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Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

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Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#451

Post by sizzle »

bredren wrote: post #15

I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland. I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland. Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart. It isn't just dealing with t…

Hello fellow Oregonian, have you tried shadowbanning this/these disruptive individuals? How do you catch repeat offenders beginning a VPN? Browser fingerprinting? (Anyone else know?)

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#452

Post by sizzle »

bredren wrote: post #15

I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland. I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland. Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart. It isn't just dealing with t…

Hello fellow Oregonian, have you tried shadowbanning this/these disruptive individuals? How do you catch repeat offenders beginning a VPN? Browser fingerprinting? (Anyone else know?)

Thanks for keeping r/Portland such a fun place to hang around in, really enjoy the creative community/people who post there!

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#453

Post by SL61 »

md224 wrote: post #188

It seems to me like the main purpose of moderation is to make sure posts conform to the theme of the subreddit... to keep things on topic. Almost everything else can be taken care of by the downvotes of the community members. A subreddit is like a community where every citizen has a gun. They can police themselves by downvoting each other... the only thing mods need to do is make sure the theme of the community stays…

This was my experience on a couple of subreddits which were a bit smaller than yours. One of the subreddits even covered a topic that often gets a lot of drama and high-strung people. But outside of the occasional obvious troll, the communities managed themselves. “Low-quality” posts like memes were effectively disallowed by the community itself, i.e. they would always be downvoted - but if they became popular, so be it. We never got abusive modmail, no one was ever mad at us. If two users started arguing, we’d stay out unless there were actual threats or slurs, which only happened a few times.

I do think the situation is different for subreddits that aren’t really “communities” such as /r/pics or a meme subreddit, where most traffic comes from the front page. But the same general philosophy probably still applies to some extent.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#454

Post by dntbnmpls »

bredren wrote: post #15

I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland. I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland. Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart. It isn't just dealing with t…

> I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base.

You became a moderator because you have an agenda to push. Nobody wastes that much time modding a sub without an agenda. And your fellow mods allowed you to be mod because you share their ideology. This is the case for most subs and it's why subs tend towards ideological/propaganda shitholes.

> In this example, the person will not stop and creates new accounts every day.

You could always turn the sub private. But you won't because you want to use the sub to push an agenda. Right?

> While there are things Reddit can be doing to help, (such as improving tools to counter ban-evasion,) I think this problem is bigger than Reddit

Actually what reddit should be doing is declawing mods like you and going back to being a user centered platform. Like it used to be when reddit was fun and interesting.

> and focuses on lack of enforcement for digital actions that would qualify as genuine crimes of harassment if translated into the physical realm.

If there are genuine crimes in your sub, then call the cops. Simple.

For every shitty user, there is a shitty mod. As a matter of fact, it is shitty users that tend to become mods. You have a really easy solution to all your problems - privatize the sub. Make it invite only. For every complaint you listed, there is a solution provided by reddit - private subs.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#455

Post by allarm »

tptacek wrote: post #385
sova wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all what I said, I asked how will passively sitting by result in an unban? You are simply confirming the fact that there is no way to get unbanned, even if the moderators made a mistake, or if the person wants to actively participate. Reddit basically says if you get banned you must make a new account if you want to participate in that board still. So it's natural people make lots of accounts. Is there a mecha…

Stalking and harassing moderators won't get you unbanned; instead, it confirms that there should be no place for you anywhere on Reddit.

You keep responding with completely unrelated text.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#456

Post by dgzl »

jethro_tell wrote: post #335
thejynxed wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portland (and Seattle) have had such a terrible homeless (and drug addict) problem for decades that it's been reported on in various PBS shows such as Frontline several times over the years. It even spawned an entire music subgenre in rock that gave birth to the likes of Nirvana, Hole, Mudhoney, etc.

Heh, the dressing like a homeless logger/fisherman trend wasn't a show or a fashion statement. In my area, people complain that there are homeless people 'now', when I was a kid, fishermem would come home from Alaska with thousands of dollars of cash in their pockets, buy a tent and a sleeping bag and just camp right next to the bar. Lots of couch surfing. People had bars on their windows. These PNW cities have alway…

You're only partly right, the problem more is exceptionally worse than when you were a kid.

I'm 4th generation Southern Oregon and when I was a kid (20 years ago) I rarely saw homeless people in Medford, they either were much more reclusive or didn't exist. Ashland is it's own case however and we would play the game "Hiker or Homeless."

There's a bike path that runs from Ashland all the way to... Well, at least Central point, or maybe Gold Hill? It's about 25 miles. The Medford sections are now overflowing with tents and homeless camps, enough to make it dangerous for families and children. This was unthinkable twenty years ago.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#457

Post by ryandrake »

castillar76 wrote: post #175
jlg23 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find a comment inappropriate or unfair, or mod behavior hypocritical. And I share that in a post that gets flagged or downvoted, and I get banned. Kurt Tucholsky gave great advice on how to write a letter to a government agency that is applicable to all potentially heated discussions: * write letter. * put letter in drawer. * wait thre…

This is absolutely true, and it's unfortunate that the current format of sites like Reddit and HN discourage this kind of behavior. The comments that get the most votes are the ones that have been present the longest, which incentivizes early and fast, "shoot from the hip" commenting so your comments get into the flow early where people can see and vote on them. In most large subreddits, it's basically not worth your…

I guess one way to combat this is to just not worry so much about whether a comment gets lots of upvotes or whether or not it is even read. They’re fake internet points, don’t mean anything, and are not worth anything. If you feel you can contribute to the conversation, do so. Don’t worry about whether you’re commenting early enough or whether you are betting on the right “lucrative” thread. Your comment could be one out of a thousand—who cares? HN karma is not some kind of competition.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#458

Post by dang »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #179
staycoolboy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, bad actor here. I only use Hacker News and Reddit. And I always manage to get banned every few months, so I guess I'm a "bad actor". Usually I start off OK. I can rank up 1000 points on HN or 20k karma on Reddit quickly because some of the discussions are interesting and non-inflammatory and I have interesting things to say. But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find…

Another "bad actor" here. I think that it's a combination of two phenomena: * I have accounts not just here, but also at places like Lobsters and Something Awful. In those places, because accounts are rare and can be banned so easily, discourse is constantly trying to stay much more civil than here or Reddit. * As a former community moderator, I don't respect moderation actions on sites where anonymous signup is allo…

> I don't respect moderation actions on sites where anonymous signup is allowed.

We don't put barriers to signup because we want it to be easy for authors, experts, and people with firsthand knowledge of a situation to step into a thread. Those are some of the best comments HN receives. If you put up barriers to keep out hoi polloi, you end up keeping out the likes of Alan Kay and Peter Norvig too, and plenty of lesser known people who have made first-rate contributions.

Besides that, there are legitimate cases when throwaway accounts are needed in order for a person to post on a topic, often when they have first-hand knowledge of a situation as well. How do you allow that while keeping out trash?

Obviously, if there were a way to allow the above good stuff while keeping out trolls, toxic comments, etc., that'd be grand. But as long as there's a tradeoff, I'd rather have the long tail at both ends—I think the forum would be more mediocre and stale without it.

p.s. I'm puzzled by your comment about paid moderation. It seems to me that unpaid moderation would be more likely to be biased, since people are going to extract compensation for the work in some form or other. If it isn't money, it's probably going to be power or an ideological or personal agenda, or something else that manifests as bias. In any case I'd be curious to hear what sort of bias you think is showing up in mod actions on HN.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#459

Post by Mandatum »

bredren wrote: post #15

I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland. I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland. Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart. It isn't just dealing with t…

Shut your subreddit down and detail your actions. Use a tool that doesn't put your moderators in danger.

A subreddit isn't worth your safety.

There are online places where they use a third-party to verify identity. It may not have the most adoption, but at least you're not putting yourselves at risk.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#460

Post by dang »

cambalache wrote: post #445
loceng wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long argued that the downvote is terrible for civil discourse, I've had to tread carefully and be warned many times when I comment on it - including writing in-depth constructive criticism and not simply whining. It's strange to me that especially on a technology forum discussing the negatives or pitfalls of certain mechanisms is being suppressed, censored - just like with politics, as politics is inherently int…

The downvote/upvote count thing should be informative, and the display preferences based on user's choice. I find the HN practice of dimming downvoted comments downright Orwellian.

You can always click on a faded comment's timestamp to go to its page, where the comment should be in a readable font. I'd love to know what Orwell would say about requiring an extra click, but oh well.
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