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I don't get the impression they are spending a whole lot on community management. In a way, that's a big part of what I see as their largest problem - they are

I don't get the impression they are spending a whole lot on community management. In a way, that's a big part of what I see as their largest problem - they are relying on the zeal of the subreddit moderators to work for free. (They should have a model which allows moderators for large subreddits to get paid. And for the subscribers to vote for moderators.) This is why the large subreddits are so incredibly polarized in either left or right directions - the moderators are not paid to deal with things fairly, they are there spending their time working free - the only benefit they get is that they get to enforce their particular political choice onto others in their subreddit. Look at e.g. r/politics and r/the_donald as extreme examples of what I'm talking about.

exelius 8y ago
I would go so far as to say that while the moderators of most major subs may have started as volunteers, they are almost certainly on someone’s payroll now as “social influencers”. This includes the political subreddits (actually especially the political subreddits). It’s legitimate user posts and discussions filtered by whoever has the coin to rent access to those moderators.
- falcon620 8y ago
  There's also been a few accusations of r/tesla moderators being on payroll (can be read at r/realtesla).
  - exelius 8y ago
    I know someone who is a mod for a couple major subs and he absolutely does paid placements (he has his own bot network for everything, but being a mod his shill posts don’t get deleted). Mods don’t necessarily use their mod power itself for profit, but knowing how the sub works and what users like is very powerful. So is ignoring obvious upvote botnets because they belong to you or another mod.
    - falcon620 8y ago
      The inevitable conclusion I come to: Something like reddit2 should be run by a minimalist apolitical company. They should work on building some kind of democracy in each sub-reddit, based on some factors (where "participation quality" is one important factor). If the users are unhappy, they should be able to call for an election, etc. The reddit2 company should focus primarily on keeping the platform alive and on fighting bots. And on tuning the scoring model. They should be financed in some way that doesn't depend on the content. Be it individual contributments, random, anomymized advertisments etc. The company should try to hire apolitical engineers and managers. People who just care about solving an engineering problem.
      - catach 8y ago
        Tildes [0] may grow to align with much of what you're looking for here, maybe not. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093

exelius 8y ago

I would go so far as to say that while the moderators of most major subs may have started as volunteers, they are almost certainly on someone’s payroll now as “social influencers”. This includes the political subreddits (actually especially the political subreddits). It’s legitimate user posts and discussions filtered by whoever has the coin to rent access to those moderators.

falcon620 8y ago
There's also been a few accusations of r/tesla moderators being on payroll (can be read at r/realtesla).
- exelius 8y ago
  I know someone who is a mod for a couple major subs and he absolutely does paid placements (he has his own bot network for everything, but being a mod his shill posts don’t get deleted). Mods don’t necessarily use their mod power itself for profit, but knowing how the sub works and what users like is very powerful. So is ignoring obvious upvote botnets because they belong to you or another mod.
  - falcon620 8y ago
    The inevitable conclusion I come to: Something like reddit2 should be run by a minimalist apolitical company. They should work on building some kind of democracy in each sub-reddit, based on some factors (where "participation quality" is one important factor). If the users are unhappy, they should be able to call for an election, etc. The reddit2 company should focus primarily on keeping the platform alive and on fighting bots. And on tuning the scoring model. They should be financed in some way that doesn't depend on the content. Be it individual contributments, random, anomymized advertisments etc. The company should try to hire apolitical engineers and managers. People who just care about solving an engineering problem.
    - catach 8y ago
      Tildes [0] may grow to align with much of what you're looking for here, maybe not. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093