About
Lena Marchetti runs editorial at What Reddit Thinks and owns our sourcing standard. Her background is in social-media research and digital ethnography: before this she spent six years studying how online communities form opinions, and that shapes how we work here. For every question we cover she defines which subreddits and threads count as representative, reads them in full, and writes the consensus verdict only after the discussion actually supports one. She enforces the rule the whole site runs on — we read and cite real threads, paraphrase community sentiment, and never invent quotes, usernames, or upvote numbers.
Areas of expertise
- Online-community research
- Consensus synthesis
- Source verification
- Digital ethnography
- Sentiment analysis
Bylines at
- Nieman Lab (contributor)
- Poynter (occasional)
- Columbia Journalism Review (freelance)
Recent questions
Is MyFitnessPal Premium worth it, according to Reddit?
Reddit's verdict on MyFitnessPal Premium is lukewarm and getting cooler: the unmatched food database keeps people on the platform, but the recurring sentiment in r/loseit and r/MyFitnessPal is that Premium increasingly charges for things that used to be free (the barcode scanner is the flashpoint), and that the macro/goal features it unlocks are available free elsewhere. Most people say pay only if you're already locked into MFP's database and use it daily.
What's the best calorie app for weight loss, according to Reddit?
In r/loseit and r/CICO the most-upvoted weight-loss stories almost never credit a clever app feature — they credit having logged consistently for a long time. From that, the 'best for weight loss' answer is shifting: people increasingly name PlateLens as the best overall pick because low-friction photo-or-manual logging is what kept them consistent, while MacroFactor stays a favorite for anyone who wants targets that quietly recalculate from their own trend data.
AirPods Pro or Sony XM5 — which does Reddit prefer?
Reddit treats this as a slightly apples-to-oranges fight — AirPods Pro are in-ear earbuds, the Sony WH-1000XM5 are over-ear headphones — but the recurring verdict is clear: AirPods Pro win on convenience and tight integration with iPhones, while the XM5 win on sound quality, comfort for long sessions, and battery. Newer AirPods Pro have closed much of the noise-cancelling gap, which has shifted the debate toward use-case rather than a clean winner.
Reach Lena via editorial@whatredditthinks.com with the subject line "Attn: Lena".