3 ms·

I'd say that it's perhaps more tied to moderation. Reddit communities vary dramatically in quality of discussion and one thing that seems to separate the highes

by IanCal 5y ago

I'd say that it's perhaps more tied to moderation. Reddit communities vary dramatically in quality of discussion and one thing that seems to separate the highest quality from the lowest is heavy moderation. AskHistorians for example is extremely strict and has very high quality answers. Another example that's strict in a different way is CasualUK, where even vague references to politics or politicians is an immediate day ban (I was banned for making a joke that someone looked like a particular politician) and this results in a high quality "discussion" (the goal is not debate but fun friendly chats and it achieves that perfectly). edit - evidence on the voting system not always helping is that quick, low effort posts and comments quickly rise to the top and drown out all other things. To the point where banning direct image posts so users have to click twice rather than once makes a difference in what's posted and rises.

swarnie_ 5y ago
I think Reddit might be fundamentally flawed because of its voting system and its need for high moderation to make it workable. Mods influence so much power over what people are and aren't allowed to talk about. You use the example of CasualUK which is indeed a very good if slightly "police state" sub but it only exists because the other UK subs became unviable. The old defence has always been "if you don't like it go away and make your own sub", unfortunately with so many obvious subs being squatted its difficult to get exposure to newer communities. From memory we have: /r/unitedkingdom - Mostly teenage lefties, often resembles a 6th form common room, mostly dislike the UK. /r/ukpolitics - Similar to above, slightly quicker on the banhammer. /r/england - cybersquatted and shutdown for years by a power mod, just opened back up but the power mod won't give top rank over to active mods. /r/scotland - A borderline anti-English hate sub, harsh group think in most threads. /r/baduk - The less said the better. I don't know what the solution is because as i said, reddit is flawed at a base level. The only positive change i can think of is to cap active participants in a sub to a specific small number.
- IanCal 5y ago
  > I think Reddit might be fundamentally flawed because of its voting system and its need for high moderation to make it workable. Perhaps. Or perhaps it's groups of people that are fundamentally flawed. > The only positive change i can think of is to cap active participants in a sub to a specific small number. Which would break a significant number of use cases of reddit. Whatsapp groups have no voting, typically pretty limited numbers of participants but can be hot flaming piles of garbage and a huge source of misinformation spreading around the world.
  - unishark 5y ago
    > Perhaps. Or perhaps it's groups of people that are fundamentally flawed. This is totally all there is to it. Also individual people for that matter. There was some twitter thread that was linked here recently that totally reminded me of a clique of vicious adolescents backstabbing someone in middle school. A side of humanity I hadn't seen in decades.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  >/r/ukpolitics - Similar to above, slightly quicker on the banhammer. I'm really sad about what happened to /r/ukpolitics. Back when it had 20-30k subscribers it was genuinely full of political anoraks and I'd often feel I'd learned something because you had the full spectrum represented there. They'd argue but people tended to know their shit a lot more, and obviously rubbish arguments were much less common. It's far more successful on paper now, but it's also enormously less interesting for me. Maybe I'm just not the intended audience any more, I'm the sort of person who'd rather see an anarchist and a Thatcherite get into a verbal knife fight than the beige, very mainstream discussions that go on there now.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
I'm seconding your suggestion. I also think it's mostly moderation. Through close to two decades of watching and participating in discussions on Reddit, HN, Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube comments, some phpBB boards, website comment systems, as well as a bunch of local discussion boards in the age before social media, I've observed that: - Niche forums fare better than general ones - Voting systems don't matter at all, including pseudo-voting like "likes" and "shares" counters - Real name policy doesn't matter - Heavy active moderation - i.e. with moderators being part of the community - seems to be the deciding factor - Passive moderation, like e.g. "report" buttons on Facebook/YouTube, does not work It is my current belief that the only way to maintain quality discussion in a community is to: 1. Define a quality standard, e.g. through a set of guidelines, and 2. Have moderation that continuously and timely enforces everyone's adherence to the standard. Nothing else matters. People don't have one fixed mode of communication - they can't be divided into groups like "idiots", "assholes" and "quality contributors". Individuals may habitually prefer some styles, but they also naturally mimic other people, and ultimately always adapt to boundaries of what's allowed. Culture then grows around those boundaries, further influencing people through mimicry. A person that's a total asshole on YouTube can also be very professional at work, and polite to their friends. A person that's communicating constructively on HN may do the opposite on Twitter. In all these cases, the enforced standards differ. Guidelines aren't standards if they aren't actually enforced, and moderation doesn't bring quality if it's not moderating for it.
- IanCal 5y ago
  > - Voting systems don't matter at all, including pseudo-voting like "likes" and "shares" counters I'm a little torn on this. I can see them as useful or damaging. I quite like HNs which doesn't support the chasing of karma per comment too precisely. Not perfect, but none of the solutions are really. > A person that's a total asshole on YouTube can also be very professional at work, and polite to their friends. A person that's communicating constructively on HN may do the opposite on Twitter. In all these cases, the enforced standards differ. Indeed, I know I write very differently here to reddit, and differently on different subs. Just as in real life. The timely side is I think very important, as this keeps the overall view of the place looking as you want it. On that side, I think rapid deletion is a very useful tool. Something I liked about the casualuk approach is that there's a fast forgiveness as well. A one day ban and comment deletion is simple, obviously impactful but not actually harmful and there's no long lasting "negative" score for people to aim for (or feel like it means they become outcasts). Moderation has its problems, and maybe there's a better approach, but it's much harder to "game" an active person with a stake in keeping a place nice.

by IanCal 5y ago

swarnie_ 5y ago

I think Reddit might be fundamentally flawed because of its voting system and its need for high moderation to make it workable. Mods influence so much power over what people are and aren't allowed to talk about. You use the example of CasualUK which is indeed a very good if slightly "police state" sub but it only exists because the other UK subs became unviable. The old defence has always been "if you don't like it go away and make your own sub", unfortunately with so many obvious subs being squatted its difficult to get exposure to newer communities. From memory we have: /r/unitedkingdom - Mostly teenage lefties, often resembles a 6th form common room, mostly dislike the UK. /r/ukpolitics - Similar to above, slightly quicker on the banhammer. /r/england - cybersquatted and shutdown for years by a power mod, just opened back up but the power mod won't give top rank over to active mods. /r/scotland - A borderline anti-English hate sub, harsh group think in most threads. /r/baduk - The less said the better. I don't know what the solution is because as i said, reddit is flawed at a base level. The only positive change i can think of is to cap active participants in a sub to a specific small number.

IanCal 5y ago
> I think Reddit might be fundamentally flawed because of its voting system and its need for high moderation to make it workable. Perhaps. Or perhaps it's groups of people that are fundamentally flawed. > The only positive change i can think of is to cap active participants in a sub to a specific small number. Which would break a significant number of use cases of reddit. Whatsapp groups have no voting, typically pretty limited numbers of participants but can be hot flaming piles of garbage and a huge source of misinformation spreading around the world.
- unishark 5y ago
  > Perhaps. Or perhaps it's groups of people that are fundamentally flawed. This is totally all there is to it. Also individual people for that matter. There was some twitter thread that was linked here recently that totally reminded me of a clique of vicious adolescents backstabbing someone in middle school. A side of humanity I hadn't seen in decades.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
>/r/ukpolitics - Similar to above, slightly quicker on the banhammer. I'm really sad about what happened to /r/ukpolitics. Back when it had 20-30k subscribers it was genuinely full of political anoraks and I'd often feel I'd learned something because you had the full spectrum represented there. They'd argue but people tended to know their shit a lot more, and obviously rubbish arguments were much less common. It's far more successful on paper now, but it's also enormously less interesting for me. Maybe I'm just not the intended audience any more, I'm the sort of person who'd rather see an anarchist and a Thatcherite get into a verbal knife fight than the beige, very mainstream discussions that go on there now.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

I'm seconding your suggestion. I also think it's mostly moderation. Through close to two decades of watching and participating in discussions on Reddit, HN, Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube comments, some phpBB boards, website comment systems, as well as a bunch of local discussion boards in the age before social media, I've observed that: - Niche forums fare better than general ones - Voting systems don't matter at all, including pseudo-voting like "likes" and "shares" counters - Real name policy doesn't matter - Heavy active moderation - i.e. with moderators being part of the community - seems to be the deciding factor - Passive moderation, like e.g. "report" buttons on Facebook/YouTube, does not work It is my current belief that the only way to maintain quality discussion in a community is to: 1. Define a quality standard, e.g. through a set of guidelines, and 2. Have moderation that continuously and timely enforces everyone's adherence to the standard. Nothing else matters. People don't have one fixed mode of communication - they can't be divided into groups like "idiots", "assholes" and "quality contributors". Individuals may habitually prefer some styles, but they also naturally mimic other people, and ultimately always adapt to boundaries of what's allowed. Culture then grows around those boundaries, further influencing people through mimicry. A person that's a total asshole on YouTube can also be very professional at work, and polite to their friends. A person that's communicating constructively on HN may do the opposite on Twitter. In all these cases, the enforced standards differ. Guidelines aren't standards if they aren't actually enforced, and moderation doesn't bring quality if it's not moderating for it.

IanCal 5y ago
> - Voting systems don't matter at all, including pseudo-voting like "likes" and "shares" counters I'm a little torn on this. I can see them as useful or damaging. I quite like HNs which doesn't support the chasing of karma per comment too precisely. Not perfect, but none of the solutions are really. > A person that's a total asshole on YouTube can also be very professional at work, and polite to their friends. A person that's communicating constructively on HN may do the opposite on Twitter. In all these cases, the enforced standards differ. Indeed, I know I write very differently here to reddit, and differently on different subs. Just as in real life. The timely side is I think very important, as this keeps the overall view of the place looking as you want it. On that side, I think rapid deletion is a very useful tool. Something I liked about the casualuk approach is that there's a fast forgiveness as well. A one day ban and comment deletion is simple, obviously impactful but not actually harmful and there's no long lasting "negative" score for people to aim for (or feel like it means they become outcasts). Moderation has its problems, and maybe there's a better approach, but it's much harder to "game" an active person with a stake in keeping a place nice.