For the millionth time, this is false. There are certainly many gigantic ones but most of them are small. The specialized ones are small and people do know each other and are very trustworthy. World class experts that are happy to help with any subject you can imagine. They often have extensive FAQs and guides. reddit is still a fantastic resource if you know how to use it.
I’ve been spoiled by the Dope in this way, as some other (non-reddit) places I hang out at the modding process is utterly opaque, I’ll just see “banned” next to someone (if I am lucky and they didn’t just cornfield the bannee’s entire posting history where I may not know it even happened), will wonder what horrible thing they did to warrant that, and if I dare to ask I’LL get banned or at least warned off.
I’ll then do some research off of the site in question, find out that quite a few of the bannings are for truly lame and arbitrary reasons in a lot of cases, yes politics in more than a few instances. One site (PM if curious) has a forum but its main focus is on a vast database of music data, but bans will nuke every contribution outside of the forum, reducing the utility of the site in the process.
For the two reddit warnings I got (the second resulting in a 3-day posting ban), I was sent a link for where I could dispute the warnings, upon which I’d be soon notified of their assessment of my dispute.
Crickets, of course.
Two crappy subreddits was enough for me.
A cookie crust made with gingersnaps is even better!
I actually find myself hanging out there more than here after “discovering” Reddit back in October. (I apparently posted a couple times four years ago when I had some issues with a piece of musical hardware.) There’s just more going on, and there’s more niche topics being discussed in depth. I don’t hang out on the argumentative subs, so I don’t know what goes on there, but all the subs I’m at feel more progressive and gentler than even here. My only mod interaction has been a 30-day ban from some sub on music for who knows what rule I broke. I didn’t write anything controversial or annoying, but I apparently broke some group rule. Never gave enough of a shit to challenge or find out. There’s plenty other subs, who gives a damn.
That said, despite my attention being diverted there, I don’t feel the same sense of personal connections and history that I get here. There’s personal stories I follow; there’s the “Cheers”-like atmosphere of a place where everyone knows your name; it’s much more like an actual community. So the Dope and Reddit kind of perform different functions to me.
In my case, the two subs that I had to contend with were my most frequented - my home town and a scale-modelling sub - so the others didn’t really compensate enough, I guess.
But yeah there’s definitely more going on there, like some really fringe stuff that I’d doubtfully find here.
Even before avatars came along here, a boon to this visually-oriented person, I got to know the handles of many Dopers. By extreme contrast, I cannot name a single fellow redditor-between the tiny generic cartoon avatars and the miniscule font for user names, combined with many of the latter being mundane generic creations with obligatory 4 digit numbers at the end, I hardly ever note the avatars or read the handles.
I don’t even remember what my exact handle is because I joined it with an auto-generated name, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change it without creating a new account. The one other thing that I don’t like about it is the slightly “gamified” aspect of karma and all that. I mean, I kinda get it, but the popularity contest aspect of it kind of rubs me the wrong way. But I did break 2000 likes the other day, so there’s that, I guess (on a complete throwaway comment. My most useful comments generally only get like 10-20 likes, but that’s because they tend to be in less popular subs. Post something on r/AskReddit or r/AmIOverracting early that gets a positive reaction and you can farm some karma.)
You can’t change a username ever. You can find out what it is if you know the email that you used if you have an associated email. It used to be that you didn’t have to have an email to register.
I know what it is because I’m auto-logged in on my computer and iPhone. I know the first two words of my name, but couldn’t tell you the 4 digits that follow if you offerred me a million dollars. And I have a bit over a thousand comments over there in the last few months.
I was really into the karma game for my first several years on there but have slowed way down. My top post has 102k net upvotes and my top comment has 10.4k net upvotes. I have over 1.7M total karma (1.2M post, 510k comment). A few years ago I started a sub that has over 60k members. I’ve had fun with it.
It is in no way a replacement for here of course but it’s still a great resource.
MapPorn and especially Whatisthisthing are great. Whatisthisthing could be an extension of the SDMB it is so helpful. I have joined dozens of subs but the most encouraging sub I have ever read is r/silverbugs. It is for people who collect silver and they never put down a beginner. You might have one post where someone asks if they should convert 3000 ounces of silver into gold and the next post is some high school kid with 3 old dimes and a bent silver dollar. Everyone is encouraging and offering advice.
I’d be too lazy to mash up all those gingersnaps and turn them into a shell, but if someone made a pumpkin pie shell like that for me, I’d be happy to use it instead of a graham cracker pie shell!
I am fond of Cemetery Porn.
Awesome pictures and commentary about memorials/graves worldwide.