Quote:
Originally Posted by artdutra04
Reddit is a terrible place for substantial conversations/debates and answering technical questions.
The problem is that people use upvote and downvote as a proxy for "I agree" or "I disagree" with the content of posts. People like magical internet upvote points, so they tend to shy away from substantial boring conversation and go for the low-hanging fruit of upvotes, the posts that enough people will like to upvote and few will find faults with.
This results in the highest rated comments almost always being puns, memes, and reaction GIFs, even in specific sub-reddits.
Chief Delphi is better for a community like FRC for a few reasons:
- Unlike Reddit, most people with accounts on CD have met other people from CD in real life at events/competitions/etc. As such, most people here tie their accounts to their real name/photo and/or team number. True anonymity is rare and discouraged by the site rules.
- Forums like vBulletin (which is what Chief Delphi uses) are much better suited for long-term organization of topics based upon sub topics, like programming, motors, CAD, competitions, etc.
- The "voting" on posts here is limited in daily quantity, limited to how often you can give it to one person, is entirely private in how they are doled out, but public in their rolling total. By "voting", I'm talking about reputation points. As such, it tends to be used more sparingly, and generally isn't used much in a negative way unless there is egregious behavior (trolling, baseless accusations behind veil of anonymity, etc).
- Because of the above, trolling isn't very common here, and conversations are almost always civil and respectful.
- Chief Delphi has been around for a long time (longer than some current freshman have been alive!), and has a very large and active community of students, mentors, alumni, and sponsors. There is a huge amount of knowledge here via threads, photos, whitepapers and more, and lots more available by just asking a question.
|
This is an excellent summary for why /r/FRC isn't a great community forum.
I know it was joked about earlier, but there truly is a hivemind on reddit, and that's not really welcoming to someone new. Chief has been the longstanding giant for the FRC community, and it's got a good system going. It's down to each individual user, but most of the time on here, when a new person posts (and is a little out of line) we gently remind them of the forum rules instead of red-dotting them into oblivion. Exceptions, of course, are made for straight-out rude or offensive posts.
As a contrast, I posted the same sort of reminder you'd find here on Chief (a game hint isn't a game hint unless FRC explicitly calls it out as one) and I got downvoted for ruining the fun. "You must be fun at parties", etc.
Classy.
One of the things I really enjoy here is that even when you get 'dots', you're allowed to leave a response or comment - and even reply to it! You can't get that with downvotes. It's another tiny facet where CD allows for constructive discussion, rather than just 'I disagree with this, downvote'. On here, it's more of a quick way to leave direct, personal feedback and take it to PM's rather than calling each other out in the thread and detracting from the discussion.
Reddit is, as others have said - good for memes, and sharing 'look at this thing my team did', but Chief is the winner when it comes to long-term constructive discussions in this community. I don't see that changing anytime soon.