>You don't stand to gain anything from Reddit ever.
Oh come on, really?
I'm a hobbyist game developer. I frequent a few subreddits including /r/gamedev. It's a fantastic community and I've learned a lot there, and I've been able to use it for free promotion. It's been very valuable to me and I've enjoyed using it.
If your statement was "you don't stand to gain anything from /r/funny ever" I might agree with you, but this is just too broad a brush to paint hundreds or thousands of individual communities with.
You're better off going to a website entirely dedicated for that topic than sub section of a link aggregator. Why not just frequent http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html or conceptart.org or something?
But isn't HN just an aggregator too? Just lacking the subsections? When you get down to it, how much specialization do you want? Surely a dedicated objective C site would suit me better, or a dedicated Python site. This generalized site called HN is no good at all. I find, unsurprisingly, that reddit isn't something that is any one thing. There is some good, some bad (well, lots) and some excellent stuff (not enough though). For the record, HN provides lots of what I want, and heaps of what I don't, but with a signal to noise magnitudes higher than reddits.
The thing about HN is that you can verify a lot of users on here by going to their profile and seeing who they are (for the most part), a feature Reddit does not have.
On some subreddits (including gamedev) your flair can say something personally identifying about you, like your Twitter handle. It's optional, but it's optional here too.
Sure, other options are out there, but why should I? I like Reddit. I was challenging the statement that it's impossible to derive value from Reddit. I do.
Oh come on, really?
I'm a hobbyist game developer. I frequent a few subreddits including /r/gamedev. It's a fantastic community and I've learned a lot there, and I've been able to use it for free promotion. It's been very valuable to me and I've enjoyed using it.
If your statement was "you don't stand to gain anything from /r/funny ever" I might agree with you, but this is just too broad a brush to paint hundreds or thousands of individual communities with.