There's some smaller subs that delivered great content. What will you miss the most?
In a broader sense, the fact that it was already established. I was comfortable. I had all my subs. More importantly, I could search up something of interest and find people who shared that interest. Now? Now I've flown the coop and damn, it's a little scary not having everything in one tidy little birdhouse. I have no doubt I will come to love Hubski, but I can't deny that it is mildly terrifying that there is no Super Smash Bros tag yet (you guys are out there, right? Right?). I believe it's just an initial fear though. I've never been a part of the building process.
Holy shit dude, you play Smash? I was just wondering if there were any Smashers on here. Which games do you play? I'm a PM guy myself, but I also dabble in Melee and play some Sm4sh on the side when my brother is annoying enough to convince me. But, awesome! We should make a Smash tag or something.
I like to think of different web communities like these as different 'countries' with different cultures. Once you get over the initial phase of tailoring the websites to your liking, learning the etiquette, and just getting to know the place you become much more 'at home'. Sure, it's intimidating, but it would be to visit Poland as well. However, you don't get the niche communities that Reddit has on here. :/ It's just the way that Reddit was set up with the subs really facilitated a lot of small groups coming together.
I love polandball! I think reddit is still the best place for it though. With the way things are, Reddit is not good for a bunch of things it was at some point, but I think a site with reddit's design and reddit's massive userbase is still the best for polandball.
I liked the smaller communities, where you basically posted what ever and just talked about common interests. In a way, yeah, Hubski basically is a large one of those magical subreddits, but with the way tags work, I miss a really cohesive and defined group of people who are interested in the same fields. Hubski is a bit more holistic, and I like that, but I feel that maybe some of the anonymous intimacy those subs offered is gone.
Nothing. I am just going to continue what I've been doing. Just stick with subreddits I enjoy.
Reddit is actually really enjoyable once you have it customized to your liking. It's hard to find places where you can have quality discussion because a lot of the defaults are replete with memes and hackneyed jokes.
Yep! I find myself skipping through the comment section to find good comments. But it can be a hassle. Though I have to admit I've chuckled some at those hackneyed jokes. :P
I'm not entirely sure I'm done using reddit yet. I mostly used it as a lurker and only really created an account so I could better curate things I wanted to see. Every once in a while, I like to get on and mindlessly scroll through r/gifs or whatever, looking for neat and funny things. If I do leave for good, I think I'll miss the two or three really good Android apps that I use to access reddit on mobile. See, for the type of content on reddit, I almost exclusively use my phone. As a semi-lurker, the experience of scrolling through a never ending feed of content is pretty much the perfect sort of activity to pass the time when all I have is my phone.
Disclaimer: I still use Reddit. I got into Reddit relatively early. I came in post subs, but before Digg crashed. Bozarking was still around. Since then, I wouldn't say Reddit got worse, but it changed. I never even look at the defaults these days, I just hang out in the subs that are relevant to my interests. The sheer size of Reddit at this point has made it like a modern usenet, and I can find discussion on whatever niche I want with no effort. What I do miss from those days though, is the effort the average user put in. Comments were longer on average. People wouldn't rely on cheap gags for karma but would put some effort into their jokes. I learned new stuff all the time from users who took the time to write long, enlightening posts. That all still exists, but it is buried under mountains of crap. Hubski has the quality content I missed, but it is lacking (and I don't think it will ever acquire), the dumb, over the top sense of humor that would make me chuckle during my bathroom break at work. I see this place being more like Metafilter than Reddit. Also, I sometimes miss the how programmer centric Reddit was back then. /r/programming was still a default, and it permeated everything. I do like a variety of perspectives, but Reddit was rather influential on my development as a programmer. Now I've been rambling for far too long about nothing that really matters, so cheers.
I would say that there is already established niche interests. You like an obsure board game? There is a sub with hundreds of people. You collect figures? Silver? You hate someone in particular? There is a subreddit with hundreds of people who are into the same thing. It can be an echo chamber but it is also nice once you set up the subs.
/r/SyrianCivilWar has been my source to follow that conflict (and its spillover) for years now. I honestly don't know if I can ever really leave reddit so long as I maintain an interest in following that conflict. Though it may be better for my own health to not be so invested in a foreign war. Following a bloody war on the internet, flipping through images of dead soldiers and decapitated prisoners is both horrifying and desensitizing. I'll try to stop visiting there. On a lighter note, /r/Soccer has by far the best soccer community I'll come across. I don't really know of another place to follow /r/SwanseaCity (though, of course, once the season starts, I'll be able to watch the Jacks on NBCSports).
/r/SyrianCivilWar is really amazing, and so is /r/UkrainianConflict. /r/Coys is the best soccer community ^_^
/r/UkraineConflict is good too. I guess the way the war seems less "hot" to me means it hasn't drawn my attention as much. I also have a big soft spot for the PYD and the Rojava revolution. And thanks for giving us Gylfi! Next season we'll be finishing ahead of you lot in the table ;)
The Imaginary Network of fictional art, which I'll still visit from time to time. As others have said, I don't think many of us will leave Reddit; it still serves its purpose of mass democratised information retrieval and indexing that no other website has the community size to match. The fact that we Reddit outcasts are here at all implies we are more versed and invested in Reddit-like theory than 95% of Reddit users, or we wouldn't have found Hubski to begin with; this in turn implies we already have pretty well curated and selective subReddit subscriptions, and there's really little wrong with our own Reddit feeds. Reddit still serves that function of harvesting and parsing links of the niches we're interested in, the key problem I think we all have with Reddit–the reason I'm here–is that Reddit is no longer a good place for meaningful conversation. The mechanics of how Reddit sorts posts and comments, combined with its size and demographic, have killed Reddits capability to systemically host good conversation. This is a function Reddit can no longer serve — and a function Hubski seems to serve quite well.
There really is a community for just about every conceivable subject on reddit. I'll miss that. Just tonight, I was wondering "where does $some_neighborhood launch their fireworks from?"... and I went to my city's subreddit and found the answer right away.