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I upvoted you because for a moment I thought you were talking about the political censorship that happens on reddit. Which I agree is awful and I hate that. Mod

I upvoted you because for a moment I thought you were talking about the political censorship that happens on reddit. Which I agree is awful and I hate that. Mods censor opposing political opinions all the time and get away with it. But just standard moderation of content? That's absolutely necessary. Without moderations subreddits degrade into memes and low effort comments. You only need to look at web archive to see the quality of many subreddits vastly decline as they got big. As a mod of a default subreddit, we remove joke comments and image posts. And it's not like it's a new thing, we have always done that. And the quality is still far from perfect, but it's much better than other subs. Sometimes I click on the comments of a reddit post looking to see more discussion about it. And instead it's just a bunch of jokes. Often by a handful of people that lurk in the rising posts, and make sure they get their comments there first, and so beat all the other comments (reddit's comment sorting algorithm is god awful and easily exploited like that.) Even if they don't have anything to say, or any insight into the subject. Another problem is there are two different types of users. "Serious" users, for lack of a better name, and "entertainment" users. The users there for entertainment upvote images, jokes, etc. Serious users are looking for discussion and debate and whatever. These two categories aren't easily separated and often mix. The users looking for entertainment often take over subs about serious subjects, e.g. worldnews. The top posts become whatever pleases the lowest common denominator, or requires the least effort to read. Short articles are easier read the long articles, and images are even easier, and provocative headlines even easier. So image posts and headlines like "mildly important official says something politically unpopular" take over entirely.

tensor 11y ago
I'm not at all against moderation. I'm against the idea that subs that don't moderate out memes and jokes and images are somehow "bad" and should be removed. There have been more than one hostile takeovers of more popular subs, driven by the idea that these subs need to change. To me, this behaviour is wrong, these people should be making new subs instead. In short, we should stop saying that "low quality content subs" are a problem. They really are not. The problem is instead a lack of well moderated subs, and/or a lack of promoting these or inability to discover them.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  Echoing this 100%. People clearly enjoy memes, cat pictures, and so forth, or else they wouldn't wind up with thousands of imaginary internet points (and sites making nontrivial amounts of money off this exact content, like the cheezburger network) on a daily basis. Those that want their heavily moderated spaces have them within easy reach, those that want their low effort internet junk food, likewise. So what's the problem, again? It sounds like the system is working mostly as designed.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >inability to discover them. As long as this is true, what's wrong with taking over a sub, if that's what the people want? Making a new sub requires getting everyone to change. You might as well ask those who wanted the old sub behavior to make their own sub. There's no inherently right decision as to what the default should be, and in particular that decision isn't "just do what the original mods/creators want".
  - rndgermandude 11y ago
    Honest question: How do you (or whoever is doing the takeover) know "what people want"? After all we are talking about subreddits that somehow got popular with what they were doing... So why does a popular subreddit have to change and why do the people who made the subreddit into the popular thing it was have to find a new place instead of whoever has a problem with how things are done making their own and new place?
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      Well, democracy answers this by asking people directly. So one way to do it is poll the sub's members. Or, you could see whether the stuff that gets deleted was highly voted before it was deleted. If people don't like certain content, it won't get voted up. I'm not sure which cases of hostile takeovers they're referring to, so I don't know what happened there, but presumably they either had a mod on their side, or got an admin to step in. The mod's behavior must have been pretty bad if an admin intervened.
calgoo 11y ago
What about splitting comments into two sections: 1. Comments: Imgur / youtube etc style comments with jokes etc. 2. Discussions: Questions, arguments, details, references etc. You would need some moderating, but it "could work". Lots of unknowns, such as how much moderating, how do control moderators etc. Its not really a solution to the actual people "problem" but more a UI/ presentation solution to compensate both sides. Now, trolls will always exist, and will always try to crash the party, does not matter what you do.
- calgoo 11y ago
  You could actually moderate the discussion threads heavily, and then do only NSFW style moderating on the comments. But like i said, it does not solve the who monitors the monitor problem.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  That's possible. The only issue would be the mixing I mentioned. Serious comments often get joke replies and vice versa. But yes I would like to see that tried.
  - mlonkibjuyhv 11y ago
    How about side-voting joke replies to serious comments. They all still exist in the same tree, but you would gain another dimension to sort/filter/display comments by.
ikeboy 11y ago
Some links about Reddit censorship: https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3pme4i/a_list_of_sjwcompromised_subreddits_and_viable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3pme4i/a_list... https://reddit.com/r/subredditcancer/comments/374s5i/this_week_i_was_banned_from_400_subreddits_in_a/ https://reddit.com/r/subredditcancer/comments/374s5i/this_we... Some subreddits will ban anyone that posts or comments in certain other subreddits.
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  Reddit is just a platform. If mods of a subreddit are seen as being heavy-handed in their moderation then people a free to create a competing subreddit.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    This ignores some critical context. For one, the worst behaved subreddits moderation wise are often the "default" ones, meaning the ones that everyone sees when logged out. They have a favored position on the site, in other words. Every user is subscribed to them by default, which also means their content is going to wind up on /r/all more often. Also, once a subreddit gets that size, crap mods can get away with a lot more because the volume of submissions make it hard to tell that something untoward is going on. And the people who pay attention (perhaps a few thousand on a good day) will easily be drowned out by those who do not. Community forks happen, but never at that level. The deck is hilariously stacked towards the entrenched communities.
    - Nullabillity 11y ago
      /r/technology used to be a default, but got forked (and pretty much died) after some mod drama.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    I argued against that position at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11557949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11557949 See also http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-web/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centrali...
coldtea 11y ago
>But just standard moderation of content? That's absolutely necessary. Without moderations subreddits degrade into memes and low effort comments. And that's bad because? (My question is a rephrase of the parent's comment). It's perfectly OK for people to have memes and low effort comments. Not everything should be a "high-bro" discussion, with nuanced arguments and evolved though policing.
erikpukinskis 11y ago
What political opinions get censored?
- trump2016 11y ago
  Anything pro-trump or pro-clinton gets censored in /r/politics, the default subreddit for politics. /r/politics might as well be /r/SandersIsGod Oh by the way they don't say they're removing the submission because it's pro-trump, they just enforce rules that are so broad that there can be a wide discretion in how they're enforced. These rules are heavily enforced for pro-trump and pro-clinton sbumissions, but not pro-sanders submissions.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    I can understand Trump's acolytes being banned considering their recent slap fight with /r/Sweden. The folks that run /r/The_Donald have shown they're not good folks in general, so having jerk mods in /r/politics ban them is amusing at least for me since these are the same dorks that thought writing IRC scripts to spam racist epitaphs made them "hackers."
    - trump2016 11y ago
      Umm what? a few bad apples do not represent all trump supporters. By the way what you said has nothing to do with why normal news submissions are being censored.

tensor 11y ago

I'm not at all against moderation. I'm against the idea that subs that don't moderate out memes and jokes and images are somehow "bad" and should be removed. There have been more than one hostile takeovers of more popular subs, driven by the idea that these subs need to change. To me, this behaviour is wrong, these people should be making new subs instead. In short, we should stop saying that "low quality content subs" are a problem. They really are not. The problem is instead a lack of well moderated subs, and/or a lack of promoting these or inability to discover them.

Karunamon 11y ago
Echoing this 100%. People clearly enjoy memes, cat pictures, and so forth, or else they wouldn't wind up with thousands of imaginary internet points (and sites making nontrivial amounts of money off this exact content, like the cheezburger network) on a daily basis. Those that want their heavily moderated spaces have them within easy reach, those that want their low effort internet junk food, likewise. So what's the problem, again? It sounds like the system is working mostly as designed.
ikeboy 11y ago
>inability to discover them. As long as this is true, what's wrong with taking over a sub, if that's what the people want? Making a new sub requires getting everyone to change. You might as well ask those who wanted the old sub behavior to make their own sub. There's no inherently right decision as to what the default should be, and in particular that decision isn't "just do what the original mods/creators want".
- rndgermandude 11y ago
  Honest question: How do you (or whoever is doing the takeover) know "what people want"? After all we are talking about subreddits that somehow got popular with what they were doing... So why does a popular subreddit have to change and why do the people who made the subreddit into the popular thing it was have to find a new place instead of whoever has a problem with how things are done making their own and new place?
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    Well, democracy answers this by asking people directly. So one way to do it is poll the sub's members. Or, you could see whether the stuff that gets deleted was highly voted before it was deleted. If people don't like certain content, it won't get voted up. I'm not sure which cases of hostile takeovers they're referring to, so I don't know what happened there, but presumably they either had a mod on their side, or got an admin to step in. The mod's behavior must have been pretty bad if an admin intervened.

calgoo 11y ago

What about splitting comments into two sections: 1. Comments: Imgur / youtube etc style comments with jokes etc. 2. Discussions: Questions, arguments, details, references etc. You would need some moderating, but it "could work". Lots of unknowns, such as how much moderating, how do control moderators etc. Its not really a solution to the actual people "problem" but more a UI/ presentation solution to compensate both sides. Now, trolls will always exist, and will always try to crash the party, does not matter what you do.

calgoo 11y ago
You could actually moderate the discussion threads heavily, and then do only NSFW style moderating on the comments. But like i said, it does not solve the who monitors the monitor problem.
Houshalter 11y ago
That's possible. The only issue would be the mixing I mentioned. Serious comments often get joke replies and vice versa. But yes I would like to see that tried.
- mlonkibjuyhv 11y ago
  How about side-voting joke replies to serious comments. They all still exist in the same tree, but you would gain another dimension to sort/filter/display comments by.

ikeboy 11y ago

Some links about Reddit censorship: https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3pme4i/a_list_of_sjwcompromised_subreddits_and_viable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3pme4i/a_list... https://reddit.com/r/subredditcancer/comments/374s5i/this_week_i_was_banned_from_400_subreddits_in_a/ https://reddit.com/r/subredditcancer/comments/374s5i/this_we... Some subreddits will ban anyone that posts or comments in certain other subreddits.

onewaystreet 11y ago
Reddit is just a platform. If mods of a subreddit are seen as being heavy-handed in their moderation then people a free to create a competing subreddit.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  This ignores some critical context. For one, the worst behaved subreddits moderation wise are often the "default" ones, meaning the ones that everyone sees when logged out. They have a favored position on the site, in other words. Every user is subscribed to them by default, which also means their content is going to wind up on /r/all more often. Also, once a subreddit gets that size, crap mods can get away with a lot more because the volume of submissions make it hard to tell that something untoward is going on. And the people who pay attention (perhaps a few thousand on a good day) will easily be drowned out by those who do not. Community forks happen, but never at that level. The deck is hilariously stacked towards the entrenched communities.
  - Nullabillity 11y ago
    /r/technology used to be a default, but got forked (and pretty much died) after some mod drama.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  I argued against that position at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11557949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11557949 See also http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-web/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centrali...

coldtea 11y ago

>But just standard moderation of content? That's absolutely necessary. Without moderations subreddits degrade into memes and low effort comments. And that's bad because? (My question is a rephrase of the parent's comment). It's perfectly OK for people to have memes and low effort comments. Not everything should be a "high-bro" discussion, with nuanced arguments and evolved though policing.

erikpukinskis 11y ago

What political opinions get censored?

trump2016 11y ago
Anything pro-trump or pro-clinton gets censored in /r/politics, the default subreddit for politics. /r/politics might as well be /r/SandersIsGod Oh by the way they don't say they're removing the submission because it's pro-trump, they just enforce rules that are so broad that there can be a wide discretion in how they're enforced. These rules are heavily enforced for pro-trump and pro-clinton sbumissions, but not pro-sanders submissions.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  I can understand Trump's acolytes being banned considering their recent slap fight with /r/Sweden. The folks that run /r/The_Donald have shown they're not good folks in general, so having jerk mods in /r/politics ban them is amusing at least for me since these are the same dorks that thought writing IRC scripts to spam racist epitaphs made them "hackers."
  - trump2016 11y ago
    Umm what? a few bad apples do not represent all trump supporters. By the way what you said has nothing to do with why normal news submissions are being censored.