[HN Gopher] Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control
___________________________________________________________________
Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control
Author : dblack12705
Score : 37 points
Date : 2023-02-08 19:31 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maximumeffort.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maximumeffort.substack.com)
| moritonal wrote:
| Totally agree with the math here. If you look at Discord servers
| you see how they have to break down into authoritarianism as mods
| have less and less time to deal with each issue.
| airstrike wrote:
| Reddit mods are arguably the worst part of reddit. It's so
| refreshing to come to HN and see (community- and mod-powered)
| moderation done right
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Reddit mods are arguably the worst part of reddit
|
| No, the actual administrators (the ones that work there are).
| They're the ones that can actually ban entire subreddits and
| entire users. I had my account permanently suspended for
| _upvoting_ vaccine hesitancy. That wasn 't done by a reddit
| moderator.
| DennisP wrote:
| It varies by sub, and by the purpose of the sub. Some are
| terrible, some are quite good.
|
| For example, the mods of r/askhistorians are so strict that in
| most threads the majority of the comments are deleted. But they
| apply the rules consistently, and keep the sub tightly focused
| on questions answered by professional historians, in detail,
| with sources. If you have a historical question you'd like
| answered, it's an amazing resource.
| keneda7 wrote:
| I would totally agree. So many of them just seem to be on a
| power trip and moderate based on their mood. Its sad because
| its really killed reddit for a lot of people.
| dageshi wrote:
| My guess is, being a mod means you see patterns and you know
| when something is going to descend into a shitstorm because
| you've seen similar comments descent into a shitstorm before.
|
| So eventually mods kill comments not because they
| particularly dislike them but because they can't be bothered
| with dealing with the inevitable shit to come.
| saos wrote:
| [flagged]
| knolan wrote:
| Interestingly enough there's been some mod drama over on
| /r/AskScienceFiction today. This is a sub where people ask
| questions and get in universe responses. It's very nerdy and can
| be fun. It also can attract a certain type of poster who can be
| lacking in say, self awareness and take it too seriously.
|
| The new Harry Potter game is generating a lot of posts and a
| particular mod who has personal reasons to dislike JK Rowling
| added an auto mod post to the top of each post related to Harry
| Potter spoiling the game story. They're unrepentant about it and
| their responses show what a lack of self awareness in moderation
| can do. Probably the worst case I've seen in a while.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/10wstqa/...
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _a particular mod who has personal reasons to dislike JK
| Rowling_
|
| I think it's disingenuous to paint what are likely _political_
| reasons as just personal quibbles.
| knolan wrote:
| If I painted it as a political agenda someone else would
| complain. They are personally affected because they are
| trans. That seemed the most honest way to phrase it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > personally affected because they are trans
|
| That's something I find surprising about reddit - I can't
| remember what the exact percentage is, but I think it's
| something like 0.1% of the world population is trans... but
| it seems like 90% of the moderators on reddit are. What is
| it about reddit that attracts them?
| chungy wrote:
| It's still political. It's extremely unlikely the mod in
| question and JK Rowling have ever met, which makes it
| impossible to be personal.
| knolan wrote:
| Personal as in their private life or identity is
| affected, not interpersonal as in a relationship between
| two or more people or groups. Political would relate to
| government policies, or how a country is run. I'm
| flabbergasted that I need to explain this.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| If someone is trans, or cares about trans people, its
| entirely personal to them. The "issue" isn't always a
| political one.
|
| Yes, the mod in question may be forcing their personal
| worldview on a subreddit, but the OC's phrasing of the
| overall situation seems completely accurate.
| mike_d wrote:
| > a particular mod who has personal reasons to dislike JK
| Rowling
|
| We all have a duty to speak out against people who promote
| anti-trans, anti-gay, and anti-abortion agendas.
| goatlover wrote:
| How is spoiling a story for others doing that? It just makes
| the person spoiling it look like an asshole.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Sorry, but no.
|
| Hogwart's Legacy the game is simply part of the franchise. It
| does not promote any sort of political speech. People
| attacking it are attacking it because they have an issue with
| the person, not the franchise in which JKR doesn't actually
| exist.
|
| My perception of JKR is that she was simply a person with a
| personal opinion, and then it became a holy war against her
| because certain individuals became enraged that they are not
| loved and accepted by her and the world at large. They
| attacked her, which made her defensive and feel more set that
| there is a problem here.
|
| I am sure that if she had been left alone there would have
| been many opportunities for dialogue, but that can't happen
| now.
|
| For what it's worth, I do understand her perspective. She
| grew up as a female, with a fully female body. It's hard for
| her to wrap her head around it that someone at age 30 or
| whatever age can just pop some hormones and request to be a
| woman. They've never had the fear of walking down the street
| alone at night, never had the fear of being raped or being
| the victim of violence, never experienced nonstop
| discrimination and objectification, never had an ever-present
| focus over reproductive biology, etc.
|
| All this self-defeating noise attacking JKR just makes people
| less understanding because they only see 1 side making all
| the noise.
| jldugger wrote:
| > It does not promote any sort of political speech.
|
| I mean, the analysis of Harry Potter's universe goes beyond
| trans identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs
| uuhdigsuendifhe wrote:
| What duty? Could you elaborate a little? I certainly have no
| conviction or choose to impose it upon others to hate the
| same thng I hate.
| berjin wrote:
| Or you could accept that people have opinions that are
| different to yours and books are orthogonal to her opinions
| anyway. It's really concerning how authoritarian some people
| are while ironically claiming others are the bad actors. This
| is what the echo chamber voting system on reddit results in.
| knolan wrote:
| Except they didn't just stop there. They used their platform
| to actively hurt those capable of separating the art from the
| artist. I've no interest in the Harry Potter series. I've
| never read or watched any of it and I've a negative opinion
| of JKR's hateful opinions. I don't feel the need to punch
| down.
|
| As a moderator who has agreed to apply the rules of a
| community for the betterment of that community to decide that
| those rules don't apply to them is simply not good enough.
| college_physics wrote:
| What is the alternative? Operating a discourse forum is high
| maintenance and low visibility. Facebook/Linkedin? Horrible
| platforms in practically all possible ways. The fediverse has
| some ideas about a Reddit alternative (Lemmy) but much less
| mature than mastodon at this point and ofcourse yet to be seen
| how moderation will fare if user numbers start rising.
|
| Like so many aspects of the current tech landscape, its largely a
| case of TINA, there is no alternative, even though the
| deficiencies are glaring.
| seydor wrote:
| It's not a scaling problem , it s a "reddit likes free labor"
| problem. They aren't going to give up on the small group of self-
| important idiots who named themselves mods 15 years ago and still
| havent quit, because they can't find new ones. No sane person
| will do such work _for free_ in 2023
|
| Trying to reason on the behavior of the mods is like arguing with
| the weather
| cmh89 wrote:
| It's a little bit of A and a little bit of B. I first started
| using reddit slightly before the great Digg exodus. Back then
| all the subreddits were relatively small and a lot of them were
| great. It's reasonable to me that someone who was passionate
| about a hobby like hiking or bicycling, or even video games
| would want to volunteer their time to nurture a community they
| enjoy.
|
| Now, there are very few 'mainstream' subreddits that are a
| reasonable size. You have to be in to a niche of a niche to
| find a good community. No reasonable person would volunteer
| their time or get enjoyment enough to wade through anonymous
| accounts yelling at each other on /r/politics or /r/pics. So
| you end up with a bunch of people who are willing to trade
| their time to feel like they have control over other people,
| and naturally they abuse it.
|
| reddit is a shell of its former self and having professional
| moderators with clear and accountable rules would be a major
| step forward. reddit has always shirked accountability though
| in the pursuit of profit, so I don't really see it happening
| outside of a change in the law.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| I think one point the author is missing (or maybe I missed it in
| my reading) is that large subreddits are mostly about consumption
| and that's what makes them less fun as a community. People post
| to r/pics for the chance their image, or a comment on the image,
| garners huge amounts of upvotes for clout on the site. In
| addition to volume, another reason they don't want people to
| submit their links is because users don't want the competition to
| be corrupted by corporate marketing departments.
| par wrote:
| Similar problems exist with mods on facebook pages.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Reddit's decade-old rule that you shouldn't submit more than 10%
| of your own content is one of the weirdest artifacts of that era,
| especially since every social media company would kill for good
| original content.
| i_like_apis wrote:
| I find Reddit mods are particularly power crazy. Most of them
| seem to be doing it for power rather than for love of the content
| of their sub. There is so much personal bias and posts removed
| for personal reasons, or just to flex. I'm not speculating on the
| reason, but it's definitely like that.
| sebstefan wrote:
| But if you pause for a minute, can you think of a place on the
| internet where there isn't a systemic problem with mods being
| power crazy?
|
| Genuine question!
| seydor wrote:
| yes, many. Subreddits are sticky and it s almost impossible
| for someone to start competing with the medium-to-big ones ,
| because the 'obvious' names are taken . This is especially
| true for countries / cities / brand names. As long as the
| mods are not completely crazy, there is only one word for
| 'politics' or 'europe', and users will not go to a new sub
| just because the mods are better.
|
| If they were individual internet forums, people would just
| leave instead. Reddit acts as big single-sign-on that heavily
| biases users towards its existing subreddits. The fact that
| reddit admins still allow a small group of people to moderate
| hundreds of subreddits for decade+ is proof of that. If they
| cared, they would mandatorily recycle them
| pictur wrote:
| [flagged]
| dageshi wrote:
| It's easy to understand, it'll take hours of your day on a big
| sub, many subs regularly advertise for mods, but most people
| aren't interested in the extra work.
| smoldesu wrote:
| FWIW, promoting a bunch of your content (even if original) is
| seen as anti-participatory in some communities. Even HN
| recommends against it in the guidelines. While we're at it, at
| HN's scale you see the same polarization of engagement in /new.
| Simply posting original quality doesn't warrant engagement.
|
| Reddit gives you a myriad of subreddit case studies to blow-up,
| but I think this is less of a scaling problem and more the split
| culture between communities.
| epolanski wrote:
| > Simply posting original quality doesn't warrant engagement.
|
| Timing and luck is essential in any upvote/downvote community.
| eggbrain wrote:
| Would it be potentially viable to make moderators more like
| filterers (e.g. like filter lists in Ublock Origin)?
|
| You could "subscribe" to a moderator if you like the way they
| filter content, and if you "unsubscribed" from all moderators
| you'd get as much of an "unfiltered" view as possible.
|
| Bad moderators, over time, would get less and less subscriptions
| to their filtering of content, and would have to adapt, or be
| fine with less "power" over the content they moderate.
| sebstefan wrote:
| I don't think it would work
|
| - Most people never touch which ublock filter they use, so
| moderators probably wouldn't care too much about maintaining a
| decent behavior
|
| - People would have no idea what mod to pick and just pick the
| first few top ones, resulting in even more centralization,
| these people would have insane monetization options
|
| - You also have the problem that if a top mod "retires", the
| combination of extreme centralization + a large portion of
| users who can't be arsed to go into the settings would mean
| that a fair portion of the userbase would durably get unmodded
| content
|
| - I believe that reddit doesn't want their users to be able to
| "turn off" moderation, even just for themselves, which you
| would be able to do by removing all filters. Think of people
| posting child porn, etc.
|
| I'd have just gone for an appeal system. Your ban message has
| an "appeal" button inviting you to make a post on /r/banned,
| once you've posted reddit notifies a certain number of recently
| active users at random, send them a DM telling them they've
| been selected for drama duty, and give them a special
| upvote/downvote for your post in /r/banned or something. The
| results determine if your ban gets overturned. With some
| thought put for edge cases (what if nobody gave a crap, do you
| get another chance, ...) but, hopefully, it's kept simple.
|
| You track how many overturns per ban the average mod gets,
| single out the outliers, and allow the community of the
| /r/banned sub to give these mods the boot or not
| eggbrain wrote:
| Your top three points ring true (in a nutshell, people won't
| change their default filters), but the same could be said in
| general about participation in a community -- e.g. the people
| that struggle against the moderators in a community are
| usually not the ones passively viewing content, but more the
| power-users -- those who heavily comment, post, etc.
|
| The power-users also (in my mind) determine the community --
| if they feel restricted by not being able to post (as the
| parent link talks about) from heavy-handed moderation, they'd
| also most likely be the ones willing to change their filters.
|
| > I believe that reddit doesn't want their users to be able
| to "turn off" moderation, even just for themselves, which you
| would be able to do by removing all filters [...]
|
| To be fair, at the most unfiltered level, I was still
| imagining the content would still be "filtered" to cater
| towards the site-wide rules, and nothing else.
| cmh89 wrote:
| Not allowing moderators to hide behind a share mod account
| would be helpful so you can actually see what mod is handing
| out bans.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I doubt this would help, I think it would just dramatically
| increase moderator harassment but it wouldn't actually
| increase accountability more than a little because even if
| you know which mod is banning users doesn't mean you can
| remove them (other than through harassing them into
| submission).
|
| I also don't see it as necessary or the fundamental issue
| behind a lack of moderation accountability. The problem
| with moderation accountability is that Reddit moderation is
| based strictly on seniority, there's really no effective
| way for users to protest bad moderation other than moving
| to another sub, and that's not really that realistic when
| the badly moderated subreddit has a better and more
| discoverable name. Admins will also rarely remove active
| moderators.
| [deleted]
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Reddit uses the actual users as the main filtering mechanism
| (upvotes/downvotes, spam button, report button) and this most
| of the time works better for most communities.
|
| I think it's very questionable if giving moderators the power
| to soft-censor is a good idea, because it will cause moderators
| to censor posts they probably wouldn't have censored before,
| and moderator influence is inherently less democratic than user
| influence. Reddit Enhancement Suite has long implemented
| various filtering mechanisms for users though so users DO have
| some capability to censor things themselves if they have the
| know-how, but it's not like these mechanisms are built into say
| the official reddit app which is the main way reddit is
| overwhelmingly used.
| eggbrain wrote:
| > "...Reddit uses the actual users as the main filtering
| mechanism (upvotes/downvotes, spam button, report button) and
| this most of the time works better for most communities."
|
| I might be alone in this, but for me
| upvotes/downvotes/reports have become increasingly less
| useful as Reddit has gotten larger and larger. It's great up
| until a point in communities (during which time a user-base
| acts in good faith), and then at some point a report becomes
| a "mega-dislike", people click "spam" for links that are
| doing "better" than what they submitted, etc etc.
|
| I've tried to stick to smaller communities to combat this,
| but they also can suffer from things like "drive-by" brigades
| from larger communities (e.g. when a post unexpectedly
| reaches /r/all).
|
| > "...Reddit Enhancement Suite has long implemented various
| filtering mechanisms for users though so users DO have some
| capability to censor things themselves if they have the know-
| how, but it's not like these mechanisms are built into say
| the official reddit app which is the main way reddit is
| overwhelmingly used."
|
| RES is indeed great -- although like you said it's a pity it
| isn't built into the site natively.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I had a similar experience. Posting some original personal blog,
| on-topic, long-form, and not commercial in any way, was classed
| immediately as spam. Concluded that closed user groups were the
| way to go.
| azmodeus wrote:
| Most social media doesn't like links off-site. Posting the blog
| post as a Reddit post works better.
| jedberg wrote:
| I think the author doesn't understand that reddit mods don't work
| for reddit. In their discussion with the mods they mention "site-
| wide rules" which makes me think they don't understand that the
| mods of each reddit make their own rules.
|
| On that sub, their rules don't allow people who mostly post links
| to their own site. It's up to you if agree with their rule, but
| those are the rules they have chosen.
|
| The common response is "if you don't like the rules make your own
| subreddit". Unfortunately that doesn't scale very well,
| especially if you're trying to replace a popular subreddit.
|
| Of course the simple workaround here is that OP shouldn't be
| posting their own content anyway. The should send it to a friend
| who can post it if they think it's interesting.
|
| Posting your own content if you aren't already an engaged member
| of the community is like walking into a room and shouting "hey
| everyone I have something you might like!". That's why there is
| leniency for active members of a subreddit to post their own
| things.
|
| For people who are saying "thankfully HN is different!", it
| really isn't. It's basically the same as a subreddit run by the
| mods here. I personally like the way the mods run things here,
| which is why I participate here more. But at the end of the day
| it's just a different set of humans with a different set of rules
| (and a little bit more control since they can do things on the
| server that reddit mods can't). And on this "subreddit" they
| allow people to post their own content if it's relevant, similar
| to a lot of other subreddits that aren't /r/moviedetails.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Don't be so sure that some of the mods don't work for Reddit.
| Some of them are powermods modding multiple large subs in the
| millions of subscribers, and they seem to be able to get their
| way instantly with anything they want. Pretty lucky of Reddit
| to have people who can mod multiple huge subs for years for
| "free". Not only that, but Reddit wants to do a public IPO to
| raise more money. So let's see how that's going to go with the
| investors.. "we have vAlUe FoR tHe ShArEhOlDeR by not paying
| staff, but these are capricious little creatures who we have no
| idea who they are and they have control over user engagement
| and the user experience but don't worry about it". How well is
| that going to go? Not very well. At the very least, it'll be
| required to be published in the financial statements how much
| of the Reddit budget goes to PAY mods, and this will finally
| put an end the oft-repeated claim that all the mods are
| volunteers.
|
| I hope the supreme court takes away section 230 from these
| people. They have abused their power so much by permanently
| banning people who simply have an opinion that is not the same
| as theirs, that they deserve to lose it.
| tptacek wrote:
| People are entitled to run their own private sites in ways
| that restrict you from sharing your opinions that are not the
| same as theirs. The view of the law that you're espousing is
| one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a
| service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their
| messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the
| government over private enterprise, and a stultifying
| precedent for anyone who wants to stand up a site of their
| own.
|
| Get a blog.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Sorry, but if you have control over 5, 10, 20+ million
| subscribers, it's not your own private site. You're either
| a paid employee or you're a freeloader riding on someone's
| carriage, in which case they should be paying Reddit for
| allowing them a platform and bandwidth in which they can
| shape and control the narrative by controlling what speech
| is allowed.
|
| It goes beyond just controlling the speech or opinions of
| people who disagree with you such as I am doing here, there
| is also money involved such as in controlling which links
| get published. Those links drive traffic to specific sites
| which host ads. Surely you do not believe that all the
| links to specific sites over and over is simply because
| they are "fast to publish" or something do you?
| tptacek wrote:
| No, that's not a thing, we don't nationalize websites
| because they become popular.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| >In their discussion with the mods they mention "site-wide
| rules" which makes me think they don't understand that the mods
| of each reddit make their own rules.
|
| They're referring to the 10% guideline that many subreddits
| follow:
|
| You should submit from a variety of sources (a general rule of
| thumb is that 10% or less of your posting and conversation
| should link to your own content), talk to people in the
| comments (and not just on your own links), and generally be a
| good member of the community.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion/#wiki_here_are_som...
| groffee wrote:
| [flagged]
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >For people who are saying "thankfully HN is different!", it
| really isn't.
|
| Yes it is. HN's moderation is run by HN. The rules are applied
| consistently because there are are no third party mods or
| rules. People know what to expect and that builds community
| better.
|
| You don't have to wonder if some edgelord mod is going to get
| home from school and delete your post based on their mood.
| waboremo wrote:
| You are still incorrectly comparing. The equivalent to HN in
| Reddit world is a single subreddit. When you compare a single
| subreddit to HN, you see there aren't many differences at
| all, a single set of rules being applied as the mods intend.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >a single set of rules being applied as the mods intend.
|
| Perhaps you haven't had as much moderator interaction as I
| have, but this is not the case whatsoever. Some subs will
| have 30-100 mods and each will apply the rules differently
| per their own interests or pet peeves.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Most importantly: HN is moderated by _payed_ moderators,
| which are hired and selected to do a good job here. They are
| still humans and fallible, obviously, but it 's a far cry
| from "random dude that started a community in his free time".
| riffic wrote:
| paid
|
| there's a great reddit bot that explains that "payed" is a
| sort of nautical term.
| favaq wrote:
| That's not correct. Users can "moderate" by flagging
| comments, which hides them. dang rarely undoes a flag.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| Sure, but that further bolsters my point that HN is in fact
| different.
| jedberg wrote:
| I think you missed my entire point then.
|
| > HN's moderation is run by HN
|
| No, it's run by a few humans.
|
| > The rules are applied consistently
|
| Yes, because those humans are awesome and consistent.
|
| > because there are are no third party mods or rules.
|
| That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of the
| humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent.
|
| But some run their subreddits just like HN.
|
| If you think of HN as a well run subreddit it makes more
| sense.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >No, it's run by a few humans.
|
| Dang is employed by HN.
|
| >That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of
| the humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent.
|
| You're disagreeing and then saying something that isn't
| appreciably different.
| tptacek wrote:
| Dan is HN. The analogy to a subreddit is good; Dan has in
| fact much more control over HN than a moderator does of a
| subreddit.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| YC has a vested interest in keeping the HN moderation a
| certain way, it bring a certain quality to the discourse
| but it's different than the structure of any sub.
|
| Dang has a direct relationship with the owners of the
| site and responsibility to them, that relationship
| doesn't exist in any way on reddit. The mods run amok.
|
| Suggesting HN is effectively just another subreddit
| dismisses several important differences.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, I don't think that's how HN works at all. Dan can in
| fact run amok on HN. I don't believe there are
| significant pressures from YC on how Dan structures
| moderation here.
|
| People unfamiliar with the setup here tend to think about
| YC first when they think about its management, but they
| should think about Dan first. My understanding is that
| things are pretty hands-off; even the perks that YC
| companies get here are, I believe, pretty much things Dan
| decided to give them.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >Dan can in fact run amok on HN. I don't believe there
| are significant pressures from YC on how Dan structures
| moderation here.
|
| I'm sorry but this is absurd. If dang had a mental break
| and decided only cat picture posts were allowed going
| forward, there would definitely be a conversation. It
| being hands-off so far means that YC and dang have
| current consensus and trust exists.
| tptacek wrote:
| The trust between YC and Dan regarding HN is probably the
| whole story about moderation here. Again: people think YC
| exerts a bunch of influence in how HN is moderated, and I
| doubt it exerts much influence at all. Dan is running
| this place the way he'd run it if YC didn't exist.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're belaboring the point because
| whether it's trust or a contractual agreement to run the
| site a certain way the result is the same. Either way
| works for my argument which was that the relationship is
| the difference from reddit's way. I don't care how the
| relationship is mediated.
| tptacek wrote:
| About the most interesting thing you can say about YC's
| "vested interest" is that they have a vested interest in
| having HN continue to be moderated at Dan's total
| discretion. That interest would change, obviously, if Dan
| was raptured. But discussing the possibility of Dan's
| rapturing is not interesting, curious, or productive:
| we're not talking about the failure modes of moderation
| when moderators are incapacitated, we're talking about
| moderatorial discretion.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| The point of community stability is that it contributes
| to both their reputation and YC investment class
| applicant pools.
|
| >That interest would change, obviously, if Dan was
| raptured. But discussing the possibility of Dan's
| rapturing is not interesting, curious, or productive:
| we're not talking about the failure modes of moderation
| when moderators are incapacitated, we're talking about
| moderatorial discretion.
|
| Wild monologue, I'm not sure it serves the conversation
| to express your tangents and then criticize them as if
| they were mine.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Dang might be well-intended kind dictator, but he's no
| machine. He's just a very thoughtful and kind person with
| human limits and capacities.
| tough wrote:
| DanGPT won't have those limitations
| goatlover wrote:
| What about when DanGPT hallucinates a violation?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Dang is a member of a specific community. Consequently,
| even if well intentioned, he is likely to share their
| cognitive biases and perspectives.
|
| I think this is why we won't have great transparency
| around banning, shadowbanning, or a check on the
| censorious power of flagging.
| NotPractical wrote:
| I imagine that (thoughtfully) moderating a site as large
| as HN is no easy task, and though I'm all for more
| transparency, I think logs like that have the potential
| to open a whole can of worms and add much more burden on
| Dan. All of a sudden you get a bunch of HN posts that
| solely exist to criticize Dan's decisions which clog up
| the feed. If a rule is added against this it looks like
| even more censorship.
|
| Lobsters [1] has mod logs, but it also has a much smaller
| community, and it's invite-only so there's less need for
| moderation in the first place.
|
| [1] https://lobste.rs/moderations
| jseliger wrote:
| I noticed the moderator problems on Reddit many years ago:
| https://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/16/the-moderator-problem-
| how..., but I also observe that, since then, Reddit appears to
| have become much more popular. So maybe the structure is good
| enough.
| parsoj wrote:
| hmm - I didn't get that read about the author at all.
|
| In fact the whole premise of the article (comparing moderation
| policy differences between different subreddits) - would
| suggest they totally understand that reddit moderators aren't
| all pulled from one homogeneous pool of employees.
|
| I think the "site wide" bit was actually brought up by the
| moderator - referring to the fact that the /r/moviedetails
| moderation checks your full post history across all of reddit
| (not just your behavior on /r/moviedetails) and bans you from
| their subreddit based on that.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| The problem with reddit mods is that it's like the cops: the
| people least suited to the job are the ones who are most
| attracted to it. We end up with subs that effectively have no
| rules except the random whims of the mods and reddit themselves
| don't care at all. The comments on reddit reflect this perfectly
| because it's become more toxic over time, a haven for people
| interested in the casual abuse of others.
| drewrv wrote:
| I'd say one difference between reddit mods and the police is
| that the stakes are really low on reddit.
|
| Arguing or getting upset about mod decisions gives off strong
| "fight with the bouncer" vibes. Even if you're right, there's
| no way to "win". The best course of action is to just quietly
| move on.
| abetusk wrote:
| People are focusing on the Reddit mod narrative but if you go
| down in the article further, there's some interesting ideas.
|
| The author talks about Dunbar's number [0] and does a speculative
| approximation, saying that good faith communities are about the
| maximum size of the "friends-of-friends" and some of "friends-of-
| friends-of-friend" graph. That is, say you trust your friends to
| have good faith discussion (around 150 of them) and you trust
| your friends of friends to have good faith discussions (150^2)
| and maybe some portion of your friends of friends of friends (now
| we're at 150^2.5), then the community size is about 300k.
|
| The data size is small and anecdotal but the idea is pretty
| interesting, at least to me. It at least tries to answer what the
| critical online community size is where good faith discussions
| break down, "scaling issues" start to creep in and at what point
| online communities change. A lot of folks here on HN talk about
| things like how to social media at scale (for example, Shirky's
| "Three Things to Accept [about online communities]" [1] has been
| no doubt featured on HN before). I also wonder if this ties into
| the "1000 true fans" idea somehow.
|
| Whatever the community size is where scaling issues crop up, this
| leads to practical advice on which communities to focus on if you
| want to engage in a meaningful way, promote your work, or find a
| niche community for a business idea, say. That is, look for
| communities whose size is large enough to be impactful but small
| enough so that it hasn't gone through the scaling phase
| transition. This number is most likely in the range of 20k to
| 300k, maybe with an upper bound of 3M.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20131130191257/http://www.shirky...
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Author has no clue what they're talking about and it shows.
| Moderators are under absolutely no obligation to enforce Reddits
| anti-spam policy and I am aware of zero instances of a moderator
| being removed or warned for failure to remove spam.
|
| Now moderators ARE held accountable for some things, they can't
| just turn a blind eye to global rules like no child pornography
| without being removed, and in general they're expected to keep
| their communities under control. If their community in particular
| starts harassing other communities either on or off of Reddit, or
| it brings Public disrepute to reddit in some way (/r/jailbait),
| generally the admins will get involved. However the admins don't
| care if you don't remove spam for your own subreddit for a very
| simple reason - it only affects users ON YOUR SUBREDDIT so why
| would they care or be involved? The commonality between all the
| cases I just mentioned is you're causing trouble OUTSIDE your
| community and causing Reddit as a whole problems, THAT'S when the
| admins get involved. They are like the federal government of
| reddit they're not supposed to care about internal affairs of
| states they're supposed to care about inter-state affairs and
| international affairs.
|
| Another important thing to realise about reddit is most of the
| moderation isn't done by moderators or admins, there are way too
| few of them to moderate effectively. The author is correct about
| one thing - were those Reddit's only moderation tools even with
| automation scaling moderation would be impossible, but they're
| not the only moderation tools Reddit has. Most moderation is done
| through the influence of users soft-censoring posts through
| downvoting and reporting posts to draw the attention to the mods.
| Something the author didn't even write about or seem to think
| about is the fact the mod probably only looked at his post
| BECAUSE a user reported it.
|
| In general though, Reddit at a global admin level has long
| blocked users for self-promotion and they even have a writeup
| about it. I have seen countless users, even ones generally well
| received by communities banned for self-promotion, even ones
| whose posts I kept promoting after the original posters account
| got banned because I liked their posts so much (and I know how to
| not get banned for spamming on Reddit), because one mans useful
| post is another man's spam and to be fair you have to just ban
| all self-promoters. Reddit has writeup about this:
| https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion/
|
| FTA: "But my article is not the type of spam these rules are
| meant to exclude" FT rules: "We're not making a judgement on your
| quality, just your behavior on reddit." "10% or less of your
| posting and conversation should link to your own content"
|
| So I would say if anything, the scalability problem Reddit has is
| that authors like the OP can't read the fucking rules, break
| rules, get banned, and cry about it while citing a misinformed
| view of how Reddit moderation works which isn't surprising given
| he didn't even bother to read the rules before publishing this
| crap.
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