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Reddit takes a new direction

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Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#131

Post by iskander »

alecco wrote: post #12

Reddit is changing. It's currently in a renewed and stronger Eternal September. Bastion subreddits like /r/AskScience and /r/Truereddit are reduced to junk and fads. The hope for the group of moderated subreddits (Republic of Reddit) didn't really take off, it's just a handful of submitters. The top voted comments on threads about censorship are mostly 1 to 3 months old users. And now reddit (had to) surrender to a d…

There's a lot of dissonance between: > It's currently in a renewed and stronger Eternal September. >The top voted comments on threads about censorship are mostly 1 to 3 months old users.

and

>Sure, a lot of questionable/creepy subreddits shouldn't be there. But where's the line? And who draws it?

The way to deal with a dilution of community quality is communicate and enforce stricter standards. Ban more stuff. Not because of a moral panic, but because the trolls, spammers, pornographers, etc.. can trash your site with force disproportionate to their numbers. You can't fight Eternal September unless you lay down some serious boundaries.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#132

Post by betterth »

jasonkester wrote: post #63

People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply. So when a post gets deleted by a moderator, people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue. There's a whole constitution out there specifically defending anybody's right to create a pro-Nazi subreddit, and to otherwise post anything they please on the site so long as it's not ille…

"The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see. And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan."

This site is akin to a Reddit subreddit.

The community here is great, clearly amongst the best of the Reddit subreddit communities.

Is this community better than the Reddit community? Honeslty -- no. This is a place for tech news, and that's it.

The Reddit community has done a lot of wonderful things, for each other, for others, and for society in general. This community can make almost none of those claims.

Many people who frequent both look at Hacker News as if it were the real /r/technology.

But I didn't think people compared communities in general -- this place is tiny compared to even many of the subreddits!

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#133

Post by mindcrime »

ugh wrote: post #91
sophacles wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.* I am honestly not sure we can say that at all. I thoroughly enjoy both hn and reddit, for completely different reasons . Sure, from a strictly legal standpoint, it isn't censorship or a constitutional issue, but at the same time, the "anything goes" attitude in places like 4chan and reddit allow for a lot…

For fucks sake. Is that really so hard to understand? Pedos can’t trade their images anymore (whether legal or not). That’s the extent of the limitation. How the fuck is that supposed to turn Reddit into something radically different? It’s this one tiny thing. It’s not some big change that changes Reddit. It’s not so hard. Some people just want to be deliberately obtuse. The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!

The slippery slope is a fucking fallacy!

Until it isn't.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#134

Post by ugh »

scott_s wrote: post #130
ugh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was supposed to be an accusation. Some things deserve accusations. And profanities. Sigh. I’m quite disillusioned about HN, actually. Not that it should surprise me, but damn. People here say the exact same things as on Reddit. If you squint a bit the reactions are the same. That doesn’t make me happy. I do recognize that I can’t do many constructive things here (short of screaming at people) so I’m going to excus…

The first statement of the actual Guidelines of HN is "Be civil." I find it strange that you're disillusioned with HN because your uncivil comment was not well received.

(Just to clarify: I'm not disillusioned about karma or anything petty like that. I’m ok with being downvoted for not being civil. I’m disillusioned about the general attitude displayed here. That attitude made me want to not be civil anymore.)

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#135

Post by harshreality »

_delirium wrote: post #6
throwawaymar2 wrote: post #2

I confused about why he thinks it ironic that Nabakov is banned... I mean, it got grandfathered in when child porn laws were written, somehow, but it is certainly fiction about a paedophile, right? Anything that bans other kiddie-fiddler fiction while allowing _Lolita_ is quite obviously inconsistent, and those in favor of this inconsistency probably ought to examine why they like _Lolita_.

It wasn't grandfathered in; it's unconstitutional, in the U.S., to ban Lolita . It would be pretty unfortunate if literature couldn't even seriously deal with the subject! (Incidentally, it's pretty hard to read Lolita as being pro -pedophilia; if anything, it's an extended, mostly negative investigation into the protagonist's psyche, although many pages in literary journals have been spent arguing over how to interp…

Lolita the book is protected because it fails the third prong of the Miller test. Nabokov's Lolita is considered to have "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific" value. However, that test sets the bar at a completely arbitrary level:

What about Adrian Lyne's 1997 movie, Lolita? It has artistic merit, but arguably not as much as the novel.

What about girls' dancing and gymnastics? Should photography of those activities, even including women's international gymnastics competitions, be banned just because, viewed with an eye toward prurience, they might qualify? Certainly the activities have artistic value, but how much?

What about purely fictional depictions of minors, either in manga (see the case of Christopher Handley's manga possession) or even in fictional stories that may not be deemed to have serious literary merit?

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#136

Post by trb »

Policing a community is where humans excel and policies/computers fail.

I ran a community once, with around 30k active users. Definitely not big, but we faced the same problems. Our solution was simple, aside from adhering to the law: "Mods delete what looks icky".

We felt that automated systems would always fail (users would use "4" instead of "a"), and strict policies always led to debate about whether something was allowed or not.

Instead we tried to recruit mods that knew the community, the direction it was heading and were able to keep a level head. Sure, someone went overboard once in a while and deleted o.k. stuff, but we'd just remove their mod privileges and reinstate what they deleted (thinks were removed from the database 14 days after they were marked as "deleted").

We were never accused of harboring pedophiles, or going overboard with removal. Those that complained about free-speech were always radical political groups well outside of "acceptable" for most communities.

The key is to find moderators in line with the community, in a benevolent dictator way. No idea if reddit could find enough of those, but it worked well for us and should scale with community size, as reddit has a larger pool to recruit from.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#138

Post by icebraining »

cbs wrote: post #99
jasonkester wrote: post #63

People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply. So when a post gets deleted by a moderator, people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue. There's a whole constitution out there specifically defending anybody's right to create a pro-Nazi subreddit, and to otherwise post anything they please on the site so long as it's not ille…

people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue First-amendment speech is only a subset of free speech. Unfortunately people seem to hear "freedom of speech" and think that the ONLY place that freedom exists is under the scope of the 1st. Its not. The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their r…

The Bill of Rights only says that our government can't take it away. Other people are still free to take it away. But when they take it away (and are within their rights to do so) it is a free speech issue. The difference is the argument is not a you can't or you shouldn't be able to, its just a you can but shouldn't.

Well, it is a free speech issue, but whether one should or not is debatable. I'd prefer they didn't, but I don't know if it's fair to ask that from them.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#139

Post by epochwolf »

ugh wrote: post #134
scott_s wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first statement of the actual Guidelines of HN is "Be civil." I find it strange that you're disillusioned with HN because your uncivil comment was not well received.

(Just to clarify: I'm not disillusioned about karma or anything petty like that. I’m ok with being downvoted for not being civil. I’m disillusioned about the general attitude displayed here. That attitude made me want to not be civil anymore.)

> That attitude made me want to not be civil anymore.

Then it would be a good idea to take a break, maybe go for a walk, until you can be civil.

Re: Reddit takes a new direction

#140

Post by icebraining »

Steko wrote: post #110
a_redditor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit. The admins have always been supportive of allowing any content that is legal, even up to a very specific definition, which is why these now removed subreddits were allowed to exist for so long. Lots of people are making the slippery slope argument, saying things along the lines of "how long before they ban /r/trees?…

"I think you're missing the point of the users who see this new rule as a negative mark against reddit" We see the point, we're saying it doesn't matter. It's been pretty obvious over the last year that this train has been coming down the tracks and there's ultimately only one way it could play out. The spam rule was already there and it's not rocket surgery to realize that any content more objectionable then spam is…

How was it obvious? r/jailbait was banned, yes, but that was only after there was a semi-revolution (a mod removed and banned all the other mods, then proceeded to give an ex-mod* his powers back, who then essentially tried to fuck it up (I heard actual preteen porn was posted)).

Assuming that that event necessarily means the removal of the other subreddits seems contrived.

* VA, the guy who also created & mods r/picsofdeadkids, r/PicsOfDeadJailbait, r/incest, etc.

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