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Regional subs are the worst, for whatever reason. My theory is it's because they bring together people with nothing in common besides their geographic location.

Regional subs are the worst, for whatever reason. My theory is it's because they bring together people with nothing in common besides their geographic location. Even subs that should be neutral, fun or supportive have attitude problems. One about a game I'm playing, for instance, consists mainly of dramatic complaints with a feeling of impending doom.

oehpr 5y ago
Topic Subreddits tend to be joyful, but there are things that can turn communities very toxic. It could be the demographic the topic appeals to. It could be that some moderation decision for the subreddit is festering and creating a lot of hurt feelings. It could be that there's some underlying issue that the community is uncomfortable with, or divisive, and a loud minority are dominating the discussion. I have two examples of this from otherwise extremely positive communities. /r/factorio and /r/satisfactory (same genra, but I like this genre) /r/factorio initially had no issue with self promotion of videos and series. This caused a ton of consternation and all kinds of other subjects turned very very negative. Moderators created another subreddit dedicated for self promotion of series, and the community stayed angry about everything for about 2 months, before things regressed to /r/factorio's mean, which was very positive. I saw a similar thing happen in /r/satisfactory. Before the game was released people on the subreddit had nothing to talk about for the most part, and satisfactory announced that it was going to be epic exclusive for 6 months before release. Given that many people really hated Epic, and because we didn't actually get to play the game, anything that didn't talk about the Epic exclusivity, was subject to the conversation. Eventually moderators placed dedicated threads for epic exclusivity discussion but still, the whole subreddits tone was extremely vitriolic. Even on things that didn't have anything to do with Epic Exclusivity. Then the game released. And that toxic discussion was totally wiped out by people actually playing the game. The subreddits snapped to positive tone instantly.

oehpr 5y ago

Topic Subreddits tend to be joyful, but there are things that can turn communities very toxic. It could be the demographic the topic appeals to. It could be that some moderation decision for the subreddit is festering and creating a lot of hurt feelings. It could be that there's some underlying issue that the community is uncomfortable with, or divisive, and a loud minority are dominating the discussion. I have two examples of this from otherwise extremely positive communities. /r/factorio and /r/satisfactory (same genra, but I like this genre) /r/factorio initially had no issue with self promotion of videos and series. This caused a ton of consternation and all kinds of other subjects turned very very negative. Moderators created another subreddit dedicated for self promotion of series, and the community stayed angry about everything for about 2 months, before things regressed to /r/factorio's mean, which was very positive. I saw a similar thing happen in /r/satisfactory. Before the game was released people on the subreddit had nothing to talk about for the most part, and satisfactory announced that it was going to be epic exclusive for 6 months before release. Given that many people really hated Epic, and because we didn't actually get to play the game, anything that didn't talk about the Epic exclusivity, was subject to the conversation. Eventually moderators placed dedicated threads for epic exclusivity discussion but still, the whole subreddits tone was extremely vitriolic. Even on things that didn't have anything to do with Epic Exclusivity. Then the game released. And that toxic discussion was totally wiped out by people actually playing the game. The subreddits snapped to positive tone instantly.