Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit

#271

Post by Gracana » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:31 PM UTC

fourstar wrote: post #205

lambda wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just somewhat puzzled that twox is a default. It seems like a prime candidate not to be just due to these sorts of inevitable problems. Lots of people new to discussion boards tend not to understand there may be different rules, sets of expected behavior, or the like on different sub-boards, so making something a default is likely to attract lots of people who are new and don't understand the rules. Once you coup…

Mods don't decide to make a subreddit a default, admins do.

The mods were absolutely involved in the decision to make the subreddit a default. Unfortunately, moderators are not elected and they cannot be usurped. They have no obligations to their subscribers, and indeed in this case they made the decision behind closed doors.

Re: Reddit

#272

Post by robbyking » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

kyro wrote: post #9

Exciting news. One thing I sincerely hope reddit will do with the new injection is to increase the level of quality of content and discussion across the board. Often the advice given is "you've got to find the smaller subreddits" and while that's true, I think having the first few layers filled with terrible content and hive-minded, often racist/sexist discussion is incredibly detrimental to both the site's image and…

I moderate a medium sized Reddit community (r/mtb, ~32k), and the key for me has been enforcing a few basic rules: no memes, no rage comics, and all posts must follow reddiquette. (Okay, that 3rd rules is really a blanket for 10 rules, I admit.)

Sometimes we get trolls, but because of the rule structure they usually get bored pretty quickly. I have a handful of regular posters, too, who do a good job of posting every day and reporting spammers. It really has a true community feel, as was the intention of the site.

Re: Reddit

#273

Post by smikims » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

fourstar wrote: post #241

lambda wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that the admins consulted with the mods before doing so, but I could be wrong; how the front page has worked has changed many times over the years, and I haven't been keeping very close track.

They send you a message, but at that point it's already been decided what they have chosen to be the defaults.

You can always opt out though. There's literally a check box you can change if you don't want it anymore. You don't uncheck that box without a lot of communication and deliberation generally, but it's there.

Re: Reddit

#274

Post by teach » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:34 PM UTC

yuhong wrote: post #28

I wish that Reddit would actually copy HN's about box and remove the 10:1 rule for submissions. This include killing Anonymity Rules from /r/talesfrom*.

I would like to see a Reddit about box, at least.

Re: Reddit

#275

Post by shampine » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:36 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #254

giulianob wrote: post #75

As a long time Reddit user, I've been really disappointed lately with Reddits "battle" against content creators and the little recourse you have if you are marked as a spammer or shadow banned. See the recent /r/indiegaming debacle for example, where a subreddit where mainly indie devs would post about their games now allows very little self promotion ( http://redd.it/2fdwyv ). Some of these rules are Reddit wide so…

You are confusing mods and admins. > For example, if you make a few self posts, make tons of comments, post links to 5 different websites, then post 1 link to your website, you are breaking the rule and if a mod sees it you can be banned (comments/self posts don't count towards the 90/10 rule so your 5 posts to 1 self promotion post is breaking the rules). Some admin recently said that something like that has never h…

I'm a mod of quite a few subs. We have to submit spammers to /r/spam. It is a bot run sub that basically does link counts from your history, if you hit a threshold, you will get shadowbanned. Submitting a user there who has been around for say 1 year with 250/250 karma, they probably will not get shadowbanned as they don't fit the algorithm. Mod a sub for long enough and you can instantly look at an account and tell whether or not they would get shadowbanned. There are tons of egregious spammers on the site who will never get banned because they don't fit the mold.

Re: Reddit

#276

Post by elwell » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:37 PM UTC

gatsby wrote: post #4

"It’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time. We have some creative thoughts about the mechanics of this, but it’ll take us awhile to sort through all the issues. If it works as we hope, it’s g…

With a monetary incentive, how will this affect behavior?

Re: Reddit

#277

Post by diminoten » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:41 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #262

diminoten wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your vote isn't supposed to matter, not any more than anyone else's vote. That's the entire premise of democracy, in fact, a fact that's completely and utterly ruined by the arbitrary nature of moderation. The idea that you'd ever go to reddit.com or reddit.com/r/foo and see nothing but gems is a pipe dream. You're asking other people to do your work for you. You are the one who's supposed to contribute your up/downv…

Most people go to reddit to hear about news or see what's popular, not to sift through new submissions for gems. If reddit cared only about democracy, it would solve the problem of an incredible submission being buried by a measly five to ten downvotes in its first twenty minutes regardless of how many people would have liked it overall. Personally, I have neither the time nor the incentive to try to influence groupt…

If Reddit had the moderators that HN had (and the proportional quantity), there simply would be no problem. HN mods are a group of people selected specifically for the task of moderation. They were appointed.

But Reddit doesn't have those kinds of moderators, because the moderation system is alarmingly broken on Reddit.

The folks who moderate the various reddits are there by no virtue other than the fact that they were either there first, or have some relationship to the person who was there first.

It keeps sounding like there's a crisis of identity happening over at Reddit HQ, and I really hope they come out the other side of it with an understanding of how damaging moderators have been to the website, as currently implemented.

Re: Reddit

#278

Post by ep103 » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:42 PM UTC

alexis wrote: post #31

cryoshon wrote: post #13

Mod/admin censorship, government manipulation (out of Eglin AFB most likely), and corporate advertising/shilling are pretty blatantly huge in reddit right now, with many users openly looking for alternative websites. The admin team has shown again and again that they're willing to tolerate anything until there's bad PR. One of the founders (Alexis) has a PR firm, Antique Jetpack, which is on record [1] as cooperating…

Seriously? I debunked that stratfor conspiracy with a deluge of sunlight - even getting top-voted comment on the r/conspiracy post http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1l4aiq/reddit_is...

The rest of his points are spot on, though, as is Bane's reply.

Re: Reddit

#279

Post by ufmace » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

gatsby wrote: post #4

"It’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time. We have some creative thoughts about the mechanics of this, but it’ll take us awhile to sort through all the issues. If it works as we hope, it’s g…

I don't understand this. How does "the reddit community" own shares in a company? What does that even mean? Are board votes going to be held on reddit posts or something?

Re: Reddit

#280

Post by arder » Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

alexis wrote: post #96

minimaxir wrote: post #7

I like Reddit. I recently obtained a data dump of every single submission and comment so I could perform interesting data analysis and may just determine what make a post on Reddit viral. The problem I have with Reddit is that I'm still unsure if it's a positive externality. There's a lot of good aspects of Reddit (discovery, community), but there's so much bad about Reddit that it's impossible to overlook it (abusiv…

That's one big reason why Steve & I wanted it to be open-source! http://code.reddit.com It's not like all forum-software-innovation stopped in June 2005 when the 2 of us launched reddit to the world. The hard part is going to be quantifying "quality of submissions" in a scalable way. We thought a lot about this and while it's not perfect, the vast majority of content on reddit across those half million communities is…

Isn't this an integral problem to the reddit model though, that you can point to half a million communities and say "Look, so many people doing so much good" while what many will point to is "look, you've made thousands of dollars from celebrity leaks" and "You've got huge communities of people sharing images of underage girls.

I guess my commentary would be that there's a lot of places for people to be pleasant to each other and to discuss their shared interests - be it enthusiasts forums or facebook. The risk is being the place people go to be abusive and share their degradation of other people, and it's difficult to just take the rough with the smooth in that respect, when other communities are held to account for that sort of behaviour.