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The whole appeal about reddit is it's not just one "community," it's multiple subreddits with different rules and different types of comments. If a subreddit be

The whole appeal about reddit is it's not just one "community," it's multiple subreddits with different rules and different types of comments. If a subreddit becomes too negative, just hit the unsubscribe button and find a better one.

overcast 10y ago
I understand what Reddit is about. Here was my response to someone making a similar comment in the previous thread. You know, I get this response every time I talk about this topic. I really dislike the "well no one is making you use / buy / watch / listen" to something. People can be critical of something they want to succeed. It happens a lot in certain game communities. What if I WANT to talk about politics, in a civil manner? Any sufficiently popular subreddit, just devolves into complete trash.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  ...So why not hang out in /r/politicaldiscussion, a subreddit created for exactly what you're asking for and that is heavily moderated to keep it on-topic? I definitely agree that many subs - and particularly front page ones - can be a cesspool, although amusingly they don't quite get as bad as just about every news and newspaper site I've seen. But really, /r/upliftingnews is just too toxic for you? /r/changemyview is too negative? There's lots of great, very low-toxicity subs on Reddit. Abandoning the site because you're trying to discuss political issues - touchy in any arena, online or in person - seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Politics was just an example honestly, I avoid politics in any form of discussion. Believe me when I say my day to day life is better without sitting on Reddit and the like.
- rm999 10y ago
  >What if I WANT to talk about politics, in a civil manner? Any sufficiently popular subreddit, just devolves into complete trash. What you're looking for are strictly moderated subreddits with a clear set of rules. I've had good luck with r/NeutralPolitics and its sister subreddit r/NeutralNews. Reddit isn't a community so much as a tool for people to form communities. The people who realize this get way more out of reddit than the people who don't.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  Well that's part of the problem, stick to less popular subreddits, and you'll get less of the 'riff raff', to quote Basil Fawlty. And when they start getting popular find an even less popular one. I've been a part of many forums and internet communities and chat rooms, and they always tend to go the same way: The people who have been around for awhile get increasingly annoyed by the newcomers and their lack of decorum or 'idiotic statements' or whatever, so that segment of the group starts posting in a new more secluded place and use the other place less and less. Eventually more and more people find out about the 'secluded place' and it becomes more and more cluttered with 'undesirables', (often a few people from the previous group are now part of the old farts, or have become the new old farts), so a chunk of them break off from that community or forum and start posting somewhere even more secluded. And eventually it happens again. And again. And it's turtles all the way down. I saw the same exact shit happening in real life too with Meetup.com. People stopped posting stuff to meetup groups because they didn't want certain people to come, then there's a smaller group that's secret from the others, then either some people find out about it that shouldn't or one of the people in the secret group starts acting in a way that the other people don't want to deal with them anymore (for example, one time it was because they started dating someone who was a real jerk), so a new, smaller secreter group is formed, and so on...turtles all the way down again.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Do you think it's right that the good standing users, have to go out of their way to find alternative routes to use the product? Start at the source, and clean up the problem. All you're doing is letting the trash take over, and the current system encourages it. The Meetup scenario is depressing. Thankfully the one Tech Meetup I attend every so often is positive.
    - cableshaft 10y ago
      When you get the admins to clamp down, they're probably going to clamp down on some people or behavior that was tolerated or used by even the 'good' people because of some positive thing, and then those people start another group and take a bunch of those people with them, and it effectively becomes the same thing as before. I think it only works if you always had the rules in place, and even then, there will be some well liked people that will see how much they get away with, get removed, post a fit "I was ONLY doing blah and blah" and everyone else in the group gets mad and demands you let them back in, and blah, and blech. The meetup thing started innocently enough a couple times (with a couple people I was told explicitly they didn't want certain people to come), it's like 'we found some people we like hanging out with now thanks to meetup and now we're just inviting them over to our place', but eventually they stop posting their normal stuff on meetup and it gets harder and harder to keep the group going. I was a forum admin for way too long. Kinda glad I'm out of that now. Although now I'm an organizer for a meetup group, and it's not much different.
jkeat 10y ago
It's still worth pointing out that bigger subreddits where people feel more anonymous have lower quality discussions.
smhinsey 10y ago
This is what people continue to say and it was true in the early days 5+ years ago but I'm a skeptic on this point today. Unless you're talking about one of the ultra moderated places like AskHistory you can count on the toxic bullshit constantly seeping in around the edges of just about every discussion. Sometimes it's shut down and voted into oblivion, sometimes the wind is right and your innocuous discussion is suddenly derailed into alt-right land.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

overcast 10y ago

I understand what Reddit is about. Here was my response to someone making a similar comment in the previous thread. You know, I get this response every time I talk about this topic. I really dislike the "well no one is making you use / buy / watch / listen" to something. People can be critical of something they want to succeed. It happens a lot in certain game communities. What if I WANT to talk about politics, in a civil manner? Any sufficiently popular subreddit, just devolves into complete trash.

1_2__3 10y ago
...So why not hang out in /r/politicaldiscussion, a subreddit created for exactly what you're asking for and that is heavily moderated to keep it on-topic? I definitely agree that many subs - and particularly front page ones - can be a cesspool, although amusingly they don't quite get as bad as just about every news and newspaper site I've seen. But really, /r/upliftingnews is just too toxic for you? /r/changemyview is too negative? There's lots of great, very low-toxicity subs on Reddit. Abandoning the site because you're trying to discuss political issues - touchy in any arena, online or in person - seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- overcast 10y ago
  Politics was just an example honestly, I avoid politics in any form of discussion. Believe me when I say my day to day life is better without sitting on Reddit and the like.
rm999 10y ago
>What if I WANT to talk about politics, in a civil manner? Any sufficiently popular subreddit, just devolves into complete trash. What you're looking for are strictly moderated subreddits with a clear set of rules. I've had good luck with r/NeutralPolitics and its sister subreddit r/NeutralNews. Reddit isn't a community so much as a tool for people to form communities. The people who realize this get way more out of reddit than the people who don't.
cableshaft 10y ago
Well that's part of the problem, stick to less popular subreddits, and you'll get less of the 'riff raff', to quote Basil Fawlty. And when they start getting popular find an even less popular one. I've been a part of many forums and internet communities and chat rooms, and they always tend to go the same way: The people who have been around for awhile get increasingly annoyed by the newcomers and their lack of decorum or 'idiotic statements' or whatever, so that segment of the group starts posting in a new more secluded place and use the other place less and less. Eventually more and more people find out about the 'secluded place' and it becomes more and more cluttered with 'undesirables', (often a few people from the previous group are now part of the old farts, or have become the new old farts), so a chunk of them break off from that community or forum and start posting somewhere even more secluded. And eventually it happens again. And again. And it's turtles all the way down. I saw the same exact shit happening in real life too with Meetup.com. People stopped posting stuff to meetup groups because they didn't want certain people to come, then there's a smaller group that's secret from the others, then either some people find out about it that shouldn't or one of the people in the secret group starts acting in a way that the other people don't want to deal with them anymore (for example, one time it was because they started dating someone who was a real jerk), so a new, smaller secreter group is formed, and so on...turtles all the way down again.
- overcast 10y ago
  Do you think it's right that the good standing users, have to go out of their way to find alternative routes to use the product? Start at the source, and clean up the problem. All you're doing is letting the trash take over, and the current system encourages it. The Meetup scenario is depressing. Thankfully the one Tech Meetup I attend every so often is positive.
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    When you get the admins to clamp down, they're probably going to clamp down on some people or behavior that was tolerated or used by even the 'good' people because of some positive thing, and then those people start another group and take a bunch of those people with them, and it effectively becomes the same thing as before. I think it only works if you always had the rules in place, and even then, there will be some well liked people that will see how much they get away with, get removed, post a fit "I was ONLY doing blah and blah" and everyone else in the group gets mad and demands you let them back in, and blah, and blech. The meetup thing started innocently enough a couple times (with a couple people I was told explicitly they didn't want certain people to come), it's like 'we found some people we like hanging out with now thanks to meetup and now we're just inviting them over to our place', but eventually they stop posting their normal stuff on meetup and it gets harder and harder to keep the group going. I was a forum admin for way too long. Kinda glad I'm out of that now. Although now I'm an organizer for a meetup group, and it's not much different.

jkeat 10y ago

It's still worth pointing out that bigger subreddits where people feel more anonymous have lower quality discussions.

smhinsey 10y ago

This is what people continue to say and it was true in the early days 5+ years ago but I'm a skeptic on this point today. Unless you're talking about one of the ultra moderated places like AskHistory you can count on the toxic bullshit constantly seeping in around the edges of just about every discussion. Sometimes it's shut down and voted into oblivion, sometimes the wind is right and your innocuous discussion is suddenly derailed into alt-right land.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]