The default sub-reddit's turn into what happens when you have a site populated mostly by the lowest common denominator and posts that appeal to the same. Once it became mainstream the defaults just fell into an Eternal September cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) that most sites never recover from. However, reddit had a defense mechanism against this in that there are many, many subsections and almost hidden communities or "True*" sub-reddit's for the core/original users who prefer some semblance of thought provoking content or discussion, or at least pretend to.
I generally unsubscribe from all of those defaults (except maybe /r/WorldNews) and almost never look at them, have some lists of subject related sub-reddits I like (ex: tech). There are sub-reddits that have communities in them I haven't found a replacement for elsewhere aside from maybe some private FB groups. There is something to be said for exclusivity or staying obscure. For every /r/The_Donald there is a /r/Sweden, or for /r/SRS and /r/RedPill there is /r/TwoXChromosomes and /r/AskMen. You aren't going to read about the good communities in the news, as polite people having interesting level headed discussions rarely makes headlines.
To me Hacker News is just another sub-reddit like site. I usually see the same links posted in my sub-reddit's as I do HN, and I'd wager the discussion is sometimes better in the sub-reddit's than it is here, it's at least on par.
> I generally unsubscribe from all of those defaults (except maybe /r/WorldNews)
Maybe I don't understand how bad the rest of the default subs are, but the last time I went to the comments in r/worldnews, I saw nothing but awful, racist garbage. Maybe the links and headlines are worth reading, but those comments have completely killed any interest in discussion there.
I get it, you want a news place that's not all US, all the time. I'm right there with you, but if I am going to "world news", then I expect news from everywhere in the world.
The US is the focal point of basically every other subreddit (e.g. politics), so they specifically go out of their way to be the rest of the world. That's not unfair by any means. If they open it up to US news then that's all it becomes. Call it "WorldNewsExceptTheUS" and you still put US at the focal point.
r/news does that, I don't actually go on r/worldnews and instead just use r/news which has actually a decent variety of news from around the world sometimes, also there are people who work hard to balance off the racist and hateful comments for the sub
/r/AskMen is a very skewed community too, just not as skewed as RedPill. It's like this all over the site. The whole site disproportionally attracts people who are unsatisfied with their social circles and looking for an alternative. It's like 4chan except people have recognizable usernames, so it feels like people are having genuine interactions with other people.
To see it all you have to do is go to a mainstream subreddit click on a few usernames and read the comment histories.
Does it? A subreddit is as good as its moderators; a good team can keep a sub from being flooded with trolls, or even regulars who are unfamiliar with a sub's rules or culture.
When a really nice niche subreddit is thrust into the lime-light by becoming a default, it usually dies from an influx of low-quality default users. If it doesn't die from that, the moderation team has to really step up their job - a job they're not getting paid to do which means moderation teams get overworked and burned out, and the quit and the sub dies from lack of moderation. If the subreddit is survives that, the more successful approach seems to be for moderation to become very heavy-handed, which does quite well in a number of places, but also forces a change to the subreddit's culture that was doing well before it became a default.
If the answer is to not become a default sub, well, then the low-quality of the default has affected a good quality sub from becoming a default and prevented quality content from reaching more users.
Unfortunately, a good moderation team doesn't just appear, and one way of acquiring talent is to gasp pay for it. Reddit's avoidance of paying moderators results in relying on unpaid volunteers to do the bulk of the work, so good teams are few and far between, and horrible racist troll-y shit is de jure.
Reddit wants to be "the front page of the internet", but when the default not-logged-in front page features shit like "What's the difference between a feminist and a gun? (self.Jokes)" (pulled just now), it's never going to rise above being dismissed as the front page for horrible trolls, racists, and misogynists.
If I'm supposed to make an account then wade through a pile of shit subreddits just to find an AskHistorians diamond or two, how about I just don't wade through the pile of shit at all?
I think some would be able to survive even the danger of being a default sub, for example either AskHistorians or AskAnthropologists just straight up deletes any top level comments without a source and are very ban happy leading to questions with only 5 answers, albeit all of decent quality.
This made me just imagine an aristocracy of commentators where once a community grows to a certain size/popularity it locks up and others must be vetted into the group through some process I can't imagine yet.
That's pretty much how every private tracker site has worked. Just s/seed/karma/ ratio and use the same process.
Might as well take the whole system where power users/VIP users with higher ratio or who paid can get extra privileges.
Comment karma makes your upvotes/downvotes worth more? Let admins endorse power-users with the power to "bless" people with high vote-power, including a buff to the implicit self-upvote?
I generally unsubscribe from all of those defaults (except maybe /r/WorldNews) and almost never look at them, have some lists of subject related sub-reddits I like (ex: tech). There are sub-reddits that have communities in them I haven't found a replacement for elsewhere aside from maybe some private FB groups. There is something to be said for exclusivity or staying obscure. For every /r/The_Donald there is a /r/Sweden, or for /r/SRS and /r/RedPill there is /r/TwoXChromosomes and /r/AskMen. You aren't going to read about the good communities in the news, as polite people having interesting level headed discussions rarely makes headlines.
To me Hacker News is just another sub-reddit like site. I usually see the same links posted in my sub-reddit's as I do HN, and I'd wager the discussion is sometimes better in the sub-reddit's than it is here, it's at least on par.