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It has been my experience for quite a few years now that the redditors who hang out in niche subs don't do so out of the goodness of their hearts in order to help people out, but to gang up on people, correct people, talk down to people, etc. To circlejerk with other lowlives who have nothing to fill their days with. You can get a few pieces of information from them that would be hard to find elsewhere, but it will always come with 50% of the thread being jerks or trying to have a laugh at your expense. Recently, one of them even told me outright that I had to expect abuse when showing up 'ignorant'. I.e. they'll take any excuse, even the fact that someone is simply new to the Thing, as reason to abuse them.
Is that really any different than the supposed halcyon days of web 1.0 forums full of cranky grognards?
(Maybe I just haven't judged my specific audience here and you don't think of that as a golden age of online discourse, in which case, fair enough. But I feel like "lurk moar" is generally good advice, and I'd rather get good information and a bit of cranky abuse than bad or trivial information with a "hope this helps <3".).
In the Usenet days so long as some users were willing to contribute positively, all you had to do was ignore the flames. Now with the mods as gatekeepers, those useful contributors are also chased away and the flamers are all that is left.
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No, things were never 'halcyon'. But you had more variety than you see on reddit these days. They fall into this mode. And they mostly all conform to the same superficial politics.
I wasn't told to 'lurk more', I was told I deserved abuse because I had less experience with x than they did. And that I was probably trolling because how on earth could anyone not already be familiar with the niche?
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