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Storming Reddit's Moat

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Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#71

Post by p_j_w »

detaro wrote: post #58
abcdjdjd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Moderators have a lot of power to influence conversations on Reddit in non-obvious ways. You had the above quote when I was commenting on your post, but may have edited it out. But I think this line right here is also why reddit is becoming unusable and going downhill fast. Basically, moderators are given way too much power and users have no recourse against mod abuse really. Users can't vote a moderator out for exa…

Plenty of high-quality subreddits are high-quality because they do moderate and don't succumb to the lowest common denominator of more mainstream subs. You'd be killing the IMHO most valuable parts of reddit with that rule.

I completely agree. In my opinion, the best subreddits all tend to ban memes or other low effort content, or at the very least restrict them to a weekly thread of some sort. If users were able to vote on mods, the ones that did this sort of stuff would probably all be removed.

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#72

Post by detaro »

abcdjdjd wrote: post #68
detaro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of high-quality subreddits are high-quality because they do moderate and don't succumb to the lowest common denominator of more mainstream subs. You'd be killing the IMHO most valuable parts of reddit with that rule.

Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history. Sure, you can make an argument that maybe the leaders (in this case mods) will be benevolent and lead fairly and for the betterment of all efficiently. After all, dictatorships are more "efficient" at getting stuff done than democracy (note, not saying GOOD is done, just more efficient when you don't have to consider ot…

There are plenty of subreddits that work just fine (I can't say I see moderation issues in most subreddits I frequent, and if I do it's more often "spam gets through"), and if they stop doing so the user base has a trivial recourse: fork and move. (Indeed it's not unheard of for there to be multiple subreddits for one topic, with different levels of strictness regarding content). That alone breaks the dictatorship analogy.

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#73

Post by abcdjdjd »

fjabre wrote: post #41
abcdjdjd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Moderators have a lot of power to influence conversations on Reddit in non-obvious ways. You had the above quote when I was commenting on your post, but may have edited it out. But I think this line right here is also why reddit is becoming unusable and going downhill fast. Basically, moderators are given way too much power and users have no recourse against mod abuse really. Users can't vote a moderator out for exa…

I couldn't agree with this more. As someone who has gotten to the top of Reddit front page twice with my free (no ads) web app I now cannot. It's all but impossible. Mods are so over protective they will ban you for practically nothing. If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out. I think Reddit's mod tools are disgusting and foster censorship and make Reddit a more negative and critical p…

I have left reddit mostly at this point as well, with some exceptions with some subreddits. The entire site is garbage at this point and filled with groupthink and mod abuse at this point.

I'm curious, what alternative sites have you found at this point, besides this one, that seem to have what Reddit used to be? Or maybe even if it isn't exactly what reddit used to be, at least some good alternative for sites to go to now?

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#74

Post by vkou »

abcdjdjd wrote: post #68
detaro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of high-quality subreddits are high-quality because they do moderate and don't succumb to the lowest common denominator of more mainstream subs. You'd be killing the IMHO most valuable parts of reddit with that rule.

Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history. Sure, you can make an argument that maybe the leaders (in this case mods) will be benevolent and lead fairly and for the betterment of all efficiently. After all, dictatorships are more "efficient" at getting stuff done than democracy (note, not saying GOOD is done, just more efficient when you don't have to consider ot…

> Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history.

Dictatorships have been the status quo for the world, for ~98% of recorded history. World history did not begin in 1708, 1776, 1918, or 1920.

Dictatorships fail, but they are usually replaced by other dictatorships.

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#75

Post by maxk42 »

mjmayank wrote: post #38
maxk42 wrote: post #28

I've lead two successful community "unbundling" efforts from reddit. Here are a few tips if you're thinking of doing the same: (1) You HAVE to kill the original community. Otherwise momentum will keep your users using the old community. Our first launch saw a successful small website take off initially after it was launched only to have traffic slowly die down over the next several months. What finally got it off the…

This is really interesting to hear about. Were you the creator of both communities that you unbundled from Reddit? Or did you bring the moderators on board with your business plan? Also how did the users react when you killed the community?

> Were you the creator of both communities that you unbundled from Reddit?

In both cases I was not the original creator but was a longstanding moderator who inherited an active community.

> did you bring the moderators on board with your business plan?

They brought me on board with theirs.

> how did the users react when you killed the community?

Positively. Reddit as a corporation isn't actually well-liked by the majority of the community. Poor administration policies, poor design changes, slow UI - there's a lot to complain about.

There were, of course, a few who loudly complained. But there will be a few who loudly complain about any change or no change at all.

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#76

Post by [deleted] »

abcdjdjd wrote: post #68
detaro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of high-quality subreddits are high-quality because they do moderate and don't succumb to the lowest common denominator of more mainstream subs. You'd be killing the IMHO most valuable parts of reddit with that rule.

Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history. Sure, you can make an argument that maybe the leaders (in this case mods) will be benevolent and lead fairly and for the betterment of all efficiently. After all, dictatorships are more "efficient" at getting stuff done than democracy (note, not saying GOOD is done, just more efficient when you don't have to consider ot…

[deleted]

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#77

Post by abcdjdjd »

detaro wrote: post #72
abcdjdjd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history. Sure, you can make an argument that maybe the leaders (in this case mods) will be benevolent and lead fairly and for the betterment of all efficiently. After all, dictatorships are more "efficient" at getting stuff done than democracy (note, not saying GOOD is done, just more efficient when you don't have to consider ot…

There are plenty of subreddits that work just fine (I can't say I see moderation issues in most subreddits I frequent, and if I do it's more often "spam gets through"), and if they stop doing so the user base has a trivial recourse: fork and move. (Indeed it's not unheard of for there to be multiple subreddits for one topic, with different levels of strictness regarding content). That alone breaks the dictatorship an…

>That alone breaks the dictatorship analogy.

It does not when you factor in their appears to be power mod users who moderate multiple subreddits and have power over most of the site now. Your assumption also assumes that this isn't a site wide issue and going to another subreddit solves this.

Again, the fact that power user mods exist ruins that claim for you. Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a norm across much of the site now also shows this is not the case.

Are there still some subs that don't have this abuse? Yes. But is it clear at this point the model that reddit is using is open for abuse and eventually it seems many (if not most) subreddits eventually fall into this abuse problem? Yes.

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#78

Post by aspaceman »

cblconfederate wrote: post #47
jedberg wrote: post #9

> Reddit content ranks really well on Google The most public contribution I made to reddit's codebase when I was there was the SEO features. I did all the usual stuff like cleaning up title and meta tags, and adding a sitemap. But the change that had the largest effect, by far, was adding the title of the story into the URL. As soon as we launched that, our Google traffic shot up. The way you know you have truly mast…

I never understood why google gives juice to this kind of URLs. It makes URLs longer and is barely useful anymroe but google keeps demanding it.

Think they wanted to bias against: "it's at http://zs9l.com/860d9fg%fids0a4?249F" and other URLs with alphanumerics since normal people speak them out.

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#79

Post by abcdjdjd »

brodouevencode wrote: post #21
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #15

Many popular subreddits are quietly operated by moderators with industry connections. Some of this occurs naturally. People who were deep enough into a niche to become moderators of a subreddit in the late 2000s and early 2010s are also likely to end up working in that industry or starting business in that industry. However, many companies have realized that being in the good graces of subreddit moderators can be ver…

Gave up on reddit a long time ago because of the moderation problems.

Curious, what alternatives have you found that are similar to what reddit used to be (besides this site)? Also, what alternative sites have you found replaced Reddit for you, even if they are not similar to what Reddit once was?

Re: Storming Reddit's Moat

#80

Post by detaro »

abcdjdjd wrote: post #77
detaro wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of subreddits that work just fine (I can't say I see moderation issues in most subreddits I frequent, and if I do it's more often "spam gets through"), and if they stop doing so the user base has a trivial recourse: fork and move. (Indeed it's not unheard of for there to be multiple subreddits for one topic, with different levels of strictness regarding content). That alone breaks the dictatorship an…

>That alone breaks the dictatorship analogy. It does not when you factor in their appears to be power mod users who moderate multiple subreddits and have power over most of the site now. Your assumption also assumes that this isn't a site wide issue and going to another subreddit solves this. Again, the fact that power user mods exist ruins that claim for you. Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a nor…

> Again, the fact that power user mods exist ruins that claim for you.

It's a far jump from "users who moderate to multiple subreddits" to "have power over most of the site". And if they mod one or multiple subreddits doesn't have much of an impact on other subs they are not involved with.

> Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a norm across much of the site now also shows this is not the case.

doesn't mesh with what I'm seeing, so "citation needed" on it being the norm.

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