Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 433 posts

Re: Reddit

#61

Post by kyrra »

giarc wrote: post #16
kyrra wrote: post #5

The one downside (as I see it) of Reddit that Facebook, G+, and HN all don't have is the ability to downvote. Downvoting makes it so larger subreddits will only have material on their front page that the majority of that group agrees with. This leads to certain subreddits (like /r/politics/) being heavily dominated by one side of the subject area. But I still use reddit daily myself. Getting off some of the default s…

With HN, once a user reaches a certain level of "upvotes" they unlock the ability to downvote.

Ya, I thought about after I wrote it. Though I believe you can only downvote comments not stories on HN.

Re: Reddit

#62

Post by bane »

IvyMike wrote: post #22
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…

> The admin team has shown again and again that they're willing to tolerate anything until there's bad PR. They frame it quite differently--they broadly want to support legal free speech, even ugly free speech. They do so up until the point it would be impossible to do so without damaging the company. What do you prefer them to do?

Set a global policy and stick to it. When something gets banned it's because it violates the policy and not because of some half-hearted moralizing, while other clearly horrendous communities (like nightmare inducing) are allowed to sit around.

Re: Reddit

#63

Post by jokoon »

I'm still interested in how moderation really works on reddit...

the "reddit drama" always makes me curious but I don't really know the rules very well.

Re: Reddit

#64

Post by potatolicious »

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?

I really enjoy /r/photography, the quality of discourse is high and there are very little nastiness. The mod team is also highly active and engages members - weekly discussions along directed topics, weekly writeups/discussions about famous works/photographers, etc.

IMO subreddits like it are evidence that the Reddit macro model has been, and will continue to be a failure. The community is at its best when tone is actively directed by a dedicated mod team, and abusive behavior actively policed, in distinct contrast to the relative free-for-all that are the default subreddits.

Reddit's admins make a lot of noise about believing in the hands-off approach ("every man is responsible for his own soul"), but ultimately the hands-on approach create higher-quality communities (even at scale: see /r/iama) and curbs the abuse that has made the default subreddits complete intellectual wastelands. Not only that, Reddit itself has not been consistent on being hands-off, what with the banning of subreddits and whatnot.

Side shoutout to /r/movies - always good discussions. Things get more animated and sometimes less civil than /r/photography but the mod team does a good job keeping things from exploding.

Re: Reddit

#65

Post by jn1234 »

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?

Try looking for a subreddit directed at a very specific niche. I find that the local and sports subreddits tend to be pretty good. Some other quality subreddits are http://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/ and http://www.reddit.com/r/ukrainianconflict.

Re: Reddit

#66

Post by LeoPanthera »

jn1234 wrote: post #46
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…

Heavily moderated subreddits are another way to get great quality content. The only problem with this is that it relies on volunteer moderators who devote large amounts of their free time to making the site a better place.

Heavily moderated subreddits are Reddit's biggest problem. Time and again, the volunteer moderators prove that they cannot be impartial, and bias creeps in, inevitably culminating in a bizarre power struggle with the normal users. I've seen it so many times.

This isn't helped by the fact that the majority of popular subreddits are moderated by the same people, resulting in a kind of weird cabal situation.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Personally I think no moderation, simply relying on up/down votes would be better, but without going to that extreme, perhaps only allowing one person to moderate one subreddit (or a small number) would help.

Re: Reddit

#67

Post by cshenoy »

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?

/r/AskHistorians is one of my favorites. Mods are insanely hawkish about the rules which slightly turned me off when I first subscribed. But after a few months it started to make sense and the quality of contributions is superbly high.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians

Re: Reddit

#68

Post by [deleted] »

giarc wrote: post #16
kyrra wrote: post #5

The one downside (as I see it) of Reddit that Facebook, G+, and HN all don't have is the ability to downvote. Downvoting makes it so larger subreddits will only have material on their front page that the majority of that group agrees with. This leads to certain subreddits (like /r/politics/) being heavily dominated by one side of the subject area. But I still use reddit daily myself. Getting off some of the default s…

With HN, once a user reaches a certain level of "upvotes" they unlock the ability to downvote.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit

#69

Post by ehaughee »

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?

These are some of my favorite subreddits:

http://reddit.com/r/hiphopheads

http://reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion

http://reddit.com/r/javascript/

http://reddit.com/r/snowboarding/

I find these subs to be on topic, relatively positive, often receptive to the new and uninitiated, providing a wealth of FAQ/just starting out information and have interesting weekly events.

I especially enjoy the header with album release dates in hiphopheads, and there are a number of cool weekly events in frugalmalefashion (and its more expensive brother subreddit, http://reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice).

As with any sufficiently large group, you'll find groupthink. However, I've found that many smaller subreddits are more receptive of self-criticism when it gets too bad.

Re: Reddit

#70

Post by comrh »

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?

Some of the communities around mental illness offer very caring communities. Obviously I think it is mostly because of very strict rules/admins. It is special to have an anonymous place to vent and have people understand you without trolling.

/r/mmfb

/r/leaves

/r/trichsters & /r/calmhands

/r/depression

/r/SuicideWatch

Post reply on HN