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Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

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Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#101

Post by kaens »

StavrosK wrote: post #89
zeraholladay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by informed abstainers, but if you mean informed abstainers of Reddit then I can speak for myself. I see Reddit as a self-aggrandizing media outlet. Members generally accept liberal values as status quo. Meaningful discussion imitates base prime time political discourse. Some of my specific gripes are: 1. Racism on Reddit is an acceptable subtext, as long as the subtext is funny. 2. Sexism…

I think it's more that making racist/sexist jokes is acceptable, as long as people aren't offended. Telling racist/sexist jokes is not the same as being racist/sexist.

There are a lot of people (myself included) that do not think that there are taboo topics of conversation, or taboo topics of jokes -- humor relies at least partially on delivery and unexpected turns / clever twists, which are largely independent of subject matter.

That said, that doesn't mean that I think it's necessarily appropriate to make racist jokes on a board like Reddit -- it's a textual medium, and depending on the context could be extremely unintentionally offensive to people.

That said, I can't say that jokes of any subject matter bother me on Reddit. There is some actual misogyny, and some interpreted-as-misogyny-when-it's-not drama (and you can replace misogyny with just about any "going to offend people" term here), and it detracts greatly from having useful discussion.

Then again, although the primary purpose of Reddit was useful discussion, it's really more like a pub filled with pretty smart drunk folk. It's a social gathering place, and great stuff can be found, organized, talked about, and done -- but there's also going to be some guy slurring something about his genitalia and women or whatever.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#102

Post by kaens »

StavrosK wrote: post #88
ronnoch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I would characterize Reddit (as characterized by what's voted up into default visibility) as fairly open-minded, even compulsively contrarian. Have you been there recently? They're "contrarian" in the sense that they disagree with the non-Reddit mainstream, but they hardly respect contrarianism to their own views. I definitely would not call them "open-minded." (At least, not in the main subreddits. There are s…

I disagree. Sure, it's susceptible to groupthink, but one comment by someone pointing this out is enough to turn the scales. I have never seen a single "don't downvote this guy, he's making a good point" not reverse the downvotes and lead to the person being upvoted (unless he wasn't making a good argument, but I've never seen that).

Do you read with no threshold, and read through entire threads? Read sorted by worst (or lowest or whatever it is)?

I used to. I stopped when the noise got too annoying to sift through, but I would see good comments hidden to most people by downvotes more often than never.

The "don't downvote this guy" reversal happens often, and it's really a very nice thing about the Reddit community, but a solid comment or argument is not guaranteed that treatment by any means, and sometimes that reversal doesn't actually work.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#103

Post by kaens »

Lewisham wrote: post #65
heyitsnick wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place to have it. Why?

Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system. Perhaps only Slashdot is the only community I've seen where points are awarded to comments not based on agreement, but on general merit. Admit it: you've downvoted people you don't agree with. When enough people do it, you get groupthink. Forums/mailing lists don't have that problem. Every post is given equal merit in the number of eyeballs that read i…

Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system.

I'd almost argue that groupthink is inherent in human interaction in groups larger than one. Almost.

Forums and mailing lists are certainly susceptible to it, even though it occurs less often, but I suspect that has more to do with the size of their memberships. SA, for instance, has tons of it.

Oh, and /. had a serious problem with it for a long time. Their moderation system helps, and maybe it's gotten a lot better (it's been a while since I was active on it), but oh man when /. was the site, it was pretty bad.

/. is a good example of what seems to happen to a lot of online communities -- a small, competent, awesome base of users is very active for a while, things snowball, you then get a huge upsurge in users and activity and trolling, and then that eventually fades and your userbase stabilizes at a point where the userbase is pretty solid and there's not too much in the way of ridiculousness going on.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#104

Post by lukeschlather »

kaens wrote: post #100
lukeschlather wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between Reddit and HN though is that a well-reasoned "corporations suck" comment will not get downvoted, while on Reddit a well-reasoned "unions suck" comment will get downvoted. Reddit has bouts of reasonableness, but I've never found a subreddit that is free of the mob. Except /r/dwarffortress.

on Reddit a well-reasoned "unions suck" comment will get downvoted. I'd imagine that would depend on what subreddit the thread was in. Frontpage? Yeah, probably. Then again, if it is well reasoned, there will also be people pointing out that the downvotes are frivolous, and agreeing with points and debating.

That was not really the best example. I was playing off the parent's post.

Reddit's biases overlap a fair amount with HN's. Pick a topic where HN and Reddit agree, and you will see the effect more clearly, since the HN crowd on Reddit otherwise serves as a bit of balance.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#105

Post by kaens »

lukeschlather wrote: post #104
kaens wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on Reddit a well-reasoned "unions suck" comment will get downvoted. I'd imagine that would depend on what subreddit the thread was in. Frontpage? Yeah, probably. Then again, if it is well reasoned, there will also be people pointing out that the downvotes are frivolous, and agreeing with points and debating.

That was not really the best example. I was playing off the parent's post. Reddit's biases overlap a fair amount with HN's. Pick a topic where HN and Reddit agree, and you will see the effect more clearly, since the HN crowd on Reddit otherwise serves as a bit of balance.

Sure, and I wasn't talking only about the example, but about the trend itself.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#106

Post by StavrosK »

kaens wrote: post #101
StavrosK wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that making racist/sexist jokes is acceptable, as long as people aren't offended. Telling racist/sexist jokes is not the same as being racist/sexist.

There are a lot of people (myself included) that do not think that there are taboo topics of conversation, or taboo topics of jokes -- humor relies at least partially on delivery and unexpected turns / clever twists, which are largely independent of subject matter. That said, that doesn't mean that I think it's necessarily appropriate to make racist jokes on a board like Reddit -- it's a textual medium, and depending…

I agree, it depends though. I think mostly the jokes manage to not offend, and offensive jokes are downvoted. There's not really so much misogyny as bias to side with the submitter. When someone says "my girlfriend cheated on me" everyone goes "dump that bitch/X that Y", but if a woman says "my boyfriend cheated on me", people will again say "dump that SOB".

It's not that they're against women, they're against whomever is not telling them their side of the story. It's only natural, if a friend tells you that their boy/girlfriend did something bad, you'll side with them, and so will the other party's friends. Usually both parties have a share of the responsibility, but it's human nature to usually take the side of the person who tells you the story.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#107

Post by StavrosK »

kaens wrote: post #102
StavrosK wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Sure, it's susceptible to groupthink, but one comment by someone pointing this out is enough to turn the scales. I have never seen a single "don't downvote this guy, he's making a good point" not reverse the downvotes and lead to the person being upvoted (unless he wasn't making a good argument, but I've never seen that).

Do you read with no threshold, and read through entire threads? Read sorted by worst (or lowest or whatever it is)? I used to. I stopped when the noise got too annoying to sift through, but I would see good comments hidden to most people by downvotes more often than never. The "don't downvote this guy" reversal happens often, and it's really a very nice thing about the Reddit community, but a solid comment or argumen…

Sure, but the vast majority of the time I've seen (and done) it, it does work, and that's commendable. I firmly believe that redditors are a nudge away (if that) from great discussions, and a "he's making a good point" is enough to make redditors say "wait, I downvoted him because I disagree, not because his point is bad. Let me undo that".

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#108

Post by steveklabnik »

jules wrote: post #94
_delirium wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even HN isn't that much different imo, especially outside its core competence of technical discussion (which is quite good). Discussions about economics, government, education, etc., on reddit and HN are about equally annoying to me (though I occasionally seem to fail to abstain from them at both places), with a lot of mob-mentality, up/down-voting based on agreement/disagreement, and not very well thought out knee-j…

The technical discussion on HN is not better than on Reddit. There is more noise on Reddit, but the level of expertise in the top is often higher. The people on Reddit in technical discussions are often more knowledgeable and more open minded (the tone of the discussion is less serious). HN has more groupthink and hero-envy.

Really? I had to -frontpage proggit a few weeks ago because I was sick of the trolling, circlejerking, and general asshattery. I still read several subreddits, but overall...

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#109

Post by wvenable »

Natsu wrote: post #87
wvenable wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a very good place to have a discussion with a small group of people -- thanks to the orangered envelope you get whenever someone replies to one of your posts. HN, by comparison, discussions last only as long as the link remains on the homepage. On reddit, I've had conversations go on for weeks.

> HN, by comparison, discussions last only as long as the link remains on the homepage Maybe if you don't check your threads for replies. Granted, not everyone does that, but I've conversed with more than a few folks long after the original story vanished.

I check the threads link periodically (for example, right now) but I find most other participants in the conversation do not and almost 90% of the time the conversation is dead by the end of the day.

Re: Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism

#110

Post by axod »

anon_d wrote: post #95
axod wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mob rule is extremely distasteful to watch IMHO, and it's certainly a very specific community now - liberal, pro-drugs, anti-consumerism etc etc. There's a lot of knee-jerk reactions and short-termism - outraged one day, forgotten the next. They can get their users to 'do good' in the world, but can they make any money yet?

Stop reading r/politics!

I'm talking front page stories here.
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