David Commented
I’ve been spending lots of time on Reddit lately. The Conde Nast-owned content aggregation site has a passionate user base, and the way posts are broken up into countless subject-oriented “reddits” works very well to cultivate smart, dedicated communities.
So I wasn’t too surprised to hear about the ways that users have customized their communities to promote rational discussion. In a panel this morning at South By Southwest entitled “Community Engagement Strategies: Rational Debate or Herding Cats?”, Reddit’s community manager Erik Martin pointed out a few great examples:
The “Askscience” reddit is a fascinating forum where users can post questions about the world around them (like “How serious is the threat to the Fukushima nuclear plant?“) and receive solid scientifically-grounded answers to their questions. But when you’re seeking scientific knowledge, you want to know whether the answers come from experts, so the reddit has a vetting system which verifies whether users have a provable expert status –and then posts their qualifications right next to their user name on every post.
In many of Reddit’s sports sections, users identify the teams they support, and any time they comment, an icon indicating the team appears next to their user name. It’s a simple visual cue that speaks volume about a user’s credibility: A Red Sox fan, for instance, might not be trusted to speak plainly about a Yankees player.
Similarly, In Reddit’s marijuana-themed “Trees” reddit, there’s a “highness scale” for commenters: When you make a new post, you choose, on a scale from 1 to 10, how chemically altered you are, and put the number in the title of your post. It’s another way to signal your state of mind to readers, and help them decide whether or not you’re worth listening to.
In general, Reddit’s users do a solid job moderating each other, and making sure the best comments reach the top of any discussion thread –sometimes with humorous results. As Martin pointed out, the Anarchism reddit has more rules than most others on the site.
“I’ve only been asked two times to kick off a moderator,” said Martin. “One was the marijuana reddit and one was the anarchy reddit.”
People who hold unpopular views are only allowed to post every 10 minutes, while people who post trite nonsense that appeals to the masses are allowed to post freely.
Nothing could be further from the truth than “Reddit does commenting right”. Unless by “right” you mean “creating a milquetoast community where independent thought is not allowed under any circumstances”.
You make an excellent point. I certainly agree that in many of the reddits (politically-oriented, ones, for instance) there’s a kind of groupthink that occurs, and unpopular opinions are squashed even if they are well-thought out and well written. Too many users vote down comments that they disagree with, even if they add something to the conversation.
But overall, I feel the system successfully promotes comments with value. The value being selected for may not be independent thought –it might be humor, or cleverness, or audaciousness. But the net result for me as a reader is that I know the top-ranked comments in any reasonably active discussion are likely to be at least interesting.
And still –the point of this particular blog post is how Reddit identifies users’ prejudices and expertise in innovative ways. That’s one of the things they’re doing right.
If the secret police (the admins) don’t like you for any reason, they shoot you in the head (ban you), jail you (systematically prevent you from posting for 10 minutes at a time), take away your vote, or worse.
Reddit unilaterally and arbitrarily makes rules that the user must abide by, but oftentimes the user doesn’t even know what the rules are. For example, if they deem you “unpopular” you can only post every 10 minutes. They actually built that logic into their codebase. That rule is not explained in any Reddit FAQ or listed in the terms or service anywhere, yet they routinely do it.
A major problem with your simile is that Redditors aren’t *forced* into anything. Don’t like the rules or the way the moderation works? Don’t use the site.
I agree with you that there are flaws in the system, but you can’t deny how much power the people have, for better or worse. The mods don’t rule with an iron fist.
Flag for abuse 12:28 pm on 03/13/11 loufra Yes they absolutely do, as just exemplified. Sure, if you don’t like the rules then you have the option not to use the site. You can also move move to another country if you don’t like a dictator. But that doesn’t mean that their rules are fair or somehow similar to “Athenian democracy”. They are definitely not in response to another comment.
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