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I vouched it, and I am sure I am among others. 1. Reddit's moderators can make their own decisions, but that should not change things here. It's an untrustwort

I vouched it, and I am sure I am among others. 1. Reddit's moderators can make their own decisions, but that should not change things here. It's an untrustworthy site with a culture and moderation system that rewards untrustworthy users. If it went out of business tomorrow the world would be a better place. 2. The article is genuinely interesting. 3. If all he bot does is link us to genuinely interesting back catalog .net writing, that's probably a service (at least for now) as this venue has long ignored a lot of interesting content from that ecosystem. People can break the rules here and then we'll ban them here.

Jillboy 10y ago
I agree with all your points, except for one thing that made me curious: Why would say Reddit is an untrustworthy site, with a system that rewards untrustworthy users? I'm not a particularly active Reddit user, in fact it's been a while since I've even visited the site so I'm not taking this personally at all, but I'm genuinely interested as to why anyone would consider it an untrustworthy site that encourages untrustworthy users.
- gitonup 10y ago
  Spez (The CEO and one of the admins) has admitted to shadow-editing comments posted by other users without visible tracking (normally edits get a *, and I'm otherwise not aware of any mod- or user-facing ability to do so for comments that are not yours) on /r/The_Donald[1]. [1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/spezgiving-how-reddits-ceo-triedand-failedto-troll-the-trolls https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/spezgiving-how-re...
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    Sure. Quite frankly, I hate those people too. But Reddit's poor decision making goes deeper than that. They have a culture of finding blame rather than solving problems, a massive botnet problem they refuse to address despite multiple people submitting pretty compelling evidence, incredibly lax rule enforcement. Their voting system encourages people to build elaborate bot networks to game the system. They know it, they refuse to do anything about it. Reddit is a untrustworthy site that grew and untrustworthy community.
- mi100hael 10y ago
  There have been a lot of shenanigans from the admins/mods over the past year or so, mostly related to the popularity of the pro-Trump subreddit and their resulting chagrin. There have been several thinly-veiled rule changes and algorithm changes aimed at reducing the number of pro-Trump postings that appear on the main homepage and generally lowering the visibility of that subreddit. At one point, the CEO manually edited some comments in the database that were critical of him. It all comes across as somewhat shady and untrustworthy. They could just come out and ban or quarantine the subreddit, but instead they've chose to subversively go Digg-mode and essentially start curating what users see rather than allowing it to rise/fall organically.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > There have been several thinly-veiled rule changes and algorithm changes aimed at reducing the number of pro-Trump postings that appear on the main homepage and generally lowering the visibility of that subreddit. It's worth noting that there's nothing inherently bad about this. Possible valid reasons why this step might be taken include gaming of the algorithm by specific groups, or to even out the distribution of front page items is one of the goals for the algorithm is to have a heterogeneous set of items for the front page. Not that I have any specific information in this case to point one way or the other. I just think it's important to not immediately jump to negative conclusions about that, even if a group that experiences some loss of exposure feels negatively affected. > At one point, the CEO manually edited some comments in the database that were critical of him. That part is pretty egregious, and while I understand the impulse to do what he did if we take his explanation at face value (I don'[t see a particular reason why not to, it's not flattering), one would hope someone as high up in the organization would understand that playing with the trust of your userbase that way (especially with the group in question) is not likely to end well. > They could just come out and ban or quarantine the subreddit, but instead they've chose to subversively go Digg-mode and essentially start curating what users see rather than allowing it to rise/fall organically. I'm not specifically aware of what steps they are taking now. Do you have references to point me towards so I can catch up?
    - KirinDave 10y ago

Jillboy 10y ago

I agree with all your points, except for one thing that made me curious: Why would say Reddit is an untrustworthy site, with a system that rewards untrustworthy users? I'm not a particularly active Reddit user, in fact it's been a while since I've even visited the site so I'm not taking this personally at all, but I'm genuinely interested as to why anyone would consider it an untrustworthy site that encourages untrustworthy users.

gitonup 10y ago
Spez (The CEO and one of the admins) has admitted to shadow-editing comments posted by other users without visible tracking (normally edits get a *, and I'm otherwise not aware of any mod- or user-facing ability to do so for comments that are not yours) on /r/The_Donald[1]. [1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/spezgiving-how-reddits-ceo-triedand-failedto-troll-the-trolls https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/spezgiving-how-re...
- KirinDave 10y ago
  Sure. Quite frankly, I hate those people too. But Reddit's poor decision making goes deeper than that. They have a culture of finding blame rather than solving problems, a massive botnet problem they refuse to address despite multiple people submitting pretty compelling evidence, incredibly lax rule enforcement. Their voting system encourages people to build elaborate bot networks to game the system. They know it, they refuse to do anything about it. Reddit is a untrustworthy site that grew and untrustworthy community.
mi100hael 10y ago
There have been a lot of shenanigans from the admins/mods over the past year or so, mostly related to the popularity of the pro-Trump subreddit and their resulting chagrin. There have been several thinly-veiled rule changes and algorithm changes aimed at reducing the number of pro-Trump postings that appear on the main homepage and generally lowering the visibility of that subreddit. At one point, the CEO manually edited some comments in the database that were critical of him. It all comes across as somewhat shady and untrustworthy. They could just come out and ban or quarantine the subreddit, but instead they've chose to subversively go Digg-mode and essentially start curating what users see rather than allowing it to rise/fall organically.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > There have been several thinly-veiled rule changes and algorithm changes aimed at reducing the number of pro-Trump postings that appear on the main homepage and generally lowering the visibility of that subreddit. It's worth noting that there's nothing inherently bad about this. Possible valid reasons why this step might be taken include gaming of the algorithm by specific groups, or to even out the distribution of front page items is one of the goals for the algorithm is to have a heterogeneous set of items for the front page. Not that I have any specific information in this case to point one way or the other. I just think it's important to not immediately jump to negative conclusions about that, even if a group that experiences some loss of exposure feels negatively affected. > At one point, the CEO manually edited some comments in the database that were critical of him. That part is pretty egregious, and while I understand the impulse to do what he did if we take his explanation at face value (I don'[t see a particular reason why not to, it's not flattering), one would hope someone as high up in the organization would understand that playing with the trust of your userbase that way (especially with the group in question) is not likely to end well. > They could just come out and ban or quarantine the subreddit, but instead they've chose to subversively go Digg-mode and essentially start curating what users see rather than allowing it to rise/fall organically. I'm not specifically aware of what steps they are taking now. Do you have references to point me towards so I can catch up?
  - KirinDave 10y ago