4 ms·

The core problem of using Reddit as hosting is that Reddit's site-global social gamification mechanisms incentivize things — posting jokes, hearsay, etc — that

by derefr 4y ago

The core problem of using Reddit as hosting is that Reddit's site-global social gamification mechanisms incentivize things — posting jokes, hearsay, etc — that a "serious" community (e.g. /r/AskHistorians/) explicitly wants to disincentivize. With no ability for a subreddit community to opt out of these gamification mechanisms. So your moderation efforts are always fighting against the direction the system wants to push things. Hosting a community on Reddit, is like having a shortest-path route between two buildings that cuts through a grassy field, and then sticking a sign up saying "keep off the grass" and writing tickets for anyone seen on the grass. Rather than being able to either pave the shortest-route path, or rearrange the buildings so that the route between them doesn't go through the field. There's also no ability to enable any kind of "moderated mode" on a subreddit where only subscribers may post, or where posts/comments (of new users, recent subscribers, etc) must go through a moderation queue. So you're always getting drive-by posts from users who don't know where they are or what the rules are, nor are they going to stick around long enough to care to learn them. The classic "I just found this on /r/all" comment. (You can make a subreddit invite-only, but then people can't even see posts/comments from the subreddit if they're not logged in — i.e. the subreddit is no longer a public website — which is rarely desired.)

shagie 4y ago
You'll see that is a problem here too... Turn on 'showdead' in your profile and you'll see them that get moderated away. Even the trivial posting of jokes and rather content free - it is the community and the moderation that the community does that is there. You can make a restricted subreddit where only people who are subscribers can post (though anyone can read). https://www.reddit.com/r/modguide/comments/dt2qgr/private_restricted_or_public_subreddits/ https://www.reddit.com/r/modguide/comments/dt2qgr/private_re... You can make a subreddit such that only people who have been flared can post more than once a day with external bots doing moderation and then as a moderator add/remove flares to people who contribute. You can have a sub not show up in /r/all. There is a lot of tooling that can be created and added to subs to get it to fit the moderation that is desired... it just takes work. I would contend that it will take a less work to get a reddit sub to have the community and to match the moderation desired as it would be to launch a site with custom coding that has the desired tooling and community.
- e12e 4y ago
  Tbh, I see few dead comments these days.
  - shagie 4y ago
    Try browsing through https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=5 (or wherever the last page ends up) - though there are more than a few nestled in the comments themselves. And if you scroll to the bottom of even this, rather innocuous ask HN question, there's one at the bottom.
    - e12e 4y ago
      > And if you scroll to the bottom of even this, rather innocuous ask HN question, there's one at the bottom. I consider "one at the bottom" and "a handful out of 1300 comments" to be "few". How would you define (non zero) few?
      - shagie 4y ago
        My post was 3h prior to yours. The bottom is now on page 6 and 7 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=6 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=6 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=7 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=7 Or you could pull up a new thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33474681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33474681 has one... and if there's anything web3, you can be sure to find at least one there - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469978 The structure of HN works to de-empahisize such posts. The Algorithm of HN is anit engagement after a certain point (compare to being able to sort by controversial on Reddit). The thing is that flagged and dead posts are there, but they tend to be harder to find by design. In more "engaging" posts (pull up any hot web3 one) and there'll be some... or a post about any personality.
        e12e 4y ago
        FWIW I did look at the "current" bottom of your link - I found a handful of dead out of 1300 comments. Did you see an order of magnitude different? Ed: again, I didn't say "none", I said "few".
savingsPossible 4y ago
Know of any software with different incentives? (Do you think, for example, that HK works differently because of software, because of moderation, or both?)
- shagie 4y ago
  The software, community, and the moderation/administration of it need to be thought of as one complete thing where each part places limits on the other. A Group is its own Worst Enemy - https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisitsownworstenemy.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit... Consider the lessons from LambdaMOO or Communitree in there. The design of the software promotes and discourages certain types of interaction. Stack overflow famously doesn't have a great commenting system - and it was intentionally designed that way to make long running comment back and forth difficult and unpleasant because that was what Jeff wanted (incidentally, one of Jeff's mentors was Clay Shirky who wrote the above mentioned A Group and was on the board of directors of early Stack Overflow). And as much pain as comments on SO had, the alternative for moderation would have been much worse in the framework of Stack Overflow. Likewise, there's code on HN (an algorithm) that down weights overheated discussions ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089 ). The technological and social cannot be separated and need to be built, cultivated, and grown in tandem with intention. And this is where I get back to reddit... you can do all these things on reddit, just that it takes a bit more creative use of the features within reddit and use of external tooling to enforce it. If I was to try to build something, I'd honestly start from Discourse ( https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse ) and then work to build the additional features to encourage the type of community that I'd want there and tooling for moderation. As it is, I'm not that interested in building on discourse and reddit works. If I had to deal with a larger sub where I can't read all the posts each day or was a target of trolling / low quality content, I'd likely start spinning up things like a program that rate limits people who haven't participated much in the sub initially... possibly borrowing some sentiment analyzers to try to get a heads up where there's flame war brewing. If I wanted something more "real time", discord posts are rather interesting... with the associated discord moderation bots. Think about what you want, the community that you want, and then the how you want the community to mold the technology and the technology to mold the community.

by derefr 4y ago

shagie 4y ago

You'll see that is a problem here too... Turn on 'showdead' in your profile and you'll see them that get moderated away. Even the trivial posting of jokes and rather content free - it is the community and the moderation that the community does that is there. You can make a restricted subreddit where only people who are subscribers can post (though anyone can read). https://www.reddit.com/r/modguide/comments/dt2qgr/private_restricted_or_public_subreddits/ https://www.reddit.com/r/modguide/comments/dt2qgr/private_re... You can make a subreddit such that only people who have been flared can post more than once a day with external bots doing moderation and then as a moderator add/remove flares to people who contribute. You can have a sub not show up in /r/all. There is a lot of tooling that can be created and added to subs to get it to fit the moderation that is desired... it just takes work. I would contend that it will take a less work to get a reddit sub to have the community and to match the moderation desired as it would be to launch a site with custom coding that has the desired tooling and community.

e12e 4y ago
Tbh, I see few dead comments these days.
- shagie 4y ago
  Try browsing through https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=5 (or wherever the last page ends up) - though there are more than a few nestled in the comments themselves. And if you scroll to the bottom of even this, rather innocuous ask HN question, there's one at the bottom.
  - e12e 4y ago
    > And if you scroll to the bottom of even this, rather innocuous ask HN question, there's one at the bottom. I consider "one at the bottom" and "a handful out of 1300 comments" to be "few". How would you define (non zero) few?
    - shagie 4y ago
      My post was 3h prior to yours. The bottom is now on page 6 and 7 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=6 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=6 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=7 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908&p=7 Or you could pull up a new thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33474681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33474681 has one... and if there's anything web3, you can be sure to find at least one there - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469978 The structure of HN works to de-empahisize such posts. The Algorithm of HN is anit engagement after a certain point (compare to being able to sort by controversial on Reddit). The thing is that flagged and dead posts are there, but they tend to be harder to find by design. In more "engaging" posts (pull up any hot web3 one) and there'll be some... or a post about any personality.
      - e12e 4y ago
        FWIW I did look at the "current" bottom of your link - I found a handful of dead out of 1300 comments. Did you see an order of magnitude different? Ed: again, I didn't say "none", I said "few".

savingsPossible 4y ago

Know of any software with different incentives? (Do you think, for example, that HK works differently because of software, because of moderation, or both?)

shagie 4y ago
The software, community, and the moderation/administration of it need to be thought of as one complete thing where each part places limits on the other. A Group is its own Worst Enemy - https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisitsownworstenemy.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit... Consider the lessons from LambdaMOO or Communitree in there. The design of the software promotes and discourages certain types of interaction. Stack overflow famously doesn't have a great commenting system - and it was intentionally designed that way to make long running comment back and forth difficult and unpleasant because that was what Jeff wanted (incidentally, one of Jeff's mentors was Clay Shirky who wrote the above mentioned A Group and was on the board of directors of early Stack Overflow). And as much pain as comments on SO had, the alternative for moderation would have been much worse in the framework of Stack Overflow. Likewise, there's code on HN (an algorithm) that down weights overheated discussions ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089 ). The technological and social cannot be separated and need to be built, cultivated, and grown in tandem with intention. And this is where I get back to reddit... you can do all these things on reddit, just that it takes a bit more creative use of the features within reddit and use of external tooling to enforce it. If I was to try to build something, I'd honestly start from Discourse ( https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse ) and then work to build the additional features to encourage the type of community that I'd want there and tooling for moderation. As it is, I'm not that interested in building on discourse and reddit works. If I had to deal with a larger sub where I can't read all the posts each day or was a target of trolling / low quality content, I'd likely start spinning up things like a program that rate limits people who haven't participated much in the sub initially... possibly borrowing some sentiment analyzers to try to get a heads up where there's flame war brewing. If I wanted something more "real time", discord posts are rather interesting... with the associated discord moderation bots. Think about what you want, the community that you want, and then the how you want the community to mold the technology and the technology to mold the community.