From what I've seen, most people don't actually perceive a huge difference, and either only know about one, or use both indifferently. That's to be expected, because a huge percentage of Reddit users in general only come on the site to consume content, and don't think too critically about the moderation styles and communities of the subs they join as long as they put interesting things in their feed. Of course, few of them will comment in this thread, so you might not realize that's the majority.

Of the people that do have a preference one way or another, I've observed that r/nyc users think r/newyorkcity is over-moderated by extremely liberal mods. r/newyorkcity users think r/nyc is full of conservatives and is, depending on who you ask, under-moderated or over-moderated by conservative mods.

I use both, although not indifferently. A case could be made that r/newyorkcity is slightly more left-leaning and more strongly moderated, but both reflect the variety of political views you find in the city to some extent. There is one clear difference, though: r/newyorkcity users are significantly more likley to have a strong opinion on r/nyc than the other way around, as you've probably observed by now.

I'd recommend using both as well. I'll save my rant about the two party system for a more relevant thread, but I will say that people in the city are much more likley to pick and choose which parts of a given party's platform they subscribe to than people in other parts of the country are, so you shouldn't assume you're "surrounded by trumpies" just because somebody voices one tough on crime opinion.

If you have a two pipe system you're better off just shutting the valves. Two pipe valves are designed to be used repeatedly and to be partially closed to throttle the heat. If you see multiple valves, only touch the one that's closest to your radiator on the steam supply side, though. That one is the one for you to use, the others are just to isolate the radiator for repairs and will probably start leaking if you wear out the seals by repeated use.

If you have a one-pipe steam system (the most common in smaller residential buildings in the city), there is another way to effectively stop a radiator from heating that doesn't involve opening and closing the valves. You just have to block the air from escaping out of the air vent with duct tape. This can often be just as effective as closing the steam supply valve, but you don't run the risk of creating leaks around the valve stem by using it repeatedly (the valves ARE meant to be used, but only for maintenance purposes, not opened and closed over and over again).

Beware that doing this may cause reduced heat output and / or increased hissing from other nearby radiators because the air in the steam lines has one fewer place it can escape. As long as every other radiator has a working air vent this shouldn't significantly harm the overall effectiveness of the system, though.

If you don't know what part of the radiator the air vent is, this article has some nice illustrations: https://www.sparksuper.com/5-steps-to-healthy-steam-radiators/

Also consider just telling your super / landlord the heat is on too high. Talk to your neighbors and see if they're hot as well. Sometimes they just set the central system really high assuming somebody is always going to be cold and everybody else can just open a window. If everybody is hot, though, that excess heating is just wasting their money.