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The demise of r/science AMAs on Reddit

99 points by edwinksl 8y ago

LeoPanthera 8y ago
I'm completely on the side of Reddit, here. Subreddit moderators have too much power. It's all very well saying "anyone can create a subreddit, if you don't like one, make another" but it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science". The practice of removing higher-voted posts in order to keep their AMAs at the top should never have been allowed, and I'm glad that it now isn't. Abuse of moderator power is one of Reddit's biggest problems.
- stu2010 8y ago
  I've known some r/science mods. The removed posts were reinstated after the AmA had achieved enough traction on its own, things weren't left permanently deleted. It was still blatant vote manipulation, but the end result was science AmAs were regularly featured on r/all and also the default view of Reddit.
  - chomp 8y ago
    That's what's crazy to me about this whole thing. Yes, morally and ethically, the ends don't justify the means. HOWEVER, the mods were manipulating votes to bring high profile visitors to Reddit, users were happy, Reddit execs (should be) happy that they were getting big time scientists posting, it seems like the only disconnect is how they did it. This finger wagging is just PR from Steve Huffman. If they really cared, they would have worked with moderators to create the toolsets to bring in more high quality content, and moderators wouldn't have to resort to desperate measures to bring in more eyeballs. "We're working on it" is a nothing statement. Instead, they're putting resources into a UI refresh that does not have very much support from the community.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      I think Huffman describes to a worldview where he wants to offer everyone the same tools. That's probably why he didn't like the methods /r/science used and why they added /r/popular to replace the defaults. This way any subreddit can get there.
      - chomp 8y ago
        I can completely understand that. Maybe I can understand that maybe a frontend redesign is a blocker for new tools. But you have a subreddit who has moderators who consistently organize high quality, low SNR ratio content, and who also depend on the front page to drive a large amount of their traffic. There has to have been a way to seamlessly get the custom tailored /r/popular stuff onto the mainpage without impacting these high content subreddits. I just don't think Reddit really put enough thought into this. Even something sort of hacky like "super mods" who could curate posts onto the front page. In the end, the /r/science mods had cobbled the tools to notice the drop of users (and Reddit staff didn't run enough analytics to gauge the impact of their decision), and the call was made. I don't think Reddit staff either has the numbers of admins or the tools to adequately make informed decisions about the impact of changes they make.
    - 794CD01 8y ago
      What makes you think users were happy? If people liked that content so damn much, why was artificial vote manipulation needed to make it visible?
      - chomp 8y ago
        That's like saying "If users were really happy with a website, it wouldn't matter if Google delisted them because the users would just organically go to that site even if it's not in search results" Subreddits and Reddit are in a symbiotic relationship. Most subreddits depend on the mainpage to deliver them eyeballs. Some subreddits depend on those eyeballs they receive from the mainpage to create good content and PR for Reddit. Let's be honest, there's wealth of content on Reddit, enough so that users might not miss some content going missing randomly. <Personal opinion starts here> However, I personally believe that Reddit should cultivate stronger content than cat memes and animated images. Getting Stephen Hawking to answer questions from the public is, in my opinion (from a site culture and company PR perspective), more valuable than the 1000000th Star Wars prequel meme to appear on the front page.
        794CD01 8y ago
        It is like that in the sense that both are truer than you apparently give them credit for. How many people use, say, facebook or instagram from the dedicated phone app they sought out and installed vs searching for facebook in google and using the mobile browser site? Though I think a better comparison might be the eating habits one other people have made. Veggies might be better for you, but most people will choose to eat junk food. I just think that's sufficiently solved by natural selection.
- fhood 8y ago
  And yet, here you are on hacker news, and extremely heavily moderated forum. The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation. Otherwise the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few.
  - edwinksl 8y ago
    It appears a lot of people are not aware of this important function of moderation unless they see it for themselves, perhaps by doing some moderation. It is not surprising at all to people who have done some moderation that relying on just upvotes and downvotes does not surface good content.
    - foepys 8y ago
      Up- and downvotes work to a certain extend. But when the community grows big enough, the upvotes tend to heavily favor "funny" and other easily digestible content. Many subreddits and other online communities died the, what I call, 10,000 member death. If you don't apply moderation at that point, serious content will disappear.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    I'm only here because I've read through the subreddits I'm interested in for today.
  - ProAm 8y ago
    > The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation Which is all well and good, just don't portray your site as one where the users are in control of the content. This was the seed of all reddit backlash.
  - Gargoyle 8y ago
    >extremely heavily moderated forum. I wish. The best subreddits are the ones like r/askhistorians, which are draconic in their moderation. As a result, the content is consistently extremely high quality. > the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few. This is how HN tends to work, especially in regard to the comments. It's unfortunate.
- chomp 8y ago
  On the flip side, moderators curate content for Reddit, and are expected to police their users, basically working for free to keep eyeballs on Reddit, for the benefit of the company. They've been begging for more tools since the creation of the site, and using every trick they have to create better content for their users. Reddit removed some of their dark patterns, because those were the only tools they had, and now their content shows a net loss. Reddit needs to stop making empty promises, show that they actually care about their moderators, and give them the tools they need. They're dragging their feet on helping mods curate this content and love to wag their fingers at the moderators who are working with rudimentary tools, but they sure do love to name drop the high profile posters they get.
  - CamelCaseName 8y ago
    I wouldn't call it "work". I was a moderator on a couple mid profile (<400,000 subs) subreddits until last year. The same team more or less ran the lot and all the subs were in a niche I really enjoyed. For the most part, toolbox (r/toolbox) and RES were everything I needed. The redesigned modmail was a nice (but bright) update too. In the end, I had my fun, a LOT of fun, but it started to grow boring. I think what makes Reddit great is the small subs, especially now that defaults have been done away with, and the best / popular feeds are more commonplace. The tools people talk about needing are truly for the massive, massive, subs like r/science, but I genuinely don't know how much longer those megasubs will continue to dominate for. Every change puts more eyeballs in the hands of mid size subs, and that's great. I suppose my experience is not the same as those of megasubs, but hopefully my thoughts spark some interesting discussion, because I really do enjoy reddit. Feel free to... AMA ;)
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Additionally, Reddit stopped allowing what Huffman calls “post manipulation” to highlight certain content. A certain degree of wise curation can be highly beneficial. We should all know that here. However, there is an accountability problem. Highly popular social media groups aggregate power, and power corrupts. it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science". Reddit should allow for curation-heavy groups, but these should be billed specifically as curation-heavy groups and they should compete with other groups. Something like /r/science shouldn't get to do that. Abuse of moderator power is one of Reddit's biggest problems. I'd say it's social media's biggest problem, but change moderator to insider.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    > Reddit should allow for curation-heavy groups, but these should be billed specifically as curation-heavy groups and they should compete with other groups. Something like /r/science shouldn't get to do that. /r/science should absolutely get to do that. And it's unmistakably up-front about the heavy moderation[0], much like /r/history[1] and other high-quality subreddits. IME that tends to be the dividing line between heavy moderation generating the site's best content and the worst: how clear, up-front and consistently applied the subreddit's moderation rules are. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_submission_rules https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_submission_... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/history/wiki/index#wiki_rules https://www.reddit.com/r/history/wiki/index#wiki_rules
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      /r/science should absolutely get to do that. I should clarify here. If a specific general topic subreddit like /r/science uses heavy moderation to make the best science-oriented subreddit, then this is great. There is a problem, however, when interests outside of the specific general topic start to leak in. A key example is politics. If /r/science suppresses global warming denialism, I'd say this is all well and good. The lion's share of global warming denialism is simply a misleading misrepresentation of science. However, let's suppose hypothetically that /r/science started to suppress all mention of studies showing there is some influence of sexual dimorphism, this would be ideologically driven bad science. (A fair, non-extreme reading of nature/nurture reflects that biological reality is messy and that there is some influence from both.) How does one draw the line? There can be only one /r/science, if /r/science should become ideologically subborned and biased, it effectively makes the whole voice of reddit science ideologically biased. The same question arises for cliques and cronyism. I think /r/science should become something of an aggregation like /r/popular. This way, there isn't the temptation of power and corruption coming from the power over the generic name. Then different moderation groups can compete on an even playing field by their merits, like even handed-ness and intellectual honesty. EDIT: In a way, it's the same logic as a judge ruling that the president shouldn't block people on twitter. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135945
- SurgeonOfDeath 8y ago
  I am not on /u/spez side(but I like reddit). He has low credibility because of his history with editing post and elections. Also I have problem with information diversity on r/popular. Even if you filter stuff you get junk content like funny gifs, porn etc.... r/science, r/news... etc are quality content and they should be present in popular. Also bias against gaming community. My solution would be to add targeting for subreddits. Some people want more fun content, some more science, music. If r/popular would use it would be probably the best Ps. I banned like 100 subreddits on r/popular and I gave up. Now I use regex to filter on r/all it works better than that...
- Jaepa 8y ago
  One of the features I really like with lobste.rs is actions taken by the moderators logged and publicly accessible to all users. https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations
- lilyball 8y ago
  > The practice of removing higher-voted posts in order to keep their AMAs at the top should never have been allowed, and I'm glad that it now isn't. The right response here isn't to punish subreddits that did that. It's to understand why they did that and provide them with an alternative solution. I'm sure the askscience moderators didn't like removing highly-rated posts. But they needed some way to promote AMAs and Reddit didn't give them the tools they needed to do it. This is ultimately a massive failure on Reddit's part.
- fudged71 8y ago
  I created AMA on Reddit and I was essentially ousted as a moderator for highlighting how much power moderators have.
- ballenf 8y ago
  Maybe the reddit link should be de-coupled from the reddit title. That is anyone could create a sub called "Science" and the link would be an arbitrary string. It's related to the economics of property taxes that scale with property values. Reddit created arbitrary scarcity in naming by allowing only a single subreddit of any particular name, but must work to implemented good economic policy (moderation is one form) to make sure that each remains a good citizen.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Reddit has search. I've long favoured search (directed discovery) over streams, or perhaps a bit of quality-ranked search informed slightly by streams, but it's not what most channel-based, audience-size obsessed, advertising-driven sites are incentivised for. Much my own interaction with HN is via search, and much that DDG bangs off Agolia's search interface. Google+ has seen a similar evolution, though with vastly inferior search tools. It's possible to look at related discussions on a keyword or URL at Reddit, or to create multireddits aggreggating various themes. The discoverability and usability of these tools leaves much to be desired. There's also the dynamic of Reddit's conversations and discussions, most of which are effectively dead after a day (much as on HN). It's all but impossible to have a meaningful long-term discussion there (or here). Ironically and counterintuitively, G+'s mechanics are exceedingly good in this area, though at far smaller scale -- discussions are limited to 500 comments. Much of that may be due to the specific advocacy of Yonatan Zunger, who likes (and is an excellent host for) such discussions. Reddit has been favouring mindless crap for years, and it's showing badly. /r/science are fighting a futile rearguard action.
- VikingCoder 8y ago
  I'm completely on the side of the mods, here. Our social networks reward mindless content. If a social network doesn't provide any tools for a content creator to somehow highlight, "No, really, please take an extra look at this," and / or a way for content consumers to highlight, "Ooh, yes, last time I consumed content like that, I really, really liked it, so please highlight it," then the network is failing everyone. I'm not even prescribing how that negotiation should take place. Different systems could come up with different solutions. If users have switched to /r/popular, to the exclusion of all else, then maybe reddit could offer users to flag some subreddits as having special permission to get their attention occasionally. With a Sensitivity that they could turn up or down. And then that content could be highlighted for them at the top of /r/popular.
  - ericschmidt 8y ago
    The hilarious thing is that they already had the exact tool you describe: stickied posts. They removed the "stickied posts" feature when r/the_donald .... I wanna say "abused the feature", but the truth is that they used the feature exactly as intended and the result was a front page full of Pro-Trump posts. Reddit didn't like that. So they removed Stickied posts and forced innocent mods like this dude from r/science to come up with innovative ways to highlight posts (such as deleting other posts). I'm completely on the side of the mod here because Reddit keeps removing useful features whenever people they don't like (Trump supporters) use them too. The mod is just caught in the crossfire between the admins and Trump supporters and he's doing his best to make sure his best posts stay visible. This is just another shitty move on the part of Reddit. Steve Huffman's wife's boyfriend is gonna be so pissed when he finds out !!!
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  > Subreddit moderators have too much power. > It's all very well saying "anyone can create a subreddit, if you don't like one, make another" but it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science". These complaints, though both with merit, seem totally decoupled to me.
- Kalium 8y ago
  The way Reddit administration interacts with moderators is, charitably, an opportunity for improvement. For most subs, it's where you escalate issues with spam or abusive behavior to when you can't resolve it yourself. Then you may or may not get a response in a reasonable timeframe - who the hell knows? Sometimes you get handed changes in policy or tools. Sometimes you even get advance notice, but not always. You're expected to adhere to and enforce policies, but not always given good guidance on what that means or how to do it. They're otherwise mostly hands-off, letting you manage daily affairs yourself. If you're a popular sub, Reddit administration will tend to meddle whenever it's convenient for them. They generally won't warn you or discuss it with you. They'll just do things as they see fit. The net result is that unpaid moderators do the vast majority of the work to maintain communities, but admins have arbitrary power over everything. They're hard to reach for help, and often seem apathetic about your concerns. I can only imagine that this must be what it felt like to worship the Greek pantheon.
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  Reddit central admins have screwed up in several ways here. 1) Subreddit moderators know better than central HQ about their audiences and the best content. Reddit central HQ has statistical engagement data, but that easily leads to temporary optimums. Digg is the Class A example of how using stats to make decisions works really great right up to the moment it really doesn't. A human focus on quality and relevance helps avoid that, and the subreddit moderators are in the best position to provide that. That's why Reddit created subreddits in the first place! 2) Reddit's algorithm stuck popular crappy posts to the top of subreddits for too long and did not give subreddit moderators the tools they needed to deal with that. So, duh, moderators had to figure out a way to work around that. Then they got in trouble for the work-around. But it all goes back to problems with the algorithm and tools. Reddit's interace and algorithm does not properly distinguish between "ha, that's funny"(upvote) and "wow, this is amazing and deeply affecting"(upvote). Subredditors can do this if you let them. 3) In case Reddit leaders (and readers here) have not noticed, we are in early in a sea-change in how culture perceives and interacts with social media platforms. It's no longer enough to standup an algorithm and let the chips fall where they may. That will get you testifying before Congress and dealing with the FBI before long. If Reddit wants to play in the big leagues of social media, they need to start looking more than a few feet in front of them. Reddit has a huge advantage over Facebook and Twitter in that they have developed an army of unpaid moderators who can feed quality on their platform. What's the first thing anyone says about joining Reddit? "It's all about finding the best subreddits for you." Not "wow what a great feed algorithm, in general." ---- In short: the absolute heart of Reddit's value proposition is the subreddit moderators, and that will only become more true in the future.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- rhizome 8y ago
  it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science". 10-20 years ago people made the same argument about .com domain names. Didn't turn out to matter then, either.
- TylerE 8y ago
  The victory of /r/trees over /r/marijuana disputes this.
tunesmith 8y ago
Good journalism suffers if subjected to popularity algorithms. What a weird wave this has been, where Facebook's News Feed used to be okay and then sucked, where my curated Twitter feed used to be okay and then sucked, etc. There's a difference between what people say they want (as interpreted by views, clicks, eyeballs), and what they want to want (as interpreted by values, what feels rewarding in hindsight, what they're glad they did later). I wonder if these algorithms will ever evolve to start serving up metaphorical vitamins instead of potato chips.
- kirRoyale 8y ago
  I miss when my twitter feed wasn't 85% ads.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    Use a third-party application while they still work?
- maxk42 8y ago
  The "popularity" algorithm is potato chips. Good moderation is vitamins.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    Excessive consumption of vitamins will cause much bigger problems than excessive consumption of potato chips.
    - tunesmith 8y ago
      Are you just making a specious argument, or are you literally arguing that acting in accordance with one's values will cause bigger problems than engaging in addictive behavior?
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
      But in moderation (heh), eating vitamins is much, much better for you than eating potato chips. Nobody's arguing for an excess of anything. Obviously a completely locked down subreddit that rejects and deletes all posts and comments would be useless, but so would one that's completely unmoderated.
digi_owl 8y ago
On an possibly unrelated note it seems my account has developed an issue where the front page tabs only shows articles from the last 12 hours, at best.
- seanalltogether 8y ago
  Sounds like you have sorting set to Top - 24 hours instead of Hot
- mrec 8y ago
  Is this the old "hot" front page, or the new default "best" front page? The latter is complete and utter garbage, and favours newness above all other criteria.
  - digi_owl 8y ago
    both actually, the hot tab showing a few more than the best tab.
- keypusher 8y ago
  It's not unrelated, it's the same issue the r/science mods reference. A short time ago, reddit switching the default homepage to sort by "best", where it used to sort by "hot". While "best" sounds great, it actually results in some terrible behavior such as often pushing up items you really aren't interested in, while hiding very popular posts. The only fix right now is to change your bookmark to point to https://www.reddit.com/hot/ https://www.reddit.com/hot/
danso 8y ago
I do agree that the r/science moderator was wrong in attempting to game the frontpage algorithm (by removing popular r/science posts, temporarily, so that AMAs could float to the top). But I don't get why these AMAs, which ostensibly drew large audiences, wouldn't already be at the top of r/science at their peak?
- LeoPanthera 8y ago
  I think the obvious answer is that they simply aren't as popular as the mods claim.
  - ferongr 8y ago
    I don't know why this reply is downvoted, it's essentially correct. Many science AMAs feature obscure subjects that not many would be interested in interacting with.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      Or better yet you regularly see the following [Comment removed] [Comment Removed] [Comment Removed] [Comment Removed] And when I have access to cache on rare occasions, it really is innovative or interesting content being discussed. But because someone didn't understand, or someone didn't care, or $insert_reason , the whole discussion chain was deleted. That kind of stuff made me unsub r/science . It was turning into a cesspool of narrowminded busybodies. Kind of reminds me how StackOverflow is.
- FrojoS 8y ago
  They are on top of the subreddit but not anymore on the main landing page of reddit.
  - danso 8y ago
    If they are at the top of r/science, then why did the r/science mods have to remove other popular r/science posts so that the AMAs could be at the top of r/science? > Additionally, Reddit stopped allowing what Huffman calls “post manipulation” to highlight certain content. Moderators at r/science and other popular subreddits have been accused of deleting highly ranking posts to push individual items to the top of their page. From there, they would gain visibility and receive upvotes to be featured on the main page.
djhworld 8y ago
At the start of the article I was revelling in the enjoyment of confimation bias washing over me around how reddit is changing, but then I read this > Allen admitted to the Daily Dot that he deleted popular r/science posts so AMAs would be more prominently featured. But he argues the controversial action was required for his posts to gain widespread visibility. Don't think Reddit is in the wrong here...
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  Honestly, Reddit needs to be doing _more_ to stop mods from running rampant all over the user base. A _lot_ more.
p49k 8y ago
I noticed HN fixes inaccurate titles, can that be done here? I don’t think it’s fair for the title to imply Reddit is to blame, based on the CEO’s comment in the article, which goes into detail on the (completely reasonable) anti-abuse measures that resulted in this. The moderators were clearly manipulating the site to promote these AMAs (albeit with good intentions) so it seems things are more complicated than “Reddit censors science” Edit: looks like it’s been changed, thanks!
- edwinksl 8y ago
  OP here. I took the title verbatim from the article to avoid editorializing. I am not sure where HN stands regarding changing the post title to something that is significantly different from the article title.
  - dang 8y ago
    That's in the site guidelines: Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. The article title in this case is arguably both, so we changed it to use a more neutral phrase from the article. That's always the best way to change a title, btw, when you have to. Articles nearly always include some neutral representative phrase that describes what they're about, and it's much better to find a 'native' one that way than to make up a new title oneself. Trick of the trade.
koolba 8y ago
> First, the site replaced default communities—the 100 subreddits that once made up the front page of Reddit—with r/popular, which takes posts from all subreddits. The changes were made to help smaller subreddits compete with the larger, more established communities. That's wrong as /r/popular explicitly excludes a bunch of sub-reddits. While one could see it as the Reddit staff catering it to what's "popular", a more cynical view is that the entire concept was created to shape the definition of "popular". It's pretty easy to tip the scales when you're the one managing them. Separately, does The Daily Dot have any sort of editing or review process? "Huffman" is misspelled "Hoffman", extra confusingly in a direct quote from him.
- ihuman 8y ago
  If you want to see a version of /r/popular with all subreddits, there's /r/all. /r/popular removes NSFW subbreddits, and subreddits that users often filter from /r/all (like sports subreddits).
Havoc 8y ago
They sure seem determined to re-enact the DIGG collapse.
zelon88 8y ago
"My posts weren't the most popular, so I had to delete the popular ones to get mine to the top of r/science!" Did he really just say that post manipulation is allowed when he personally values the content and expected it to be accepted? Reddit is so covered in arbitrary rules as it is. It's harder to get a post to stick on Reddit than it is here on HN sometimes, and HN isn't even for general discussion like Reddit is. Now we're finding out that the social media website with the most red-tape and outright hostile attitude towards it's userbase deletes user content to substitute self-promotional content produced by organizers? I think it's time to find an alternative. Reddit wreaks of hostility towards users. It's the online equivalent of a park bench with coin operated spikes to deter homeless people.
- roblabla 8y ago
  Temporarily deleted for the AMAs to gain traction. They were restored once the AMAs made it to the front page. This sounds bad, but you have to realize that: - The AMAs had very high-profile guests, and it's easier to attract those guests if you can promise high visibility - Moderators have very little tools to curate and promote contents that they view as valuable.
  - zelon88 8y ago
    "- Moderators have very little tools to curate and promote contents that they view as valuable." Why do moderators need tools to promote content they view as valuable? Isn't that what the upvote button is for? These are moderators. Volunteer enthusiasts of the communities they moderate. They have no stake in Reddit and they get nothing regardless of what content gets seen by who. They're job is to make sure nobody breaks subreddit rules. They aren't supposed to be purveyors of content on a social media platform. If I want to see structured, planned, and promoted content I'll go to CNN or Politico or NYT. I joined Reddit to be a part of a community that aggregates and promotes crowd-sourced content based on popular opinion. Giving moderators tools to control the content beyond what they need to enforce the rules is manipulation of the underlying purpose of Reddit, and should be disallowed. This isn't a Facebook page for a business that serves a purpose. It's an online forum whose purpose is to aggregate and rank crowd sourced content with crowd sourced input. Adding a "To The Top" button for moderators defeats the purpose of Reddit.
xtreak29 8y ago
The article is missing some context here where spez said that r/science mods removed the popular posts in the sub during AMA for increased attention which is allegedly vote manipulation from their end. Full reply : https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8khscc/rscience_will_no_longer_be_hosting_amas/dz8nky8 https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8khscc/rscience_wi...
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oconnor663 8y ago
> Reddit has not confirmed what specifically it changed to prevent post manipulation but said it’s something it doesn’t support or allow. Presumably some of these changes had to do with removing e.g. r/The_Donald's ability to spam the front page. This article is really incomplete without talking about the problems that the new rules were designed to solve.
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TekMol 8y ago
There seem to be two stages in the life cycle of social media sites that every one of them follows: 1) The site starts with transparent rules. The users are in power. Data access is open and easy. The user interface is friendly. ...the site becomes popular... 2) Rules become a secret. Power is taken away from the users. Data access becomes limited and more complicated. The user interface becomes bloated and hostile. I really hope we will manage to get decentralized social media off the ground. It sucks that even after years of work, the content creators and community builders have nothing to show for it. They are just slaves to the platform owners.
- kps 8y ago
  > The user interface is friendly. One advantage of the systems that web fora largely replaced — mailing lists and usenet — is that content and presentation are not coupled, so each user can use their own preferred interface.

99 points by edwinksl 8y ago

I'm completely on the side of Reddit, here. Subreddit moderators have too much power. It's all very well saying "anyone can create a subreddit, if you don't like one, make another" but it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science". The practice of removing higher-voted posts in order to keep their AMAs at the top should never have been allowed, and I'm glad that it now isn't. Abuse of moderator power is one of Reddit's biggest problems.

stu2010 8y ago
I've known some r/science mods. The removed posts were reinstated after the AmA had achieved enough traction on its own, things weren't left permanently deleted. It was still blatant vote manipulation, but the end result was science AmAs were regularly featured on r/all and also the default view of Reddit.
- chomp 8y ago
  That's what's crazy to me about this whole thing. Yes, morally and ethically, the ends don't justify the means. HOWEVER, the mods were manipulating votes to bring high profile visitors to Reddit, users were happy, Reddit execs (should be) happy that they were getting big time scientists posting, it seems like the only disconnect is how they did it. This finger wagging is just PR from Steve Huffman. If they really cared, they would have worked with moderators to create the toolsets to bring in more high quality content, and moderators wouldn't have to resort to desperate measures to bring in more eyeballs. "We're working on it" is a nothing statement. Instead, they're putting resources into a UI refresh that does not have very much support from the community.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    I think Huffman describes to a worldview where he wants to offer everyone the same tools. That's probably why he didn't like the methods /r/science used and why they added /r/popular to replace the defaults. This way any subreddit can get there.
    - chomp 8y ago
      I can completely understand that. Maybe I can understand that maybe a frontend redesign is a blocker for new tools. But you have a subreddit who has moderators who consistently organize high quality, low SNR ratio content, and who also depend on the front page to drive a large amount of their traffic. There has to have been a way to seamlessly get the custom tailored /r/popular stuff onto the mainpage without impacting these high content subreddits. I just don't think Reddit really put enough thought into this. Even something sort of hacky like "super mods" who could curate posts onto the front page. In the end, the /r/science mods had cobbled the tools to notice the drop of users (and Reddit staff didn't run enough analytics to gauge the impact of their decision), and the call was made. I don't think Reddit staff either has the numbers of admins or the tools to adequately make informed decisions about the impact of changes they make.
  - 794CD01 8y ago
    What makes you think users were happy? If people liked that content so damn much, why was artificial vote manipulation needed to make it visible?
    - chomp 8y ago
      That's like saying "If users were really happy with a website, it wouldn't matter if Google delisted them because the users would just organically go to that site even if it's not in search results" Subreddits and Reddit are in a symbiotic relationship. Most subreddits depend on the mainpage to deliver them eyeballs. Some subreddits depend on those eyeballs they receive from the mainpage to create good content and PR for Reddit. Let's be honest, there's wealth of content on Reddit, enough so that users might not miss some content going missing randomly. <Personal opinion starts here> However, I personally believe that Reddit should cultivate stronger content than cat memes and animated images. Getting Stephen Hawking to answer questions from the public is, in my opinion (from a site culture and company PR perspective), more valuable than the 1000000th Star Wars prequel meme to appear on the front page.
      - 794CD01 8y ago
        It is like that in the sense that both are truer than you apparently give them credit for. How many people use, say, facebook or instagram from the dedicated phone app they sought out and installed vs searching for facebook in google and using the mobile browser site? Though I think a better comparison might be the eating habits one other people have made. Veggies might be better for you, but most people will choose to eat junk food. I just think that's sufficiently solved by natural selection.
fhood 8y ago
And yet, here you are on hacker news, and extremely heavily moderated forum. The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation. Otherwise the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few.
- edwinksl 8y ago
  It appears a lot of people are not aware of this important function of moderation unless they see it for themselves, perhaps by doing some moderation. It is not surprising at all to people who have done some moderation that relying on just upvotes and downvotes does not surface good content.
  - foepys 8y ago
    Up- and downvotes work to a certain extend. But when the community grows big enough, the upvotes tend to heavily favor "funny" and other easily digestible content. Many subreddits and other online communities died the, what I call, 10,000 member death. If you don't apply moderation at that point, serious content will disappear.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  I'm only here because I've read through the subreddits I'm interested in for today.
- ProAm 8y ago
  > The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation Which is all well and good, just don't portray your site as one where the users are in control of the content. This was the seed of all reddit backlash.
- Gargoyle 8y ago
  >extremely heavily moderated forum. I wish. The best subreddits are the ones like r/askhistorians, which are draconic in their moderation. As a result, the content is consistently extremely high quality. > the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few. This is how HN tends to work, especially in regard to the comments. It's unfortunate.
chomp 8y ago
On the flip side, moderators curate content for Reddit, and are expected to police their users, basically working for free to keep eyeballs on Reddit, for the benefit of the company. They've been begging for more tools since the creation of the site, and using every trick they have to create better content for their users. Reddit removed some of their dark patterns, because those were the only tools they had, and now their content shows a net loss. Reddit needs to stop making empty promises, show that they actually care about their moderators, and give them the tools they need. They're dragging their feet on helping mods curate this content and love to wag their fingers at the moderators who are working with rudimentary tools, but they sure do love to name drop the high profile posters they get.
- CamelCaseName 8y ago
  I wouldn't call it "work". I was a moderator on a couple mid profile (<400,000 subs) subreddits until last year. The same team more or less ran the lot and all the subs were in a niche I really enjoyed. For the most part, toolbox (r/toolbox) and RES were everything I needed. The redesigned modmail was a nice (but bright) update too. In the end, I had my fun, a LOT of fun, but it started to grow boring. I think what makes Reddit great is the small subs, especially now that defaults have been done away with, and the best / popular feeds are more commonplace. The tools people talk about needing are truly for the massive, massive, subs like r/science, but I genuinely don't know how much longer those megasubs will continue to dominate for. Every change puts more eyeballs in the hands of mid size subs, and that's great. I suppose my experience is not the same as those of megasubs, but hopefully my thoughts spark some interesting discussion, because I really do enjoy reddit. Feel free to... AMA ;)
stcredzero 8y ago
Additionally, Reddit stopped allowing what Huffman calls “post manipulation” to highlight certain content. A certain degree of wise curation can be highly beneficial. We should all know that here. However, there is an accountability problem. Highly popular social media groups aggregate power, and power corrupts. it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science". Reddit should allow for curation-heavy groups, but these should be billed specifically as curation-heavy groups and they should compete with other groups. Something like /r/science shouldn't get to do that. Abuse of moderator power is one of Reddit's biggest problems. I'd say it's social media's biggest problem, but change moderator to insider.
- masklinn 8y ago
  > Reddit should allow for curation-heavy groups, but these should be billed specifically as curation-heavy groups and they should compete with other groups. Something like /r/science shouldn't get to do that. /r/science should absolutely get to do that. And it's unmistakably up-front about the heavy moderation[0], much like /r/history[1] and other high-quality subreddits. IME that tends to be the dividing line between heavy moderation generating the site's best content and the worst: how clear, up-front and consistently applied the subreddit's moderation rules are. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_submission_rules https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_submission_... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/history/wiki/index#wiki_rules https://www.reddit.com/r/history/wiki/index#wiki_rules
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    /r/science should absolutely get to do that. I should clarify here. If a specific general topic subreddit like /r/science uses heavy moderation to make the best science-oriented subreddit, then this is great. There is a problem, however, when interests outside of the specific general topic start to leak in. A key example is politics. If /r/science suppresses global warming denialism, I'd say this is all well and good. The lion's share of global warming denialism is simply a misleading misrepresentation of science. However, let's suppose hypothetically that /r/science started to suppress all mention of studies showing there is some influence of sexual dimorphism, this would be ideologically driven bad science. (A fair, non-extreme reading of nature/nurture reflects that biological reality is messy and that there is some influence from both.) How does one draw the line? There can be only one /r/science, if /r/science should become ideologically subborned and biased, it effectively makes the whole voice of reddit science ideologically biased. The same question arises for cliques and cronyism. I think /r/science should become something of an aggregation like /r/popular. This way, there isn't the temptation of power and corruption coming from the power over the generic name. Then different moderation groups can compete on an even playing field by their merits, like even handed-ness and intellectual honesty. EDIT: In a way, it's the same logic as a judge ruling that the president shouldn't block people on twitter. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135945
SurgeonOfDeath 8y ago
I am not on /u/spez side(but I like reddit). He has low credibility because of his history with editing post and elections. Also I have problem with information diversity on r/popular. Even if you filter stuff you get junk content like funny gifs, porn etc.... r/science, r/news... etc are quality content and they should be present in popular. Also bias against gaming community. My solution would be to add targeting for subreddits. Some people want more fun content, some more science, music. If r/popular would use it would be probably the best Ps. I banned like 100 subreddits on r/popular and I gave up. Now I use regex to filter on r/all it works better than that...
Jaepa 8y ago
One of the features I really like with lobste.rs is actions taken by the moderators logged and publicly accessible to all users. https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations
lilyball 8y ago
> The practice of removing higher-voted posts in order to keep their AMAs at the top should never have been allowed, and I'm glad that it now isn't. The right response here isn't to punish subreddits that did that. It's to understand why they did that and provide them with an alternative solution. I'm sure the askscience moderators didn't like removing highly-rated posts. But they needed some way to promote AMAs and Reddit didn't give them the tools they needed to do it. This is ultimately a massive failure on Reddit's part.
fudged71 8y ago
I created AMA on Reddit and I was essentially ousted as a moderator for highlighting how much power moderators have.
ballenf 8y ago
Maybe the reddit link should be de-coupled from the reddit title. That is anyone could create a sub called "Science" and the link would be an arbitrary string. It's related to the economics of property taxes that scale with property values. Reddit created arbitrary scarcity in naming by allowing only a single subreddit of any particular name, but must work to implemented good economic policy (moderation is one form) to make sure that each remains a good citizen.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Reddit has search. I've long favoured search (directed discovery) over streams, or perhaps a bit of quality-ranked search informed slightly by streams, but it's not what most channel-based, audience-size obsessed, advertising-driven sites are incentivised for. Much my own interaction with HN is via search, and much that DDG bangs off Agolia's search interface. Google+ has seen a similar evolution, though with vastly inferior search tools. It's possible to look at related discussions on a keyword or URL at Reddit, or to create multireddits aggreggating various themes. The discoverability and usability of these tools leaves much to be desired. There's also the dynamic of Reddit's conversations and discussions, most of which are effectively dead after a day (much as on HN). It's all but impossible to have a meaningful long-term discussion there (or here). Ironically and counterintuitively, G+'s mechanics are exceedingly good in this area, though at far smaller scale -- discussions are limited to 500 comments. Much of that may be due to the specific advocacy of Yonatan Zunger, who likes (and is an excellent host for) such discussions. Reddit has been favouring mindless crap for years, and it's showing badly. /r/science are fighting a futile rearguard action.
VikingCoder 8y ago
I'm completely on the side of the mods, here. Our social networks reward mindless content. If a social network doesn't provide any tools for a content creator to somehow highlight, "No, really, please take an extra look at this," and / or a way for content consumers to highlight, "Ooh, yes, last time I consumed content like that, I really, really liked it, so please highlight it," then the network is failing everyone. I'm not even prescribing how that negotiation should take place. Different systems could come up with different solutions. If users have switched to /r/popular, to the exclusion of all else, then maybe reddit could offer users to flag some subreddits as having special permission to get their attention occasionally. With a Sensitivity that they could turn up or down. And then that content could be highlighted for them at the top of /r/popular.
- ericschmidt 8y ago
  The hilarious thing is that they already had the exact tool you describe: stickied posts. They removed the "stickied posts" feature when r/the_donald .... I wanna say "abused the feature", but the truth is that they used the feature exactly as intended and the result was a front page full of Pro-Trump posts. Reddit didn't like that. So they removed Stickied posts and forced innocent mods like this dude from r/science to come up with innovative ways to highlight posts (such as deleting other posts). I'm completely on the side of the mod here because Reddit keeps removing useful features whenever people they don't like (Trump supporters) use them too. The mod is just caught in the crossfire between the admins and Trump supporters and he's doing his best to make sure his best posts stay visible. This is just another shitty move on the part of Reddit. Steve Huffman's wife's boyfriend is gonna be so pissed when he finds out !!!
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> Subreddit moderators have too much power. > It's all very well saying "anyone can create a subreddit, if you don't like one, make another" but it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science". These complaints, though both with merit, seem totally decoupled to me.
Kalium 8y ago
The way Reddit administration interacts with moderators is, charitably, an opportunity for improvement. For most subs, it's where you escalate issues with spam or abusive behavior to when you can't resolve it yourself. Then you may or may not get a response in a reasonable timeframe - who the hell knows? Sometimes you get handed changes in policy or tools. Sometimes you even get advance notice, but not always. You're expected to adhere to and enforce policies, but not always given good guidance on what that means or how to do it. They're otherwise mostly hands-off, letting you manage daily affairs yourself. If you're a popular sub, Reddit administration will tend to meddle whenever it's convenient for them. They generally won't warn you or discuss it with you. They'll just do things as they see fit. The net result is that unpaid moderators do the vast majority of the work to maintain communities, but admins have arbitrary power over everything. They're hard to reach for help, and often seem apathetic about your concerns. I can only imagine that this must be what it felt like to worship the Greek pantheon.
snowwrestler 8y ago
Reddit central admins have screwed up in several ways here. 1) Subreddit moderators know better than central HQ about their audiences and the best content. Reddit central HQ has statistical engagement data, but that easily leads to temporary optimums. Digg is the Class A example of how using stats to make decisions works really great right up to the moment it really doesn't. A human focus on quality and relevance helps avoid that, and the subreddit moderators are in the best position to provide that. That's why Reddit created subreddits in the first place! 2) Reddit's algorithm stuck popular crappy posts to the top of subreddits for too long and did not give subreddit moderators the tools they needed to deal with that. So, duh, moderators had to figure out a way to work around that. Then they got in trouble for the work-around. But it all goes back to problems with the algorithm and tools. Reddit's interace and algorithm does not properly distinguish between "ha, that's funny"(upvote) and "wow, this is amazing and deeply affecting"(upvote). Subredditors can do this if you let them. 3) In case Reddit leaders (and readers here) have not noticed, we are in early in a sea-change in how culture perceives and interacts with social media platforms. It's no longer enough to standup an algorithm and let the chips fall where they may. That will get you testifying before Congress and dealing with the FBI before long. If Reddit wants to play in the big leagues of social media, they need to start looking more than a few feet in front of them. Reddit has a huge advantage over Facebook and Twitter in that they have developed an army of unpaid moderators who can feed quality on their platform. What's the first thing anyone says about joining Reddit? "It's all about finding the best subreddits for you." Not "wow what a great feed algorithm, in general." ---- In short: the absolute heart of Reddit's value proposition is the subreddit moderators, and that will only become more true in the future.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
rhizome 8y ago
it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science". 10-20 years ago people made the same argument about .com domain names. Didn't turn out to matter then, either.
TylerE 8y ago
The victory of /r/trees over /r/marijuana disputes this.

tunesmith 8y ago

Good journalism suffers if subjected to popularity algorithms. What a weird wave this has been, where Facebook's News Feed used to be okay and then sucked, where my curated Twitter feed used to be okay and then sucked, etc. There's a difference between what people say they want (as interpreted by views, clicks, eyeballs), and what they want to want (as interpreted by values, what feels rewarding in hindsight, what they're glad they did later). I wonder if these algorithms will ever evolve to start serving up metaphorical vitamins instead of potato chips.

kirRoyale 8y ago
I miss when my twitter feed wasn't 85% ads.
- masklinn 8y ago
  Use a third-party application while they still work?
maxk42 8y ago
The "popularity" algorithm is potato chips. Good moderation is vitamins.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Excessive consumption of vitamins will cause much bigger problems than excessive consumption of potato chips.
  - tunesmith 8y ago
    Are you just making a specious argument, or are you literally arguing that acting in accordance with one's values will cause bigger problems than engaging in addictive behavior?
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    But in moderation (heh), eating vitamins is much, much better for you than eating potato chips. Nobody's arguing for an excess of anything. Obviously a completely locked down subreddit that rejects and deletes all posts and comments would be useless, but so would one that's completely unmoderated.

digi_owl 8y ago

On an possibly unrelated note it seems my account has developed an issue where the front page tabs only shows articles from the last 12 hours, at best.

seanalltogether 8y ago
Sounds like you have sorting set to Top - 24 hours instead of Hot
mrec 8y ago
Is this the old "hot" front page, or the new default "best" front page? The latter is complete and utter garbage, and favours newness above all other criteria.
- digi_owl 8y ago
  both actually, the hot tab showing a few more than the best tab.
keypusher 8y ago
It's not unrelated, it's the same issue the r/science mods reference. A short time ago, reddit switching the default homepage to sort by "best", where it used to sort by "hot". While "best" sounds great, it actually results in some terrible behavior such as often pushing up items you really aren't interested in, while hiding very popular posts. The only fix right now is to change your bookmark to point to https://www.reddit.com/hot/ https://www.reddit.com/hot/

danso 8y ago

I do agree that the r/science moderator was wrong in attempting to game the frontpage algorithm (by removing popular r/science posts, temporarily, so that AMAs could float to the top). But I don't get why these AMAs, which ostensibly drew large audiences, wouldn't already be at the top of r/science at their peak?

LeoPanthera 8y ago
I think the obvious answer is that they simply aren't as popular as the mods claim.
- ferongr 8y ago
  I don't know why this reply is downvoted, it's essentially correct. Many science AMAs feature obscure subjects that not many would be interested in interacting with.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Or better yet you regularly see the following [Comment removed] [Comment Removed] [Comment Removed] [Comment Removed] And when I have access to cache on rare occasions, it really is innovative or interesting content being discussed. But because someone didn't understand, or someone didn't care, or $insert_reason , the whole discussion chain was deleted. That kind of stuff made me unsub r/science . It was turning into a cesspool of narrowminded busybodies. Kind of reminds me how StackOverflow is.
FrojoS 8y ago
They are on top of the subreddit but not anymore on the main landing page of reddit.
- danso 8y ago
  If they are at the top of r/science, then why did the r/science mods have to remove other popular r/science posts so that the AMAs could be at the top of r/science? > Additionally, Reddit stopped allowing what Huffman calls “post manipulation” to highlight certain content. Moderators at r/science and other popular subreddits have been accused of deleting highly ranking posts to push individual items to the top of their page. From there, they would gain visibility and receive upvotes to be featured on the main page.

djhworld 8y ago

At the start of the article I was revelling in the enjoyment of confimation bias washing over me around how reddit is changing, but then I read this > Allen admitted to the Daily Dot that he deleted popular r/science posts so AMAs would be more prominently featured. But he argues the controversial action was required for his posts to gain widespread visibility. Don't think Reddit is in the wrong here...

commandlinefan 8y ago
Honestly, Reddit needs to be doing _more_ to stop mods from running rampant all over the user base. A _lot_ more.

p49k 8y ago

I noticed HN fixes inaccurate titles, can that be done here? I don’t think it’s fair for the title to imply Reddit is to blame, based on the CEO’s comment in the article, which goes into detail on the (completely reasonable) anti-abuse measures that resulted in this. The moderators were clearly manipulating the site to promote these AMAs (albeit with good intentions) so it seems things are more complicated than “Reddit censors science” Edit: looks like it’s been changed, thanks!

edwinksl 8y ago
OP here. I took the title verbatim from the article to avoid editorializing. I am not sure where HN stands regarding changing the post title to something that is significantly different from the article title.
- dang 8y ago
  That's in the site guidelines: Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. The article title in this case is arguably both, so we changed it to use a more neutral phrase from the article. That's always the best way to change a title, btw, when you have to. Articles nearly always include some neutral representative phrase that describes what they're about, and it's much better to find a 'native' one that way than to make up a new title oneself. Trick of the trade.

koolba 8y ago

> First, the site replaced default communities—the 100 subreddits that once made up the front page of Reddit—with r/popular, which takes posts from all subreddits. The changes were made to help smaller subreddits compete with the larger, more established communities. That's wrong as /r/popular explicitly excludes a bunch of sub-reddits. While one could see it as the Reddit staff catering it to what's "popular", a more cynical view is that the entire concept was created to shape the definition of "popular". It's pretty easy to tip the scales when you're the one managing them. Separately, does The Daily Dot have any sort of editing or review process? "Huffman" is misspelled "Hoffman", extra confusingly in a direct quote from him.

ihuman 8y ago
If you want to see a version of /r/popular with all subreddits, there's /r/all. /r/popular removes NSFW subbreddits, and subreddits that users often filter from /r/all (like sports subreddits).

Havoc 8y ago

They sure seem determined to re-enact the DIGG collapse.

zelon88 8y ago

"My posts weren't the most popular, so I had to delete the popular ones to get mine to the top of r/science!" Did he really just say that post manipulation is allowed when he personally values the content and expected it to be accepted? Reddit is so covered in arbitrary rules as it is. It's harder to get a post to stick on Reddit than it is here on HN sometimes, and HN isn't even for general discussion like Reddit is. Now we're finding out that the social media website with the most red-tape and outright hostile attitude towards it's userbase deletes user content to substitute self-promotional content produced by organizers? I think it's time to find an alternative. Reddit wreaks of hostility towards users. It's the online equivalent of a park bench with coin operated spikes to deter homeless people.

roblabla 8y ago
Temporarily deleted for the AMAs to gain traction. They were restored once the AMAs made it to the front page. This sounds bad, but you have to realize that: - The AMAs had very high-profile guests, and it's easier to attract those guests if you can promise high visibility - Moderators have very little tools to curate and promote contents that they view as valuable.
- zelon88 8y ago
  "- Moderators have very little tools to curate and promote contents that they view as valuable." Why do moderators need tools to promote content they view as valuable? Isn't that what the upvote button is for? These are moderators. Volunteer enthusiasts of the communities they moderate. They have no stake in Reddit and they get nothing regardless of what content gets seen by who. They're job is to make sure nobody breaks subreddit rules. They aren't supposed to be purveyors of content on a social media platform. If I want to see structured, planned, and promoted content I'll go to CNN or Politico or NYT. I joined Reddit to be a part of a community that aggregates and promotes crowd-sourced content based on popular opinion. Giving moderators tools to control the content beyond what they need to enforce the rules is manipulation of the underlying purpose of Reddit, and should be disallowed. This isn't a Facebook page for a business that serves a purpose. It's an online forum whose purpose is to aggregate and rank crowd sourced content with crowd sourced input. Adding a "To The Top" button for moderators defeats the purpose of Reddit.

xtreak29 8y ago

The article is missing some context here where spez said that r/science mods removed the popular posts in the sub during AMA for increased attention which is allegedly vote manipulation from their end. Full reply : https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8khscc/rscience_will_no_longer_be_hosting_amas/dz8nky8 https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8khscc/rscience_wi...

deleted 8y ago

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oconnor663 8y ago

> Reddit has not confirmed what specifically it changed to prevent post manipulation but said it’s something it doesn’t support or allow. Presumably some of these changes had to do with removing e.g. r/The_Donald's ability to spam the front page. This article is really incomplete without talking about the problems that the new rules were designed to solve.

deleted 8y ago

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TekMol 8y ago

There seem to be two stages in the life cycle of social media sites that every one of them follows: 1) The site starts with transparent rules. The users are in power. Data access is open and easy. The user interface is friendly. ...the site becomes popular... 2) Rules become a secret. Power is taken away from the users. Data access becomes limited and more complicated. The user interface becomes bloated and hostile. I really hope we will manage to get decentralized social media off the ground. It sucks that even after years of work, the content creators and community builders have nothing to show for it. They are just slaves to the platform owners.

kps 8y ago
> The user interface is friendly. One advantage of the systems that web fora largely replaced — mailing lists and usenet — is that content and presentation are not coupled, so each user can use their own preferred interface.