
How Reddit Sparked a Dialogue Between Scientists and the General Public - zabramow
http://www.simonowens.net/how-reddit-created-the-worlds-largest-dialogue-between-scientists-and-the-general-public/
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siyer
I did an AMA on /r/science early in 2014 when the paper I'd been working on
for most of my PhD came out [1], and it was a very fun experience - lots of
great questions, good back-and-forth, and it meant that massively more people
read my paper than would have otherwise. (It drove about 60% of the overall
views to the linked Stanford press-release, and the comment thread itself had
about 60,000 unique visitors).

I can testify to the /r/science mods doing a great job at making the AMAs
possible, but it's still by no means a perfect process. Some things that
helped make ours work were 1) downvoting trolls early - threads that could
have been derailed were instead kept pretty vibrant. 2) setting aside enough
time to do it - we basically wrote off a day of lab work and typed furiously
instead. 3) Responding to the more critical comments - ignoring comments
_really_ doesn't work. It's much better to wade in with your point of view.

[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1ycd0l?sort=confide...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1ycd0l?sort=confidence)

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chetanahuja
I'm surprised to see all the reddit hate here. The open, free-wheeling nature
of that forum is far and away superior (in the sense of, more in the spirit of
internet in general) to say, the clubby, autocratic way this site is run.

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pjc50
Which bits of reddit?

It's certainly more unregulated. That has massive downsides; _generally_
subreddits have a high tolerance for profanity, including in usernames. Most
are tolerant of various sorts of nastiness, racism and sexism.

~~~
pitay
That is still far far better than a forum site controlled by a few moderators.
In those sites anything said that contradicts the moderators interests is
deleted. Those places are terrible, especially if they are a main site for
that topic.

This does not describe this site, to avoid any confusion.

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netcraft
It surprises me that something else hasn't come along as a more appropriate
place for these AMA style sessions. Perhaps its the challenge of getting the
audience, but theres many reasons why reddit really isn't ideal for these
kinds of discussions. It works, sure - but the signal to noise ratio is really
quite low and the politics of it mostly seem to just get in the way (see the
Elon Musk AMA earlier this week where some of the highest voted questions were
removed).

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chris_raptr
What questions were removed? How can I see them? Or were they just downvoted a
lot?

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hellgas00
Apparently the r/spacex community got together ahead of the AMA with Musk to
come up with quality comments. During the AMA they worked together upvoting
their questions to get the most visibility. The mods on r/AMA felt that this
was against the rules, and crowded out the natural discussion, they
subsequently deleted all posts from r/spacex. Sounds like a good idea, until
you realize that they were very well thought out questions, head over heels
better then the questions posed by the r/AMA community. I found the AMA to be
underwhelming.

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rndn
On the other hand it's difficult to make exceptions in these cases. How do you
define a comment that is worth what is otherwise regarded as a vote
manipulation?

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oldmanjay
How scientists created a dialogue using reddit is more like it. That site sure
gets a lot of credit just for being a forum-of-the-moment.

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danso
I think the site deserves more credit than just "Well, it just happened to be
there". Internet forums and discussion boards have been around for quite
awhile. Before Facebook groups, there was USENET and phpBBs, some of which
still have scientific discussion. And of course, scientists have the ability
to use Facebook and other massive social networks to have discussions.

But of all these, Reddit's structure and philosophy (how many other massive
sites _don 't_ have a shitton of JavaScript applets and social buttons,
besides HN) facilitates both the ability to easily participate and
moderate...which seems to be integral for these communities to be as active as
they are.

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agumonkey
My subjective and anecdotal contrbution : I agree. Reddit has a surprisingly
nice balance of liveness and control.

