Reddit has completely nose dived the past couple of years. Both from a administrative sense, and a content sense. When they first started the gold program, to quiet the uproar that some users would have more power than others, they said that everyone would get the features of gold, just after a little while. They did that the first couple of times but now they don't. They recently started an IAMA app (why?), which is essentially just a PR machine. They have very inconsistent admin policies, censoring some stuff not censoring other things.
A long time ago, there were users that would appear in the comments of every top post and they were almost always jokes. There were submitters that would reach the front page consistently. These people had essentially learned how to game Reddit, finding the right jokes and right material for their audience. And because of that, over the past couple of years it has became a race to the bottom in almost every subreddit and every comment. RES makes Reddit usable to some extent, but my filters filter out 75% of r/all, and what's left isn't very engaging.
The website has obviously outgrown me, and I have started spending most of my time on other sites now (sometimes even Digg). And it doesn't matter that Reddit lost me as a heavy user, cause I'm a nobody and Reddit will still get millions of views, just that Reddit meant a lot to me. It was the first website where I actually learned stuff. My Wikipedia usage went through the roof, reading up on things that people were talking about that I had no idea existed. Long articles and even handed discussions, occasional humor. I didn't comment or post a lot but I looked forward to getting lost in it. I miss it a little.
As someone who has been on reddit since 2008, I'm in exactly the same shoes as you.
While I agree with them at least for the decision or ban this subreddit, I'm appalled by the communities reaction to it.
That, and the circle jerk of reddit (mostly my local subreddits), lead me it being the first site I've banned with /etc/hosts http://i.imgur.com/Womisb3.png
I still don't get it. Been on reddit since 2006 and it is still by far the best platform for online communities. The level of discussion is unparallelled, if you are specific with what subreddits you subscribe to.
Anecdotally, this seems to be true on both Reddit and HN.
I occasionally see HN users pop along who say, "well, HN just isn't what it used to be," and I look at their user page and find that their account is three years old. It's possible that they're on their second or third account, but context usually implies that they've just been using the site for around three years.
Ditto on Reddit. I was a regular reader of the site before it had comments. There's a frequent complaint among Reddit's users that it's not as good as it used to be, and usually the reasons they give for that are all things that have happened in just the last couple or few years. If you say for example, "yeah, Reddit really declined when pun threads became popular", most folks don't know what you're talking about it.
It makes me wonder if it's a psychological phenomenon, that things look inherently more valuable when they're new. That might be one explanation for the recent popularity of all of these social networks that focus most of all on what's new. (Facebook, HN, Twitter, Reddit... these all work fundamentally different from traditional online forums.)
A long time ago, there were users that would appear in the comments of every top post and they were almost always jokes. There were submitters that would reach the front page consistently. These people had essentially learned how to game Reddit, finding the right jokes and right material for their audience. And because of that, over the past couple of years it has became a race to the bottom in almost every subreddit and every comment. RES makes Reddit usable to some extent, but my filters filter out 75% of r/all, and what's left isn't very engaging.
The website has obviously outgrown me, and I have started spending most of my time on other sites now (sometimes even Digg). And it doesn't matter that Reddit lost me as a heavy user, cause I'm a nobody and Reddit will still get millions of views, just that Reddit meant a lot to me. It was the first website where I actually learned stuff. My Wikipedia usage went through the roof, reading up on things that people were talking about that I had no idea existed. Long articles and even handed discussions, occasional humor. I didn't comment or post a lot but I looked forward to getting lost in it. I miss it a little.