Comment · Tue, March 22, 2016 · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
The dark side of internet forums
Original post in this thread
rrtrda · 161 points
While these and other health forums contain a wealth of incredibly helpful information and inspiration, I believe their darker sides are often ignored. As people here generally tend to be keen to debate, I think certain issues should be addressed. Let’s see which ones you’ve encountered yourself:
Prejudice: Many people just don’t come here to find neutral information about a certain nootropic/drug. They want to get their preset opinion confirmed. And if nobody tells them what they want to hear, they google further, or dispute what others are saying. The longer you google, the more likely you will stumble across the correlation you were looking for. But how relevant is it?
Misinformation: Yes, there are some people out here that deserve respect. With their profound knowledge they enrich discussions and create value for the community. But they not only check sample size and Pearson’s r. Those people spot methodological flaws and inaccuracies in studies. And can assess their meaningfulness. But let’s be honest about it: those people are rare and most people don’t have the skill nor the time to do that. I myself would love to be one of those able to truly judge. Unfortunatel…
What they were answering
panfist · 2 points
In-depth discussions occur on the internet over time scales longer than a day. Reddit keeps things at the top for about a day. It's not really feasible for moderators to try to sticky every good post.
I love the interface and threaded comments, but things just disappear off the front page too quickly.
I agree with /u/macwormer that reddit is just not suited to in-depth discussion. Traditional forums are better for that, but sometimes I wish they had voting and threaded conversations. They have their own set of problems, where long-running "official discussion" type threads tend to accumulate hundreds of garbage posts between the good ones.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Yeah, with the volume of posts we have now, things drop from the front page rather quickly. Short of changing the algorithm for that, stickying is the only way to overcome that effect.