I'll have to jump in and defend these platforms here: HN isn't toxic most of the time and with reddit it depends mostly on the community. I've seen many users here on dev start to become toxic and they get shut down instantly, which makes a much bigger difference than any up-/downvote system.
As for elitism, that's just completely untrue. Content on either of these platforms (in the case of reddit I can obviously only judge the communities I interact with regularly) is ranked almost exclusively by its content. There's no such thing as an elite that gets special treatment or more relevance.
Shallow content or poor retelling
[...]
Arguable: those articles are fine if they presented in the vein of "today I learned".
This. I like reading about users learning and figuring out new things, but when those sorts of posts are framed as tutorials, I feel kind of cheated. It's a similar thing to clickbait: the content might not even be bad, but it was advertised as something else.
If they are framed correctly however, I might just skip them on some days, and on others have a look at them and maybe even add a bunch of extra info or just my opinion if it's a topic I am familiar with.
List-Articles
It really depends. Sometimes people actually do make good lists of things that aren't widely known / used, and I do appreciate those. However, many of them also fall into the "shallow content" category. If your top 10 software of any kind list includes VS Code, vim and git, you're not providing any value.
EDIT:
As for a rating system, instead of a simple up-/downvote system, I would prefer having a 1 to 10 rating system. Hick's law is probably the best if not only reason to have a simple binary rating system, but I'd love to have a bit more of a spectrum to rate content. Some posts are just pointless while others might just need a little improvement here and there.
It'd also be cool if giving a bad rating would tell the user to explain their downvote à la "You've downvoted this post. Why not leave a friendly comment explaining what could have been done better?"
This. I like reading about users learning and figuring out new things, but when those sorts of posts are framed as tutorials, I feel kind of cheated.
100%. Just be honest about it - "I learned this yesterday and here are my thoughts..."
It really depends. Sometimes people actually do make good lists of things that aren't widely known / used, and I do appreciate those
True - to write this kind of list author needs to do a research. But a lot of list articles are just result of 10 minute internet search.
It'd also be cool if giving a bad rating would tell the user to explain their downvote à la "You've downvoted this post. Why not leave a friendly comment explaining what could have been done better?"
Yes. Would be nice
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I'll have to jump in and defend these platforms here: HN isn't toxic most of the time and with reddit it depends mostly on the community. I've seen many users here on dev start to become toxic and they get shut down instantly, which makes a much bigger difference than any up-/downvote system.
As for elitism, that's just completely untrue. Content on either of these platforms (in the case of reddit I can obviously only judge the communities I interact with regularly) is ranked almost exclusively by its content. There's no such thing as an elite that gets special treatment or more relevance.
This. I like reading about users learning and figuring out new things, but when those sorts of posts are framed as tutorials, I feel kind of cheated. It's a similar thing to clickbait: the content might not even be bad, but it was advertised as something else.
If they are framed correctly however, I might just skip them on some days, and on others have a look at them and maybe even add a bunch of extra info or just my opinion if it's a topic I am familiar with.
It really depends. Sometimes people actually do make good lists of things that aren't widely known / used, and I do appreciate those. However, many of them also fall into the "shallow content" category. If your top 10 software of any kind list includes VS Code, vim and git, you're not providing any value.
EDIT:
As for a rating system, instead of a simple up-/downvote system, I would prefer having a 1 to 10 rating system. Hick's law is probably the best if not only reason to have a simple binary rating system, but I'd love to have a bit more of a spectrum to rate content. Some posts are just pointless while others might just need a little improvement here and there.
It'd also be cool if giving a bad rating would tell the user to explain their downvote à la "You've downvoted this post. Why not leave a friendly comment explaining what could have been done better?"
100%. Just be honest about it - "I learned this yesterday and here are my thoughts..."
True - to write this kind of list author needs to do a research. But a lot of list articles are just result of 10 minute internet search.
Yes. Would be nice