Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit

#381

Post by majani » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 6:19 AM UTC

golemotron wrote: post #320

convoces wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Worse, once a sub is made a default, its quantity goes up but its quality goes down. This seems to be almost universally true for any online community. As a userbase widens, content quality and even social dynamics become diluted to some extent towards a general population baseline. As a mod of /r/changemyview (153k subscribers), we have discussed opting out of becoming a default sub if we were approached by the red…

There should be a reddit of subreddits - a way to vote them up and down in order to determine the defaults.

the same effect can be had by making trending subs the defaults. Part of me thinks this could be the solution, but another part of me thinks there's no way they've gone nine years without having tried that already...

Re: Reddit

#382

Post by dangayle » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 6:32 AM UTC

Gracana wrote: post #271

fourstar wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The other end of the spectrum is the Stack Overflow method, which ends up with the most uptight and pedantic users ending up with all the control, who use their power to rain havoc upon those who might otherwise have been much better moderators.

With Reddit, you at least have a chance of having a semi-decent group of moderators who can care for and foster their community without it turning into an anal retentive hell.

Re: Reddit

#383

Post by sliverstorm » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 7:16 AM UTC

Gracana wrote: post #301

ebfe wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "feminist" is more commonly understood to mean a supporter of the modern women's advocacy movement, rather than anyone who believes in equality of the sexes. Imagine a Republican telling you that "Republican" is defined as someone who supports natural human rights, and therefore anyone who truly supports natural human rights is a Republican. The feminist definition of "feminism" is inaccurate for the same re…

I hate it when people give this definition of feminism. Feminism supports gender equality and there are ways that benefits everyone, but that's obviously not the whole of it, and I dislike the idea that men can only be sold on feminism if they think there's something in it for them.

The point is only that "gender equality" is a belief while "feminism" (usually) means the activist movement. Why is that objectionable? What does it have to do with "selling men on feminism"?

Re: Reddit

#384

Post by HelloLarias » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 7:21 AM UTC

B-Con wrote: post #56

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…

> 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 new user exp…

>Do we have any examples of large Internet communities with unilateral good discussion?

The somethingawful forums? With the exception of the forums expressly for bad discussions, every thread has high quality content.

Re: Reddit

#385

Post by arrrg » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 8:07 AM UTC

hellodevnull wrote: post #287

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…

>often racist/sexist discussion I'm confused. Reddit is one of the most anti-racist/sexist communities on the internet. That's the hivemind, so you'd expect anything that's racist or exist to quickly be deleted or pushed to the bottom of the thread where nobody can see it (on the large subreddits anyway).

This is hilarious. Reddit is extremely racist and sexist. Extremely. It’s a disgusting and vile place. Open your eyes.

Re: Reddit

#386

Post by liotier » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 8:13 AM UTC

> First, it’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it.

If it bothered you that much, you would let users publish their contributions as cc-by-sa !

Re: Reddit

#387

Post by peteretep » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 8:48 AM UTC

mreiland wrote: post #318

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"I'm a male and why is this on my reddit page" and people that just barge in without reading rules to post things against our rules I think its asking way too much of someone who wants to join a casual site known for cat pics and meme jokes to read through the couple dozen default sub rules. There's no practical educational solution here. The volume of new users and the labor of understanding all these rules is huge…

right, reddit is "doin' it rong!", that's why their projected growth is so high. Part of the reason they've been successful is because the default subreddits draw people in. This isn't about some high and mighty "what is 'proper'", this is about what people find interesting to talk about. The default subreddits are not there to scratch the itch of those like you with their nose in up in the air about "quality". As mu…

    > reddit is "doin' it rong!", that's why their projected
    > growth is so high

and then

    > much as you'd like to "predict" the downfall of reddit,
    > all signs point to no

While I think Reddit will go from strength to strength, I also remember how Digg pretty much went from (current) Reddit sized to almost nothing in about the course of two weeks. And I remember Myspace. Turns out internetters are fickle folk.

Re: Reddit

#388

Post by XtianThrowaway » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 8:56 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #366

alexis wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 130,000,000 people (40%+ outside the USA) using it every month. One can't honestly or realistically generalize 130,000,000 people other than to say they have an internet connection and are literate. As I said, there are half a million communities and the way it works (which sadly is lost on a lot of people -- our fault) is that one subscribes to communities (or unsubscribes) based on taste and interest. If…

I have done it for many years The owners of pro-religious or pro-conservative subs are frequently harassed and frequently intimidated. I know this first-hand. I used to run a religion-positive subreddit. I started it five or six years ago and I closed it almost two years ago when I finally accepted that reddit was never going to be viable platform for our community and that we were causing more harm than good by pret…

The problem reddit faces is one of community identity and management of that identity, which manifests itself, basically, in never-ending moderator drama.

I'm commenting because I have some experience with the Christian archipelago of subreddits and because I've watched conservative elements of Christianity try to find a reddit home in several different stages. (Catacombs, TheArk...)

I don't think it is necessarily accurate to say that reddit is attempting to be a neutral place, overall, as I think it's rather impossible for a community to be a wholly neutral place (and question the existence of such a thing anyway).

What is attempted instead is the creation of policy that allows for any community to set its own parameters and assumptions for discussion while still allowing for the creation of a policy of anonymous and uncensored participation. There really isn't any point to having an Internet forum without attempting these, and as soon as one wishes to depart from these goals they're no longer really in tune with reddit.

> They just believe there's some value in having a forum on reddit controlled by favorable forces even if that forum has the problems I listed.

Which is an interesting statement about territory within a larger community, as well as a problem as old as discourse itself.

I think Alexis missed your point entirely, instead making a point about personal frontpages.

But I can't see it as a possibility for reddit to attempt to attract a different userbase or reddit administrators to try to neutralize reddit culture.

All they can really do is try is create tools for small communities to set their own culture, and I think that's where you're spot on; it's currently not possible to use reddit as a platform for an arbitrary community of people because reddit is already a large community.

The problem, though, is that there are no arbitrary communities.

Re: Reddit

#389

Post by DanBC » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 9:08 AM UTC

XtianThrowaway wrote: post #388

cookiecaper wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done it for many years The owners of pro-religious or pro-conservative subs are frequently harassed and frequently intimidated. I know this first-hand. I used to run a religion-positive subreddit. I started it five or six years ago and I closed it almost two years ago when I finally accepted that reddit was never going to be viable platform for our community and that we were causing more harm than good by pret…

The problem reddit faces is one of community identity and management of that identity, which manifests itself, basically, in never-ending moderator drama. I'm commenting because I have some experience with the Christian archipelago of subreddits and because I've watched conservative elements of Christianity try to find a reddit home in several different stages. (Catacombs, TheArk...) I don't think it is necessarily a…

> All they can really do is try is create tools for small communities to set their own culture, and I think that's where you're spot on; it's currently not possible to use reddit as a platform for an arbitrary community of people because reddit is already a large community.

You might have a chance if you imported a community, and expected patterns of behaviour, from outside.

It's weird that so many people building communities are unaware of places like Meatball or some of the better Usenet troll-diffusing techniques.

Or even good design to present information. A lot of subs just present a wall of text and expect people to read and obey.

You could have a single button with a big sign saying "PUSH BUTTON TO GET COFFEE" and you'd still get people asking how toget coffee. While it fails for some people you've at least reduced that number to as few as possible.

Reddit communities start with a wall of text, and then add extra rules as stuff happens. This means that fewer people read the rules and mods have more work to do.

Re: Reddit

#390

Post by richthegeek » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 9:09 AM UTC

carrotleads wrote: post #317

silencio wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a default (twoxchromosomes) mod. I would love to see better moderation tools. Most of the shitty content I've had to deal with are from newer/multiple accounts, as well as the older accounts that are sick of the trolls. Our AutoModerator shadowban list and our ban list is so ridiculously long I can barely scroll it. It'd be amazing if we didn't have to rely on a bunch of other tools (toolbox, RES, AutoModerator)…

Shouldn't there be a rule that if posts from new accounts get reported by more than X number of people for Y reason they are automatically banned. Would make life of moderators easier. Would be easier if the tools allowed moderators to customize these X values.

There's already plenty of instances of bot swarms that mass-downvote new posts, presumably in order to give their own posts greater chance of getting to the frontpage.

If these bots could be used to auto-ban new users then Reddit would die very quickly.