
Reddit: can anyone clean up the mess behind 'the front page of the internet'? - prostoalex
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/12/reddit-can-ceo-ellen-pao-clean-up-the-mess
======
toxicFork
“That’s more than double the population of the entire UK, so it makes about as
much sense as generalising every single person in the UK, if the UK had twice
as many people.”

Great quote.

One thing I have noticed with subreddits is that whenever a subreddit passes a
threshold of subscribers and gets more frontpage exposure, the quality gets
worse and worse until everyone starts hating it, unless moderators take
serious action. It happened to many of them, from /r/atheism to /r/gaming, to
/r/adviceanimals. As you get more people into any community, it needs more
policing and moderation. AskReddit and some others have stricter rules and
seem to be doing better.

~~~
wlkr
This is so true. I frequent a wide variety of online communities and the same
can be said of any of them. Any increase in the rate of new posts always leads
to a degradation in post quality until 'stream rate' is reached and people are
posting without the expectation of their posts even being read. Maintaining a
healthy post rate is crucial but, as you say, quality also needs to be
enforced by some form of moderation with unambiguous rules. Evolutions of a
community can be tied strongly to post-rate fluctuations over time and most
long term users are well aware of these iterations. On forums, large
communities can be splintered for the benefit of quality and discussion.

~~~
qznc
The phenomenon is quite old. See e.g. "eternal september" [0]. The sad thing
is that nobody has any better idea than strict rules enforced without mercy.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

~~~
mcphage
> The sad thing is that nobody has any better idea than strict rules enforced
> without mercy.

The other sad thing is that so many online communities die because the
moderators aren't willing to resort to that, even though it works.

------
tomjen3
I tried to take the article serious until it classified all NSFW subreddits as
reddits dark side.

Yeah because collections of pictures of naked women are now so horrible they
must be "cleaned up".

~~~
monksy
I've got some news for them. Everyone is naked under their clothes. Its
horrible.

~~~
therealdrag0
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
\- Mark Twain

~~~
mkr-hn
That depends on what they're doing while naked.

------
rriepe
The subreddit infographic is terrible on its own, but the underlying logic
(moderator connections) is just abysmal. There was a time (maybe now, even, if
they haven't fixed it) where any subreddit could add anyone as a moderator
without their permission. Here's Zach Braff's actual reddit profile, for a fun
example:
[https://www.reddit.com/user/zachinoz](https://www.reddit.com/user/zachinoz)

------
StavrosK
But reddit isn't a single thing, it's a place for communities. Surely, it
can't all be messy, let alone equally messy.

~~~
mcantelon
The "clean up Reddit" campaign is likely an effort to get Reddit to impose
ideologically-driven authoritarian administration (more so than already
exists). 4chan was subjected to a similar campaign and eventually yielded.

Reddit's traditional approach has, for the most part, been to err on the side
of freedom of speech with minimal rules. Aside from the core rules, subreddit
fiefdoms are allowed to manage their domains as moderators see fit.

------
minimaxir
Reddit _can 't_ clean itself up, which is actually _the primary reason_ why
it's looking into alternative business models outside of advertising (Reddit
TV, RedditMade, Reddit Coin), since advertisers may not be willing to sponsor
a website with such material.

The fact that all of those models have failed miserably is a separate issue.

~~~
mcantelon
One thing they could do is create a separate domain/branding for subreddits
that aren't squeaky clean so things look different on the surface.

------
eertami
>SRS moderator: "but there are hate movements that use Reddit as a propaganda
organ… and someone needs to step up and get rid of them.”

Well yeah... like SRS. These people are oblivious to irony.

------
smtucker
I personally like the mess. If Reddit ever got "cleaned up" I don't think I
would ever return.

------
DanBC
NSFW also images of deliberate self harm

Interesting that they mention goatsac. He helps moderate /r/cuttersgonewild -
a sub reddit that reposts images from /r/selfharmpics and adds sexual
language. Admins have been told, many times. They don't care. On Reddit it is
fine to take a vulnerable person's image, add sexualising language, and repost
it to a different sub.

To view /r/selfharmpics you need to change your settings to stop subs showing
you custom CSS. For some reason /r/selfharmpics blanks the display.

See this example:

Original post to /r/selfharmpics

[http://www.reddit.com/r/selfharmpics/comments/2zbipf/nsfw_br...](http://www.reddit.com/r/selfharmpics/comments/2zbipf/nsfw_bruise/)

Repost to /r/cuttersgonewild

[http://www.reddit.com/r/CuttersGoneWild/comments/2zef7c/dadd...](http://www.reddit.com/r/CuttersGoneWild/comments/2zef7c/daddy_spanked_her_but_its_self_harm_because_she/)

(The Imgur header text is confusing. It's a bug[1] caused by /r/selfharmpics
blanking the display in CSS.)

I've seen users send multiple PMs to suicidal young people telling them to
just kill themselves. The users report the PMs; they block the account; they
take screenshots and message the admins -- nothing happens, even if that
account has messaged multiple people telling them to kill themselves.

Ask someone to upvote a post in a different thread? Fucking instaban.

------
elchief
Censorship of things you find offensive is not a great answer.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
I would like a comment system that lets me choose my own moderators either
directly or indirectly based on comments that i upvote. Then, if enough of my
moderators downvote a comment, i wouldn't see it.

~~~
therealdrag0
Interesting idea. But, echo-chamber much?

~~~
WorldWideWayne
Possibly, but I think it would be easy to engineer solutions to make an echo-
chamber less likely. I would still be in control and able to see hidden
comments like reddit where the hive-mind basically censors things but still
allows them to be accessed if you dig.

I guess that I just want something where I have a little more control as a
user. Many times on reddit there is a huge thread of jokes or puns that is
totally off-topic and I'd like to avoid them if I choose to. Many times I want
zero moderation so I can see what everybody is saying without having to click
"load more comments" on every sub-thread.

I can think of lots of variations on the basic idea of picking your own
moderators. I like the idea of untying a subject from a specific set of
moderators. So a sub-reddit would just be a subject, but not a set of
moderators. There could be a moderator marketplace where individuals or teams
of moderators who advertise their style and specify things like no-jokes, no-
puns, etc. There could be robot moderators as well. I would also like to give
my team of personal comment-curators more controls than just up and down-vote
like tagging or like the slashdot system where you could mark things as
funny/off-topic/etc.

(Crowd voting is a type of moderation too and I'd like to be able to ignore
them because I don't always trust the alleged majority.)

------
data_spy
As long as there are clear guidelines, they can use text, image, and
behavioral algorithms to do some serious clean up. I doubt it will ever be
perfect

------
exo762
Guardian call for censorship, with primary source being SRS mod which goes by
moniker Dworkin, which happens to be a nod to Andrea Dworkin - very radical
and men-hating person.

Good job, Guardian!

~~~
getsat
The brits have been cuckolds for a while now, so this isn't really surprising.

~~~
eertami
One article by two journalists for one paper does implies nothing about the
British opinion of reddit.

------
seany
I don't think anyone involved in SRS can be taken seriously enough to be cited
as an authority on anything. Yikes

~~~
intortus
On the contrary, good satire is often founded upon deep insights.

~~~
falcolas
I don't find SRS to be satirical in the least. Hateful, sometimes. Aggressive,
frequently. Strongly biased? Their bias is spelled out in the subreddit name.

The reason they bubble to the top of so many news articles is because SRS'
brand of equality is so strongly polarized in a way which makes for great
soundbites. Want to know what's "wrong" with Reddit? Grab a headline out of
SRS. Want a view on how to "improve" Reddit? Talk to a SRS moderator.

If you're looking for satire, check out /r/circlejerk/. They do a great job at
finding what's so wrong with the posts that hit the front page and satirizing
them.

------
StavrosK
I love how there's a "[sic]" after "penes", even though that's the correct
plural.

------
stefantalpalaru
Internet: can anyone clean up the mess behind 'the world wide web'?

~~~
StephenFalken
That makes me remember the now famous quote:

    
    
      The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural 
      resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. 
      When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-
      -free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.
    
        -- Alan Kay

~~~
raldi
What year is that quote from?

~~~
mirkules
2012: the full interview is here: [http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-
design/interview-wit...](http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-
design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442?pgno=1)

The complete quote:

Binstock: One thing about jazz aficionados is that they take deep pleasure in
knowing the history of jazz.

Kay: Yes! Classical music is like that, too. But pop culture holds a disdain
for history. Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you're
participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future —
it's living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write
code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from] — and the
Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource
like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the
last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in
comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.

Edit to add some context:

Kay: Go to a blog, go to any Wiki, and find one that's WYSIWYG like Microsoft
Word is. Word was done in 1984. HyperCard was 1989. Find me Web pages that are
even as good as HyperCard. The Web was done after that, but it was done by
people who had no imagination. They were just trying to satisfy an immediate
need. There's nothing wrong with that, except that when you have something
like the Industrial Revolution squared, you wind up setting de facto standards
— in this case, really bad de facto standards. Because what you definitely
don't want in a Web browser is any features.

~~~
nickstefan12
It's amazing how much harder a decent wysiwyg is to make in web technologies
than you'd think. Content editable was supposed to get us there, but needs a
ton of override. Grouping key and click events into actions the way youd
expect ms word to function is again not easy!

~~~
mirkules
It is difficult, I agree. But that's not really the point Kay is trying to
make. Why should we implement these things in the web browser? Further in the
interview, Kay remarks that _that_ is exactly the problem - that we are
reinventing technologies that were around for decades (reinventing them poorly
to boot, as he puts it "reinventing a flat tire").

I happen to agree with him in theory: I think it's a huge missed opportunity
to force the browser to be an application delivery mechanism instead of a
content-delivery mechanism (or "object"-delivery as he puts it).

But of course in practice, there are historical and political reasons as to
why web-as-an-app-delivery-mechanism happened, not least of which - if we took
Kay's example of MS Word - is Microsoft's unwillingness to open up the
platform (or proprietary software, in general). So we had to re-solve these
problems in non-proprietary ways, while forcing proprietary app providers to
conform to web standards that would ultimately and perhaps knowingly
cannibalize their software sales.

------
killerninjacat
Nope they can't. Reddit is too much full of bullshit, hate, and things like
that.

~~~
darkstar999
The mainstream subreddits can be, but get into hobby subreddits and it is a
great community. /r/startups, /r/homebrewing, /r/malefashionadvice. Even
/r/personalfinance got front paged is still going strong.

