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I was a moderator for r/robots for awhile. I even spent a few hundred dollars hiring an artist to create a theme. I begged them to help me pin down what the su
by ilaksh 4y ago
I was a moderator for r/robots for awhile. I even spent a few hundred dollars hiring an artist to create a theme.
I begged them to help me pin down what the subreddit was about since the submissions were all over the place, and some people seemed to think it was for a certain type of robot content and others a different type. Most ignored the question.
I tried to share articles and videos of actual leading edge robots that I though t were awesome. Generally these were ignored, along with most such things. Occasionally a video of a real robot would randomly become popular for some reason. The worst most repeated robot sketches would often receive many votes. Anything even remotely erotic went straight to the top.
They seemed to like art quite a bit, but often the voting was the opposite of what it should have been. Like artwork that was clearly derivative or low quality was top billing for the day, and amazing work was ignored.
Then there was someone who really wanted to use it for some channel that was obviously kind of a stealth marketing system. I repeatedly warned everyone about it and tried to discourage it, but the only feedback from anyone was that they liked the content and I was overreacting.
Due to the incredibly poor judgement of the people voting in the sub, I got fed up and left.
- Sebb767 4y ago> Like artwork that was clearly derivative or low quality was top billing for the day, and amazing work was ignored. With all Reddit-like forums, there are big secondary factors to what bubbles to the top. Just as an example, the timing can be critical [0], the current top posts [1], the current trends and even just whether the people who like that particular style are browsing new at just the right time to give the post some starting traction. It's a bit like the difference between weather and climate, you really need to sample a lot to get an accurate picture. [0] If a lot of users are online when the post is new it will earn a lot more votes. Someone on a data subreddit actually modeled which times are the best to post content for maximum visibility. EDIT: There's even a website for this now: https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/ https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/ [1] "Blocking" the top spots can easily happen. Just look at what stays at the top of HN on a Sunday vs. when Elon stirs something up at Twitter yet again.
- ilyt 4y agoGood for them. You obviously wanted something else than the actual users.
- ilaksh 4y agoThey wanted the clickbait and trash.
- pixl97 4y agoEh, the problem with this idea is everything appeals to the lowest common denominator eventually. All subs (and even HN) would fall to Sturgeon's law if lead to its logical conclusion. Smaller forums in the past tend to deal with this by having some groups that were strongly moderated with a strict set of rules and no/low tolerance of them being broke. Then more 'general' discussions where the rules were lessoned.
- vkou 4y agoWhat he wanted was a community with a specific theme and purpose. What he got was a bazaar of randos showed up to share softcore pornography. If a bunch of people showed up tomorrow on Hacker News, who mostly wanted to discuss Pokemon, they'd probably be shown the door. I don't see why a person running a subreddit shouldn't be able to do the same thing.
- watwut 4y agoWith art specifically, people and especially non artists don't judge it on art-school kind of criteria. They don't care that someone somewhere else did something similar. They don't care about formal quality. They care about how it makes them feel.