I genuinely don't understand why that subreddit hasn't been suspended.
Yes, getting rid of the hate and the stupid is something the owners of the site (and the content creators) want. It gives them a horrible reputation (and can impact business, as Twitter discovered). But that is still their userbase, and getting rid of the userbase drastically decreases their value.
So it is a balancing act. And the trump subreddit would be a disaster to remove as everyone would REALLY get on them for being "too political"
Only if they wait so long to clean house that their user base consists mostly of the folks who give them a horrible reputation.
The most valuable online communities are those that aggressively clean house along the way. Losing a small amount of jerks is more than made up for by the non-jerk users who feel comfortable enough to join and stay.
That's why HN has grown as fast as it has. That's why the advice for normal people interested in Reddit is "unsubscribe from the defaults and find niche subreddits." Because the niche subreddits moderate aggressively.
That's why web forums beat Usenet in the first place.
I bet they checked it a long time ago: How many of the users that hang out or lurk in those "jerk" subredits also participate in more civil subs? If those people where in their own jerky Venn circle with little superposition with the rest of reddit, I think they would have deleted those subs by now.
HN is largely a tech site geared toward mid-late twenties individuals (the start-up culture, really). Reddit is a social network geared toward late teens to mid twenties (males). Yes, there is overlap, but not to a significant degree.
Uh... you know that there are vast VAST circles of "startup culture" that are much older than late-teens/mid-late twenties.
Where the heck do you think fucking silicon valley came from - you think all the people who built all this stuff are dead, gone and not connected to the pulse of technology?
so, I assume you're quite young - but may have a poor understanding of tech history. All the +30 people are still here.
But when I say "start up culture" I basically mean "silicon valley startup culture" and HN is basically that and its fan club. Mostly the latter. It is the difference between being part of "the gig economy" and just a part time/contract worker.
Yeah, there are some older people around here, just like there are at reddit and the like. But just reading and engaging in threads, it is very clear that this also skews pretty young.
And a large part of it is that the people who are in their 30s and beyond tend to either not have time to hang out on a message board and discuss things with kids in college (in my defense, I am between projects and killing time).
I know that as I grow older (I am 41, working in tech my entire life) I lurk a lot more and more.
I am top mod of a subreddit of ~400K subscribers... I participate less and less as I get older - even if I have really strong opinions, I tend to just sigh and let the younger gen mods deal with it...
vocal minority and all that...
Someone will one day do a thesis on this phenom and put a name to it
Reddit tolerates subs that promote all out illegal behavior, so suspending the_donald for being obnoxious would be a bad move. If you have hate speech or whatever you handle that by banning the user not the sub.