There are some very specific kinds of interactions that are much harder to find anywhere else. At the same time, large subreddits tend to have stringent rules, which mods frequently apply in an inconsistent and subjective manner.

I get that it's hard to manage a sub with thousands of people, but at the same time, it is frustrating to make an effort to write a long post just to realize there is no place for it.

To make matters worse, the principle of charity is basically unheard of, and people will evaluate your sentences in such a way to make them the least true, sometimes adding personal hostilities.

Posting on Reddit feels like something that should require a legal department, and I would very much like to stop doing that altogether. At the same time, places like /r/emacs are essential to help me quickly solve issues, and /r/destructiveReaders/ gave me some of the best criticism of my material I have ever had (and I'm including people from outside the Internet).

So I guess it comes up to self-control to not waste my time with subs that are prone to be toxic. But it's hard, sometimes.

Do you still post on Reddit? If so, what are your strategies to avoid unnecessary frustration?

Discuss: namespace clashes expose and ensure instabilities in user-side solutions to interface problems.

Case in point -- the RemindMeBot, which will send a timed reminder message to anyone who calls it in a reddit comment with the phrase "RemindMe!", has been cloned and iterated upon by another bot, Kzreminderbot, which responds to the exact same trigger phrase. Both bots reply to the comment threads where they are summoned. Kzreminderbot has slightly more diverse features, including email/text notification, but the interesting thing here (I think) is the impotence of the response from the creator of RemindMeBot, who has added a link in their comment replies to send annoyed feedback to the second bot.

We talk occasionally about the scramble for usernames on new services, but this is an slightly novel example of the cascading hierarchies of website design. A feature which reddit lacked is added by a bot, but that bot is too provisional to cover the hole which it was meant to fill.

I recently received this message from an admin:

Hello! You are receiving this message because you have followed a user profile in the past.

Starting on 08/19/2019, we will begin showing some users new followers of their profile. In about 3 months, all users will be able to see all the usernames of their followers, including follows that were done in the past, while the user profile feature was in beta. Please take a moment to check your subscriptions list (where followed users also appear) to ensure that if you follow someone, you are comfortable with them being aware of this.

It's a rather big change and a shame that they are making reddit more and more like the rest of social media.