That’s been my experience. I signed up maybe a couple of years ago because there were some niche subreddits that interested me. As I did here, many years ago, I lurked for a few months, before posting anything. When I did, it was related to a niche interest’s subreddit, and it was to add a little info that I knew about, and to thank the OP for posting such an interesting question.
But I avoid the larger and more contentious subs. No politics or religion for me, thanks. Even in the niche subs that I follow, I read more than I post.
I’ve found, by poking around over there, that our rule of “don’t be a jerk” works as well there as it does here. Read, post if you have something to contribute, and be pleasant at all times. “Something is wrong on the internet!” doesn’t work. However, not being a jerk works very well.
If you really want to build up Karma (assuming that you even care about Reddit at this point), do it by making worthwhile comments on existing posts in topics that interest you, rather than creating new topics.
Yeah, I’ve kind of set it as a low-key goal of mine to figure out how to subvert their stupid ban, just for the sake of doing so and giving them a figurative finger.
I love Reddit and I get a lot of enjoyment out of it. Although I got my account in 2010 or something, I didn’t really start using it in earnest until 2019. But I’ve gotten up to 190k karma.
Reddit works for me because I go into it with a positive attitude and make positive contributions. I manage my feed in a way that works for me and rarely see anything that makes me angry or upset. I am constantly seeing things that give me a good feeling, makes me smile, helps me learn or makes me think.
Going in to Reddit with a chip on your shoulder is not going to be a happy experience for you, I think. Probably not worth your while.
I can understand the frustration with karma requirements. The subreddit I moderate has something like that, but it’s set up where the mods can review and approve the post. (And the note when the post is removed will tell you this. I advocated for that before I became a mod.) But my subreddit is rather small.
I personally would not post in r/Astronomy, having read the rules and the attitude of the moderation. They do not seem to be attempting to create a friendly subreddit. I might look at the images, but that’s it.
I’ve only been on Reddit a year (oh look, I have 4K karma…woo hoo!) but I had no problem overcoming any posting requirements, even in more restrictive subs…you just have to participate a bit to earn trust.
Also, it’s worth posting to because it fills a need the SDMB doesn’t, i.e. the discussion of focused interests. I would never go there for general posting or wide topics, however.
That’s because convos scroll off the sub’s main page VERY quickly, tho if the user has selected “hot” it may pop back up near the top, but how that works is rather arcane (as ones with no recent new posts can still do that anyway).
In the large subs. The one for Santa Barbara, as an example, isn’t like that. The regs all know each other, two of whom are also posters here under the same username.
Using a different browser (from the one your account was banned on, so if you were banned on chrome create a new account on firefox) on a different computer than the one you were banned on, but on the same wifi network seems to work, at least for now.
Of course we can discuss focussed interests here and of course we may have one or two people who can answer questions about such interests - but I am pretty sure @Maserschmidt’s point is we don’t have entire subreddits comprising people into Vintage Japanese Car Wheels, or Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches (yes these both exist)
I’ll be even less focused than that, if I want to have a discussion about the soccer team Bayern Munich, a very popular and world renowned team, there are a few soccer fans here who can talk in general terms, but that’s about it. Whereas, Reddit has more than 100,000 members I think in each of their two Bayern subs.
As @Princhester and @Maserschmidt have noted: the difference is that, on Reddit, you can not only discuss a very focused interest, but find a lot of people involved in discussing that, in a subreddit that is entirely devoted to it.
Most of the subreddits I follow are for really niche stuff: specific small-press tabletop roleplaying games, N scale model trains, etc. Here on the SDMB, I might find a handful of people who are interested in those specific topics, and able to participate in a discussion. On those subreddits, there are literally thousands of people regularly viewing and participating in them, and multiple topics/threads being started every day.
Comparatively, the Dope is just tiny (which doesn’t mean I don’t love it). Looking at the Users section of the board, there are only 130 Dopers – in total, across all topics – who have made 20 or more posts this week. There is, frankly, a fairly small universe of active posters here on the SDMB these days, which makes a real discussion of an esoteric or niche topic difficult.
Yeah, I already knew Reddit is 10 000 X or some such bigger, which means niche participation / coverage is stronger. My reply was more of an emotional plea, harkening back to the old days of SDMB, when no stinkin’ Reddit was around and the SDMB world was much bigger, but also an acknowledgment of the immense specialty knowhow hidden within the present SDMB clientele. I mean, I have a dozen niche interests I’d be happy to share deep wisdom about here, if someone only asked, and most here are the same.
It’s almost like we are settling to be a general, not-too-deep chat place, outside of politics.
IMO an inevitable result of loss of scale. We had it once, and at a time with very few competitors. The online world has utterly changed since then and all we’ve done is a) shrink and b) mostly stagnate.
The main reason most of us came here originally it was because we were fans of the column which is long defunct. A lot of people also came here because they searched for the answer to a question which had been an answered here and liked the place and stuck around. Now it’s pretty rare for anyone to come across this place. It’s just inertia from a bunch of geezers.
Even some of the larger subs still have a tight sense of community. The r/seattlekraken sub, for instance, while not enormous, is still a bustling sub dedicated to a major league sports team. And yet there’s a core group where we all know each other, know a bit about each other’s personal lives, sometimes coordinate merch buys for remote folks, and occasionally meet IRL. I live a thousand miles from Seattle and have met some of those folks at road games.