> One, which was mostly held over at Hacker News, generated good discussion on the value of cover letters in various hiring situations.
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> The other group, from the Programming Reddit, was far more hostile.
This is a good encapsulation of the difference between the two sites. If you want a polite place where something is respectable because it is well written, and where agreement is the preferred outcome, this is the site for you.
If you want a place where ideas themselves are challenged rather directly, and where respect is not automatically given because of flowery writing or authority, then for all its faults, Reddit is actually far better.
You can tell which site I prefer to read:) I get sick of the way people here get modded up and lauded for ideas that contain at their core severe and inexcusable logical, scientific, or mathematical problems. What I think should happen is that we should be looking through the skin and presentation, seeing if those ideas are worth anything, and if they're not, helping each other out by saying so clearly.
I think the difference is more that the people on HN have a lot more shared culture and shared values, meaning many are willing to make the same assumptions and see the same outcomes; while the people at reddit are more diverse and many are starting with totally different assumptions which would make your argument invalid.
Also, I think people tend to link their HN profiles more with their real lives. They shed a little more anonymity to gain a little more credibility. On Reddit people are a lot more anonymous, which makes it easier to brutally attack someone because there aren't many repercussions.
In general I am happy that there is almost always a dissenting opinion in the comments on HN, pointing out flaws in the argument that I might have been too complacent to catch.
There's a difference between "respect is not automatically given" and the kind of nastiness that reddit regularly dishes out. To put it succinctly, they pretty much fail the 'say it to my face' rule. There are plenty of things people here disagree about, just that they say it in a civil manner.
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> The other group, from the Programming Reddit, was far more hostile.
This is a good encapsulation of the difference between the two sites. If you want a polite place where something is respectable because it is well written, and where agreement is the preferred outcome, this is the site for you.
If you want a place where ideas themselves are challenged rather directly, and where respect is not automatically given because of flowery writing or authority, then for all its faults, Reddit is actually far better.
You can tell which site I prefer to read:) I get sick of the way people here get modded up and lauded for ideas that contain at their core severe and inexcusable logical, scientific, or mathematical problems. What I think should happen is that we should be looking through the skin and presentation, seeing if those ideas are worth anything, and if they're not, helping each other out by saying so clearly.