Is SDN a watered down version of /r/medicalschool

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evilboy

evilboy

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It seems like the first page is just copy paste of what is written there, yet they have more content and less trolling because of the free range of thinking allowed there.
 
tantacles said:
http://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/
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kill_it_with_fire.gif
 
evilboy said:
It seems like the first page is just copy paste of what is written there, yet they have more content and less trolling because of the free range of thinking allowed there.
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There might be more turnaround in the redditor population, which might be the source of the "free range of thinking." Really, it's just new people asking/answering the same questions. There are a lot of grumpy oldtimers on SDN.

Overall, I think SDN is the better source because the breadth of information is nearly infinite as long as you use the search function. I'm also not a fan of the general redditor's sense of humor. But that's only a personal preference.
 
/r/medicalschool has, in general, much higher-quality discussions than here. This place has been over-run with gunners and trolls for a long time.

That being said, some parts of sdn are indispensable, like the interview invite threads during the application season, or some of the sub-specialty specific boards.
 
SDN medical student forums in a nutshell:

Allo = gunners, aspergers, and trolls with a few helpful posts thrown in here and there

Osteo = DO v. MD for med school and residency

Clinical Rotations = abusive surgery and OB/Gyn residents, questions about basic hygiene and personal grooming

USMLE = massive circle jerk where everyone who gets a 250+ posts their score and complains about how hard the exam was
 
Kaputt said:
/r/medicalschool has, in general, much higher-quality discussions than here. This place has been over-run with gunners and trolls for a long time.

That being said, some parts of sdn are indispensable, like the interview invite threads during the application season, or some of the sub-specialty specific boards.
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/r/medicalschool is also an impossible to navigate mess thanks to reddit's upvoting format. reddit should have died just like Digg- both seemed dead for a time, actually- and yet it didn't. Hell if I know why it's still kicking, the site is a freakin' layout disaster and horribly unfriendly to find subreddits on without a search engine. I couldn't create a more unwieldy site if I tried.
 
alpinism said:
SDN medical student forums in a nutshell:

Allo = gunners, aspergers, and trolls with a few helpful posts thrown in here and there

Osteo = DO v. MD for med school and residency

Clinical Rotations = abusive surgery and OB/Gyn residents, questions about basic hygiene and personal grooming

USMLE = massive circle jerk where everyone who gets a 250+ posts their score and complains about how hard the exam was
Click to expand...
Hey, SDN is FULL of useful threads!
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/pee-pee-on-my-scrubs.143702/
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...n-admission-to-your-first-choice-school.1007/
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...look-busy-at-work-while-doing-nothing.180135/
I mean, I can keep digging up these gems all day without fail. Does reddit have this level of quality control? I dare say not.
 
Pardon me, but at 62 retired from medicine (general surgery), adult children through—with med school—I enjoy having a Martini (or more), surfing the web, reading, and posting here. If you want grumpy curmudgeonly posts have one of the residents, or attendings log you into the chat rooms at one of the "physician only" sites. Politics, issues with the ACA, EHRs, MOC, medmal issues, and all the **** you don't even have a sense of yet isn't as amusing. This stuff is enjoyable because it's fresh, enthusiastic, and not already tainted by the realities you'll all be tied up with for the next few decades. It's amusing, entertaining, and reading derivations and thought processes is a nice distraction. I suppose the blather on Facebook, Linkedin, is nearly as thoughtful? I could comment about a few things, but I'd be banned faster than a medical student complaining about one thing or another. Just have fun, you only get to do this once—life that is.
 
Mad Jack said:
/r/medicalschool is also an impossible to navigate mess thanks to reddit's upvoting format. reddit should have died just like Digg- both seemed dead for a time, actually- and yet it didn't. Hell if I know why it's still kicking, the site is a freakin' layout disaster and horribly unfriendly to find subreddits on without a search engine. I couldn't create a more unwieldy site if I tried.
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Exactly. In looking at it, /r/medicalschool is like SDN's ugly stepsister. The layout is terrible and difficult to navigate thru.
 
I browse both sites and sometimes the overlap is uncanny. I'm not sure where the content started--SDN or reddit. The main distinction for me is when I go on SDN, it's to read solely medical content. On reddit, I inevitably get distracted and end up watching gifs of people getting injured doing stupid things.
 
sameas said:
I browse both sites and sometimes the overlap is uncanny. I'm not sure where the content started--SDN or reddit. The main distinction for me is when I go on SDN, it's to read solely medical content. On reddit, I inevitably get distracted and end up watching gifs of people getting injured doing stupid things.
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Since we are the largest medical education website in existence and we regularly see stuff lifted from our forums posted over there, I venture that most of it probably originates here.
 
sameas said:
I browse both sites and sometimes the overlap is uncanny. I'm not sure where the content started--SDN or reddit. The main distinction for me is when I go on SDN, it's to read solely medical content. On reddit, I inevitably get distracted and end up watching gifs of people getting injured doing stupid things.
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Let's see, reddit started in June 2005. SDN started in December 1999 (which in real time terms is the beginning of Internet age). So more likely the content started on SDN first. For a website that started in 2005, their layout is quite cluttered and hard to navigate thru.
 
sameas said:
I browse both sites and sometimes the overlap is uncanny. I'm not sure where the content started--SDN or reddit. The main distinction for me is when I go on SDN, it's to read solely medical content. On reddit, I inevitably get distracted and end up watching gifs of people getting injured doing stupid things.
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4 chan -> reddit -> digg
outside of askreddit and askmeanything, reddit has almost no original content. it's basically all reposts or lifted content and i say this as someone who used to go on there daily for 6 years
 
Mad Jack said:
/r/medicalschool is also an impossible to navigate mess thanks to reddit's upvoting format. reddit should have died just like Digg- both seemed dead for a time, actually- and yet it didn't. Hell if I know why it's still kicking, the site is a freakin' layout disaster and horribly unfriendly to find subreddits on without a search engine. I couldn't create a more unwieldy site if I tried.
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The down-voting and active moderation there buries lots of the more ridiculous questions. Here, if those same questions were asked, we'd have a sea of snarky comments constantly bumping the threads.

Reddit is a pretty dumb site overall, but the small, niche subreddits can be pretty fun. /r/medicalschool is small enough that it isn't over-run with trolls.
 
 
I also browse /r/medicalschool (and, sadly, /r/premed). Agreed that there tends to be more trolls and nonsense content on SDN than on reddit, but IMO the quality of on-topic information here is a million times better than what you see on reddit. Frankly, on reddit it's just the blind leading the blind to an even worse degree than what you see here.
 
I don't see what the big deal is with reddit. SDN has better info and provides more entertainment value. Also, the upvote/downvote system blows. It's impossible to find anything on that site.
 
MedWonk said:
I don't see what the big deal is with reddit. SDN has better info and provides more entertainment value. Also, the upvote/downvote system blows. It's impossible to find anything on that site.
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The problem is that the upvote system doesn't reward you for being smart and insightful. It rewards you for making stupid puns and reposts of previous popular material, leading to everyone catering to the lowest common denominator. There are a few great subreddits like askscience and askhistorians where the moderation is fantastic and the discussion is high quality.
 
Psai said:
The problem is that the upvote system doesn't reward you for being smart and insightful. It rewards you for making stupid puns and reposts of previous popular material, leading to everyone catering to the lowest common denominator. There are a few great subreddits like askscience and askhistorians where the moderation is fantastic and the discussion is high quality.
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It's true.

Imagine if SDN sorted by likes.

My most helpful posts, and my most liked posts...often do not intersect.
 
SDN is the only forum type place I read or post. No energy left for other sites. I touch my facebook once a week even. I wouldn't recognize a reddit page if you hid the name.
 
Psai said:
The problem is that the upvote system doesn't reward you for being smart and insightful. It rewards you for making stupid puns and reposts of previous popular material, leading to everyone catering to the lowest common denominator. There are a few great subreddits like askscience and askhistorians where the moderation is fantastic and the discussion is high quality.
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Exactly. I've dished out some advice on /r/premed and /r/medicalschool every now and then, and without fail it will be downvoted because it doesn't fit into the groupthink circlejerk that the whole premise reddit is founded on promotes. I hardly ever even bother to vote on comments or posts, but some people get pretty damn offended at things they read on the interwebs.

At least in a format like traditional forums, all content is given an opportunity to be read. On reddit, groups have the ability to make things they don't agree with or don't like - regardless of how factual those things might be - less visible by downvoting it. When I read comments about medically-related stuff in the defaults, I just cringe. People are just so damn stupid but don't even recognize their own ignorance. Look at the comments for the cluster headache video in /r/videos for a prime example.
 
NickNaylor said:
On reddit, groups have the ability to make things they don't agree with or don't like - regardless of how factual those things might be - less visible by downvoting it.
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I'm imagining a whole bunch of readers like Chickenandwaffles downvoting **** and making it disappear bc it doesn't fit in their worldview. So glad up to this point I never used reddit and I'm glad I did.
 
NickNaylor said:
Exactly. I've dished out some advice on /r/premed and /r/medicalschool every now and then, and without fail it will be downvoted because it doesn't fit into the groupthink circlejerk that the whole premise reddit is founded on promotes. I hardly ever even bother to vote on comments or posts, but some people get pretty damn offended at things they read on the interwebs.

At least in a format like traditional forums, all content is given an opportunity to be read. On reddit, groups have the ability to make things they don't agree with or don't like - regardless of how factual those things might be - less visible by downvoting it. When I read comments about medically-related stuff in the defaults, I just cringe. People are just so damn stupid but don't even recognize their own ignorance. Look at the comments for the cluster headache video in /r/videos for a prime example.
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...
[–]sexquipoop69 3161 points 10 hours ago (6513|3352)

From Wiki "the disease may be the most painful condition known to medical science." ****

A comment of "this kills the steak" has 185 upvotes wow.

3161 upvotes for a twitter length copy/paste from wikipedia and the insightful addition of the word "****"
incredible.
 
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