I don’t know why I decided to browse a popular sub today, r/books (logged out, I don’t have an account anymore). Maybe I hoped I might learn something. As if! People make the absolute same posts over and over. Today I read a book! I read one page of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and I already know it’s a masterpiece and the best book ever. I read 1984 and wow, just wow. I hate stickers in book covers. Audiobooks good. Actually audiobooks bad. I hate movie covers. The absolute same thing as yesterday, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years ago. May I remember this feeling next time I decide to browse Reddit again.

Why do old users put up with this? How can they even pretend that they haven’t already read this stuff a million times before? Or are these subs 100% driven by new users and repost bots? The complete lack of new content is mind boggling.

  • @[email protected]
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    401 year ago

    Probably the same reason people keep posting the same questions in tech subs over and over and over again.

    There are a lot of people who need help/need to tell the world about something great to them, but few people are capable of or care to search previous posts.

    Moderators removing duplicates often results in a bad user experience, especially so for new users who haven’t seen that post tens of times, so it’s often allowed to a certain degree.

    • @[email protected]
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      111 year ago

      You are spot on and it’s infuriating in the opposite direction. I sub to a small local city sub reddit and people will post the same question every day instead of just doing a quick search to find that their same question has been asked 20 times this month.

      For a while, I was still using reddit to go to those small niche subs, but now they are garbage too

      • Remmock
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        71 year ago

        I’ve always found the most effective thing is to wordlessly link the oldest thread I can remember to the poster.

    • kratoz29
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      21 year ago

      And that is why forums deserved better (not implying they are dead, but most people certainly moved away).

      You could have some sort of organization with them, unlike most social media.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

        Umm, sorry, this post goes in our Comparing Software board. Please keep discussion here on topic. /typicalforummod

        • kratoz29
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          31 year ago

          Or use our old ass forgotten megathread regarding this niche subject!

    • @[email protected]OP
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      21 year ago

      This makes more sense for tech subs because I would assume that people might want to post about their problems but not be interested in reading about others’ problems so not be a subscriber. But I would expect that people who like books would subscribe to the sub, which means that they have already seen this all before a million times. But no, people post and comment like this is all new.