That page right there is why I never used Reddit and when I drop by I just don't understand it. So, your comment sounds interesting, I click the page and it's just a bunch of unrelated stuff with title's like "Does anybody else use it when they don't want to hear something ?" Hear what? What is the level above, what connects these posts?? The top of the page just says "Come for the cats stay for the something" and the top post says "Awesome new relevant CSS trick added to the subreddit." -- What?? the link I clicked suggests something about "earrumblersassemble". Clicking on a Reddit link is almost always a maddening experience for me. What is wrong with me?!
You have an unrealistic expectation of Reddit. A subreddit is not an information dump for people who want to learn about a topic (for that you should look to the sidebar, or FAQ, or Wikipedia).
Its a community of people who are interested in a topic (and trolls... so many trolls) sorted by the most recent things they were talking about and whether the community wanted to talk about it. Communities don't constantly post and upvote introductory stuff in case new people happen by, but they are often responsive to questions from new people
Think of it like a clubhouse that you walked into. Right now you are standing at the bar trying to listen in on random conversations around you and saying "none of these people are talking about what I want to know in terms I can understand, some of them are even talking about whether they like the clubhouse's new decorations! WTF!".
Instead you should try joining into one of the conversations, or looking for a sign that says "new people come over here".
Don't worry, I'm with you on this one. It's a garbage format, and it's assuredly a willful lack of organization as an exclusionary tactic, used to alienate people on some level, and require degrees of subordination among those late to the party. Is it simply a natural defense mechanism, that preserves an otherwise autonomous complex system? Maybe...
It's used all over the internet, and it's, by turns, a passive aggressive posture. Some acquiesce, and others enforce. The rest abandon. Linux follows a similar pattern with RTFM.
The Linux community process, as an example, has graduated to exclusion through sheer volume, with shrugs all around, as if to say the world really is just that complicated. But it's not. Inertia makes the situation more complicated than things need to be, and that disorganization (which was originally a product of the "everything is a file/lots of tiny, specialized executable programs" philosophy started with UNIX, leaves everyone blameless and) offers advantages to what I've come to refer to as trivia sherpas, who understand the seniority they've accumulated, and wish to keep things that way.
It often doesn't start as anything malicious, and some of it really is incidental, but that it stays that way is no accident. Sort of like the petroleum and automobile industry dynamic. Neither was an ideal solution for the problems they solve, but once circumstances snowballed in a certain direction, we all got stuck with these elephants in the room. Is it possible to uproot and improve the situation? I wonder...
Even reddit has its moments. For that matter, so do even YouTube comments.
It depends a lot on the subreddit (they're essentially different websites), and of course the people. You can often find the great Walter Bright himself answering questions on D, for instance - https://www.reddit.com/user/WalterBright
