
How to Change the Culture of a Subreddit: Looking Back at the Cringe Subs (2016) - unimpressive
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3r15h0/how_to_change_the_culture_of_a_subreddit_looking/
======
unimpressive
Excerpt for people who use the comments as a preview since it's kind of long:

"My view of the main problem was this: fighting against the userbase to stamp
out bullying was a waste of time. The problem was the userbase itself. We
would wait for a person to make a really offensive comment before taking
action, but another would quickly take their place. Over and over and over
again, it was like playing whack a mole with bullies. And there was no end in
sight - the sub was still growing extremely quickly (for a time, /r/cringepics
was in the top 20 fastest growing subs, beating out several defaults).

My solution: in order to change the culture of the sub, you have to take away
what attracts them there in the first place. Nothing else will work. In the
case of the cringe subs, we figured out the most common link between all of
the posts we thought were bad - they almost always involved something being
done by a single person. No social situation or interaction, just one person
"being weird." Oftentimes the person "being weird" is even enjoying
themselves. So our solution was simple: mandate that every single post had to
directly involve at least 2 people in some kind of interaction. This would
instantly kill off most of the content that was popular at the time, and
undoubtedly cause a shit-storm of controversy."

