8 ms·

I like the reddit and 4chan model. Content is clearly compartmentalized by topic with different rules for each subcommunity. Of course they are not totally free

I like the reddit and 4chan model. Content is clearly compartmentalized by topic with different rules for each subcommunity. Of course they are not totally free of moderation but it still allows a greater diversity of opinions with seemingly diametrically opposed groups existing side by side. Many of the big social networks lack compartmentalization. On the other hand twitter demonstrates that it's not necessary, just helpful.

aldoushuxley001 8y ago
Moderators have too much power in the reddit model. Subreddit's become their own lil fiefdoms... literally virtual real estate that different special interests vie for influence of. Unforuntately, minority voices are stifled in almost every single subreddit. Sure you can say people are free to make their own subreddits for those voices, but for example a community like /r/canada has a very valuable virtual real estate in its name. Most new canadian redditors will at one point check out /r/canada because it's canada's subreddit. Unfortunately moderators largely stifle conservative perspectives, forcing them out to subreddits like /r/metacanada.
- always_good 8y ago
  One problem is that the `/r/:subreddit` url creates name-squatting and the illusion of canonical forums. /r/canada is like <company>.com: anything else looks second-rate. /r/canada2? /r/bettercanada? /r/altcanada? /r/the_canada? /r/mapleleaf? I think reddit should've gone with `/r/:username/:subreddit` to remind everyone that every subreddit is just some random person's forum, not some canonical message board on that topic. It also makes it much easier to migrate to another subreddit because you aren't stuck picking some second-rate subreddit name like /r/bitcoin -> /r/btc. /r/spez/politics, for example, reminds you that it's the politics of whoever spez is (reddit co-founder) and his mod team.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    That's not a bad idea, but it definitely harms discoverability, and makes it easier to impersonate known subreddits. (It also could mean that a person deleting their account, or being banned, takes down the subreddit; it means transferring ownership becomes complicated.)
  - monksy 8y ago
    That would be interesting for an approach. If you add all of the r/[this] be an aggregation of everyone's r/monksy/[this]. (That would mean that the name r/[this] couldn't be posted to) We have seen issues where cities have had terrible moderation and that people have complained about it/split off. (r/seattle and r/seattlewa sticks out, as does r/chicago, r/realchicago, r/chicagonothinggoes, r/chicagoanythinggoes)
  - CookieMon 8y ago
    Or let any user offer moderation duties and give every user the ability to change/revoke who is moderating their feed. /r/spez;always_good/politics, for example, could specify the politics feed minus anything spez or always_good marked as spam or off topic (rather than using whichever mods you've set for your account).
  - AlexMax 8y ago
    That's a neat idea, but what prevents people from squatting official-looking usernames? And what happens if the mod team changes?
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  The problem isn't moderator power, it's name squatting. Do you have a concrete suggestion for giving the moderators less power, while still ensuring that subreddits don't get overrun with trolls? Keep in mind that physical in-world minorities can amplify their voices vastly online. Sometimes this is something we want (by allowing, e.g., African-Americans to point out systemic injustice) and sometimes it's not (Fascist goons shitposting racist propaganda and driving people off twitter.)
  - baud147258 8y ago
    >Keep in mind that physical in-world minorities can amplify their voices vastly online. Sometimes this is something we want and sometimes it's not Well, we can't have our cake and eat it too.
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
      But for any particular cake, in some given dining room, we need to be able to decide whether we want to put it in our mouths or not.
  - aldoushuxley001 8y ago
    I'd rather enable users to moderate their own content by giving them better tools to do so. Reddit simply isn't built for this though, because they've already committed to the subreddit model. Ultimately though, I believe reddit's successor will find success going this route. So it's less about giving more power to minorities (which are still just groups) and more about giving power to individuals to manage their own content. I'm actually shocked more social network don't give their users even more control over their content curation.
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
      > I'd rather enable users to moderate their own content by giving them better tools to do so. I hear where you're coming from, but I subscribe to a small amount of subreddits, and moderate one - and I am absolutely not willing to clean up after every troll, shill and bot that posts to all of them. As a specific example, I moderate a local meetup subreddit. We have fairly specific rules about what is and isn't allowed, and our subreddit is better for it - because people aren't allowed to just link to random events in the city, we require that they be events that they are actively interested in attending. (The rationale is twofold - one, people won't just spam links to their events, and two, attendees will find at least one person they can connect to instead of attending alone, which can be somewhat daunting.) If we, as moderators didn't do this, we'd have to rely on every user to "clean up" our subreddit for us. Those that didn't care to would find our subreddit useless, since it would be filled with links to garbage Facebook events, meetup.com sales pitches, and ads for competing subreddits and apps. Those that did, well, they'd have to do the work that we do. Why should we ask that of people? It's like opening up a dance club, but telling everyone that it's BYOB, and BYOmusic, and BYOchair if you get tired, and also you gotta bring a broom if you want the dance floor to not be full of garbage. At that point, what's our value-add?
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> Of course they are not totally free of moderation If there is one thing I wish I could beat into people's heads with a stick about online discourse, is that any place free of moderation is not going to be a free speech haven, but a cesspit where the people with the most free time will dominate and drive out others. It's incredibly cheap and easy to shit up a conversation, but quite costly to have an engaging dialogue. By having no moderation, you're actively choosing to reward shitposters, and punish quality contributors. And, no, adding an up/downvote mechanism does not solve this problem.
- baud147258 8y ago
  > If there is one thing I wish I could beat into people's heads with a stick about online discourse, is that any place free of moderation is not going to be a free speech haven, but a cesspit where the people with the most free time will dominate and drive out others. It depends. One forum where I spend some of my time has very hands-off moderation and it does have a) some quality conversations b) diversity of opinions. Of course it descends regularly in low-quality drivel, insults and/or shitposting, especially on controversial subjects, but it works. Edit: But I can't say that it works everywehre, just that it can work.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    It can definitely work in certain cases, especially when there's a single very clear focus or purpose for the forum, or some sort of accountability for your opinions.
    - baud147258 8y ago
      > single very clear focus or purpose for the forum It's the case on that forum and the off-topic discussions (religion & politics) are accesible only to accounts older than 1 year, so it helps to limit shitposting in those discussions. Accountability for your opinions in that case just mean getting mocked by other people (I said free speech, not nice speech). I just wanted to show an counter-example disagreeing with your (apparently) absolute position.

aldoushuxley001 8y ago

Moderators have too much power in the reddit model. Subreddit's become their own lil fiefdoms... literally virtual real estate that different special interests vie for influence of. Unforuntately, minority voices are stifled in almost every single subreddit. Sure you can say people are free to make their own subreddits for those voices, but for example a community like /r/canada has a very valuable virtual real estate in its name. Most new canadian redditors will at one point check out /r/canada because it's canada's subreddit. Unfortunately moderators largely stifle conservative perspectives, forcing them out to subreddits like /r/metacanada.

always_good 8y ago
One problem is that the `/r/:subreddit` url creates name-squatting and the illusion of canonical forums. /r/canada is like <company>.com: anything else looks second-rate. /r/canada2? /r/bettercanada? /r/altcanada? /r/the_canada? /r/mapleleaf? I think reddit should've gone with `/r/:username/:subreddit` to remind everyone that every subreddit is just some random person's forum, not some canonical message board on that topic. It also makes it much easier to migrate to another subreddit because you aren't stuck picking some second-rate subreddit name like /r/bitcoin -> /r/btc. /r/spez/politics, for example, reminds you that it's the politics of whoever spez is (reddit co-founder) and his mod team.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  That's not a bad idea, but it definitely harms discoverability, and makes it easier to impersonate known subreddits. (It also could mean that a person deleting their account, or being banned, takes down the subreddit; it means transferring ownership becomes complicated.)
- monksy 8y ago
  That would be interesting for an approach. If you add all of the r/[this] be an aggregation of everyone's r/monksy/[this]. (That would mean that the name r/[this] couldn't be posted to) We have seen issues where cities have had terrible moderation and that people have complained about it/split off. (r/seattle and r/seattlewa sticks out, as does r/chicago, r/realchicago, r/chicagonothinggoes, r/chicagoanythinggoes)
- CookieMon 8y ago
  Or let any user offer moderation duties and give every user the ability to change/revoke who is moderating their feed. /r/spez;always_good/politics, for example, could specify the politics feed minus anything spez or always_good marked as spam or off topic (rather than using whichever mods you've set for your account).
- AlexMax 8y ago
  That's a neat idea, but what prevents people from squatting official-looking usernames? And what happens if the mod team changes?
pavel_lishin 8y ago
The problem isn't moderator power, it's name squatting. Do you have a concrete suggestion for giving the moderators less power, while still ensuring that subreddits don't get overrun with trolls? Keep in mind that physical in-world minorities can amplify their voices vastly online. Sometimes this is something we want (by allowing, e.g., African-Americans to point out systemic injustice) and sometimes it's not (Fascist goons shitposting racist propaganda and driving people off twitter.)
- baud147258 8y ago
  >Keep in mind that physical in-world minorities can amplify their voices vastly online. Sometimes this is something we want and sometimes it's not Well, we can't have our cake and eat it too.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    But for any particular cake, in some given dining room, we need to be able to decide whether we want to put it in our mouths or not.
- aldoushuxley001 8y ago
  I'd rather enable users to moderate their own content by giving them better tools to do so. Reddit simply isn't built for this though, because they've already committed to the subreddit model. Ultimately though, I believe reddit's successor will find success going this route. So it's less about giving more power to minorities (which are still just groups) and more about giving power to individuals to manage their own content. I'm actually shocked more social network don't give their users even more control over their content curation.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    > I'd rather enable users to moderate their own content by giving them better tools to do so. I hear where you're coming from, but I subscribe to a small amount of subreddits, and moderate one - and I am absolutely not willing to clean up after every troll, shill and bot that posts to all of them. As a specific example, I moderate a local meetup subreddit. We have fairly specific rules about what is and isn't allowed, and our subreddit is better for it - because people aren't allowed to just link to random events in the city, we require that they be events that they are actively interested in attending. (The rationale is twofold - one, people won't just spam links to their events, and two, attendees will find at least one person they can connect to instead of attending alone, which can be somewhat daunting.) If we, as moderators didn't do this, we'd have to rely on every user to "clean up" our subreddit for us. Those that didn't care to would find our subreddit useless, since it would be filled with links to garbage Facebook events, meetup.com sales pitches, and ads for competing subreddits and apps. Those that did, well, they'd have to do the work that we do. Why should we ask that of people? It's like opening up a dance club, but telling everyone that it's BYOB, and BYOmusic, and BYOchair if you get tired, and also you gotta bring a broom if you want the dance floor to not be full of garbage. At that point, what's our value-add?

pavel_lishin 8y ago

> Of course they are not totally free of moderation If there is one thing I wish I could beat into people's heads with a stick about online discourse, is that any place free of moderation is not going to be a free speech haven, but a cesspit where the people with the most free time will dominate and drive out others. It's incredibly cheap and easy to shit up a conversation, but quite costly to have an engaging dialogue. By having no moderation, you're actively choosing to reward shitposters, and punish quality contributors. And, no, adding an up/downvote mechanism does not solve this problem.

baud147258 8y ago
> If there is one thing I wish I could beat into people's heads with a stick about online discourse, is that any place free of moderation is not going to be a free speech haven, but a cesspit where the people with the most free time will dominate and drive out others. It depends. One forum where I spend some of my time has very hands-off moderation and it does have a) some quality conversations b) diversity of opinions. Of course it descends regularly in low-quality drivel, insults and/or shitposting, especially on controversial subjects, but it works. Edit: But I can't say that it works everywehre, just that it can work.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  It can definitely work in certain cases, especially when there's a single very clear focus or purpose for the forum, or some sort of accountability for your opinions.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    > single very clear focus or purpose for the forum It's the case on that forum and the off-topic discussions (religion & politics) are accesible only to accounts older than 1 year, so it helps to limit shitposting in those discussions. Accountability for your opinions in that case just mean getting mocked by other people (I said free speech, not nice speech). I just wanted to show an counter-example disagreeing with your (apparently) absolute position.