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Re: Reddit

#191

Post by diminoten »

Goronmon wrote: post #184
diminoten wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am of the opposing opinion. I think Reddit has an entirely separate purpose from a place like HN, and I think it hurts the bottom line of Reddit and makes the Internet a less interesting place if more moderation were to take place on Reddit. I just don't believe it's in Reddit's best financial interest to decrease the level of impact an individual user can have on its site. I also don't believe moderators, as they'…

>Reddit is the upvote, not the moderator, isn't it? In theory. In practice, strong moderators become more important the larger the community gets. And reddit is a very, very large community. >The whole driving premise of Reddit is the upvote, and that's an incredibly powerful concept. It's powerful, but not always in a good way. I think one of the better examples is looking at the difference between /r/gaming (light…

But don't you see how problematic your argument is? You more or less beg the entire question by saying, "/r/games actually has content worth reading" -- I mean this in a non-offensive way, but who are you to say that? What's "content worth reading" for you may not actually be content worth reading for anyone else.

That's how I see the design of Reddit -- it doesn't seem to me to be the place where every single link is supposed to be tailored specifically for you/the crowd. I think people come to Reddit expecting a finished product, where the front page is a curated listing of the most interesting things that the Internet has to offer, when in reality, the only way Reddit works is if YOU help push it in that direction.

You're not viewing a finished product, you're helping make the product! Push those up/down votes and use that voice that you've got to make your Reddit reflect more of what you want it to be. I think that's partially why Sam Altman is giving some of his shares to actual users, isn't it?

Re: Reddit

#192

Post by lobster_johnson »

foobarqux wrote: post #49
noir_lord wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been using reddit for about 6 years, some of the smaller subs are amazing and I think it comes down to two major things, excellent moderation and community below a certain size (usually). I've thought about this for a while on and off and I'm not sure how you could scale that up in terms of moderation, some of the defaults do well while others are just a wasteground (I've also wondered if that is partially intentiona…

Can you give some examples of good quality subreddits?

http://www.reddit.com/r/linguists and http://www.reddit.com/r/askhistorians are very good.

Re: Reddit

#195

Post by codingdave »

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…

You are correct, but from my (admittedly outsider) perspective, they are suffering from an identity crisis. They want to be a strong community where meaningful discussion takes place and drives real action. But their branding is still, "Hey, we're the front page of the internet!", which in practical terms means people go there for time-wasting entertainment.

I feel that they need to make a choice of being the "home page" for everyone vs. a meaningful community. I do not see one site serving both needs, as the branding, culture, and even tools needed to manage those two goals just don't match up with each other.

Re: Reddit

#196

Post by DanBC »

silencio wrote: post #93
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'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)…

Twoxchromosomes is a hellhole sub.

i) diverse people have a spectrum of extreme but sincere opinions, so they look like they are provocative trolls even if they aren't.

ii) A sizable proportion of Reddit hates any even mild suggestion that maybe women don't have the easy life and the sub is a target for that rage

iii) with the watter nicely chummed trolls have an easy time.

iv) a lot of the posters are just viciously unpleasant unless your posts aligns exactly with theirs.

The reality is that your sub is the dead-corpse human-shield used to protect other less awful feminist subs.

I really hope you mod some other nicer subs so that you get some pleasure out of Reddit.

(I've been a bit vicious a out the sub, but this doesn't reflect on the moderation or (mostly) on the real users.)

Re: Reddit

#197

Post by tomjen3 »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #133
kyro wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my main issue is with the front page and default subs. They are so unrepresentative of the great quality that can be found, and yet that's the face reddit chooses to put on. Why have default subs at all? Why not rotate through a constantly changing set of high-quality subs throughout the front page? Or why emphasize individual stories on the front page and instead present snippets of entire subreddits, almost…

The high quality subs are high quality because they have limited appeal. It's the same way HN keeps a reasonable level of quality, if there way an influx of people here who weren't interested in technology/programming and just wanted to talk about video games or politics then the quality would go down.

askhistorians and askscience have relatively broad appeal, have a very high level of quality and are extremely heavily moderated. In my experince (and it is extensive, I signed up in august 2006) the heavier you moderate a subreddit the better the quality, although a bad moderator can kill a subreddit fast.

Re: Reddit

#198

Post by lambda »

silencio wrote: post #93
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'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)…

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 couple that with the general population skewing fairly male, young, not necessarily good with social norms, and a strong pseudo-libertarian streak, it just doesn't seem like a good combination with a sub that's supposed to be by and for women.

I'm curious why the mods decided to let it become a default.

Re: Reddit

#200

Post by EGreg »

This is excellent! Reddit is closer to the kind of online community I like to see and I'm happy to see what they have planned. Weren't they also giving away 10% of profits to charity?
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