I dunno, it seems weird to me to treat reddit as one community. I use reddit a lot, but really 99% of my interactions is on /r/cfb, which is a space far from the descriptions painted here.
It is a community (and I do believe it is a community of its own) imo not far away from Hacker News in terms of creating and curating interesting content, and discussing it, for a focused group of interest, except rather than tech the interest happens to be college football.
I imagine there are plenty of other spaces like that on reddit for people. I dabble a bit (mostly lurking) in /r/kettlebell too which seems to be similar except smaller.
I think you've nailed it here. Viewed from the outside, Reddit is a very different place than when viewed from the inside. Outsiders tend to go to the default subs, which are the first subs you unsubscribe from when you choose to stay. Once people migrate to a topic-focused sub with decent moderators, they definitely become part of a community.
I think that also reflects Reddit's issues with mission confusion. Reddit does present itself as a single entity: "the frontpage of the Internet," and it was founded as a single community, a group of users on one forum. The introduction of subreddits has very slowly shifted it towards being a platform, a piece of forum-hosting software--and as it grows larger, it becomes much more enjoyable to use it to browse small forums than deal with the mob on the defaults. IMO they should fully commit to being a platform for many different communities, but the site's founding ethos was the opposite.
Agreed. Reddit is a very large, diverse group of separate communities. Trying to enforce a cohesive culture throughout reddit is doomed to fail, or at least will lead to a lot of strife and a loss of fringe groups.
It's like how politicians and media in the USA are always trying (and failing) to impose upon the citizens some country-wide cohesive cultural identity and feeling of belonging. The USA is too big, with too many different regional cultures and ideals. Doomed to fail, and you'll just annoy everyone in the process.
It is a community (and I do believe it is a community of its own) imo not far away from Hacker News in terms of creating and curating interesting content, and discussing it, for a focused group of interest, except rather than tech the interest happens to be college football.
I imagine there are plenty of other spaces like that on reddit for people. I dabble a bit (mostly lurking) in /r/kettlebell too which seems to be similar except smaller.