reading the discussions here. I lurk here and reddit (mostly baduk), though I rarely comment. I think each serves different purposes, but L19 is catered more towards the current group and with longer, more insightful discussions, where reddit is more available for newer players, or just a quick browse.

It'd be nice to see some new blood here occasionally, but not at the expense of the old blood.

I am a fan of the smileys here, just saying.