I didn’t read the entire thread, but as someone who has spent a lot of time on reddit, even the specialty subreddits are generally mediocre and/or full of puritans and gatekeepers.
I’ve had instances where I would ask a question and make a post, only for it to get no competent/useful/informed replies endless times. Most replies are just people repeating the most simplistic answer possible without actually understanding the question in depth. A lot of time I even point out in the OP ‘I’m not talking about X’ only to have people say ‘it is X’ over and over and over again.
Another thing I’ve run into on reddit is a few times I’ve asked a question or made a statement (with scientific papers to back it up) on a science subreddit only to have mods take it down because they didn’t understand the question. However the question I was asking wasn’t wrong, the mods just didn’t understand the question I was asking. So even the mods on specialty subreddits sometimes don’t know what they’re doing or what they’re talking about to the point where they write off topics they don’t intuit as off topic or baseless.
Add in the fact that the admins there are on a ban frenzy, and the mods are comic book guy levels of power tripping and its really not that great for complex discussions. Coming here really makes you appreciate competent, useful mods.
If you need advice on what weed whacker to buy, its a good place. But if you take a topic like this thread I made below, and post it on reddit, you’ll just get a bunch crappy, simplistic replies. I like to discuss issues related to the humanities, and even on specialty subreddits devoted to those fields the quality isn’t impressive.