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Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge

arstechnica.com

101–110 of 112 posts

Re: Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge

#101

>Yet Reddit removed both moderators from their positions this summer because the mods refused to end r/canning's protest against Reddit and its new API fees; the protest had made the entire subreddit "read only." Now, the ousted mods fear that r/canning could become subject to unsafe advice that goes unnoticed by new moderators. "My biggest fear with all this is that someone will follow an unsafe recipe posted on the…

>Powermods dominated wide swaths of the site prior to the protests and this sort of concern was never raised I don't think most powermods really revolted. Many probably have financial motivations to keep running, so they can see inconvvinence as the cost of doing business. I am very worried about the "hobbyist mods". And yea, they weren't talked about for the same reason you don't talk about stuff you expect is "the…

>I don't think most powermods really revolted

Well, at least a substantial minority did.

>I am very worried about the "hobbyist mods". And yea, they weren't talked about for the same reason you don't talk about stuff you expect is "the ideal". If a mod is kind, has clear rules, and is even a domain expert in some cases, what is there to talk about?

Actually, this raises a good point. The hobbyist mods who were yeeted were probably disproportionately likely to be the sort of intemperate, authoritarian mods that given Reddit mods a bad name. Additionally, these mods are probably the most likely to see the easing of their authoritarian policies as tantamount to opening the doors to hatred, spam, misinformation, etc. Can their judgment really be trusted?

Re: Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Powermods dominated wide swaths of the site prior to the protests and this sort of concern was never raised I don't think most powermods really revolted. Many probably have financial motivations to keep running, so they can see inconvvinence as the cost of doing business. I am very worried about the "hobbyist mods". And yea, they weren't talked about for the same reason you don't talk about stuff you expect is "the…

>I don't think most powermods really revolted Well, at least a substantial minority did. >I am very worried about the "hobbyist mods". And yea, they weren't talked about for the same reason you don't talk about stuff you expect is "the ideal". If a mod is kind, has clear rules, and is even a domain expert in some cases, what is there to talk about? Actually, this raises a good point. The hobbyist mods who were yeeted…

>The hobbyist mods who were yeeted were probably disproportionately likely to be the sort of intemperate, authoritarian mods that given Reddit mods a bad name.

I don't know how you took my point of "if a mod is kind, has clear rules, and is a domain expert" and spun it around to "these mods lack self control and have bad rules". They were NOT talked about to begin with, that was my entire assertion.

>Can their judgment really be trusted?

I don't know, because I don't know your methodology of moderation. It sounds like you prefer a lasseiz faire approach and only want mods to keep out spam. if you don't want moderators to determine what hate and misinformation is, and are fine with low effort memes being on the front page of a sub, the current approach is ideal for you.

But, the kinds of subreddits being interviewed here were not those kinds of meme subreddits. They clearly cared about the content presented and wanted some level of quality in posts and comments.

- canning has a bit over 100k subscribers

- ender3 is 200k subs and I don't even think it's the largest 3d printer sub on Reddit

- homeautomation is the largest of the 3 mentioned with 2m subs

2/3 of these can "easily" be replaced with a different sub with looser rules if you feel strongly against their moderation style. Is it wrong for them want to maintain that level of quality?

Regardless, even a 2M sub isn't holding a candle to what actual powermods are controlling. They aren't too relevant to the discussion the author brings up.

Re: Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge

#103
post #38
post #4

Reddit has gotten very aggressive about pushing random subs onto you. I’ve really come to loathe the phrase “Because you interacted with a similar community”. I have muted so many subs, I’m getting sick of the site.

If you are using the app, I believe you can get rid of this under settings > username > enable home feed recommendations. Turning it off makes the app way more usable.

I just turned that off. If it works: thank you so very much!

Re: Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge

#104
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened "a couple of weeks ago"?

Reddit started charging huge money for API access. Thing is, reddits leadership are wildly incompetent and those APIs were relied upon by the mods to actually handle the vast oceans of posts that go on each day. Its left the mods with greatly increased workload as they now need to use the crappy tools Reddit gives them, and for some communities like the folks on /r/blind the site is totally unusable. Most subreddits…

That was a couple of months ago now. I left the site due to that, and just wondered if something else happened after.

Re: Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge

#107

Are we witnessing yet-another platform making solid steps towards extinction?

Perhaps, but it needs a proper competitor before it truly fades to irrelevancy.

Maybe it doesn't need a competitor but something that supersedes its design while staying inside the community of communities structure. Most Reddit clones do nothing better than Reddit, they just attempt to painstakingly emulate it. Karma is gamed too easily. Why hasn't someone tried to rank content by a mix of votes and quality indicators (grammar checks, NLP sentiment, engagement)? Innovation usually disrupts.

Re: Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge

#108
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit started charging huge money for API access. Thing is, reddits leadership are wildly incompetent and those APIs were relied upon by the mods to actually handle the vast oceans of posts that go on each day. Its left the mods with greatly increased workload as they now need to use the crappy tools Reddit gives them, and for some communities like the folks on /r/blind the site is totally unusable. Most subreddits…

API access is still free for moderation and accessibility tools. It’s just third party clients with high API usage that were effectively killed with the pricing change.

The problem is that knowing the rug can be yanked out anytime, the desire of people who helped write and maintain the tools to do so has somewhat fallen to zero.

Re: Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge

#109
post #38
post #4

Reddit has gotten very aggressive about pushing random subs onto you. I’ve really come to loathe the phrase “Because you interacted with a similar community”. I have muted so many subs, I’m getting sick of the site.

If you are using the app, I believe you can get rid of this under settings > username > enable home feed recommendations. Turning it off makes the app way more usable.

So it's been a week, and I haven't had to mute a random sub in all that time. Seriously, thank you—maybe it would be better for me to stop using Reddit, but if I'm going to be using it, at least it's not constantly throwing crap I don't care about in my face.
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