The demise of r/science AMAs on Reddit
dailydot.com
dailydot.com
The practice of removing higher-voted posts in order to keep their AMAs at the top should never have been allowed, and I'm glad that it now isn't.
Abuse of moderator power is one of Reddit's biggest problems.
It was still blatant vote manipulation, but the end result was science AmAs were regularly featured on r/all and also the default view of Reddit.
Yes, morally and ethically, the ends don't justify the means.
HOWEVER, the mods were manipulating votes to bring high profile visitors to Reddit, users were happy, Reddit execs (should be) happy that they were getting big time scientists posting, it seems like the only disconnect is how they did it.
This finger wagging is just PR from Steve Huffman. If they really cared, they would have worked with moderators to create the toolsets to bring in more high quality content, and moderators wouldn't have to resort to desperate measures to bring in more eyeballs.
"We're working on it" is a nothing statement. Instead, they're putting resources into a UI refresh that does not have very much support from the community.
But you have a subreddit who has moderators who consistently organize high quality, low SNR ratio content, and who also depend on the front page to drive a large amount of their traffic. There has to have been a way to seamlessly get the custom tailored /r/popular stuff onto the mainpage without impacting these high content subreddits. I just don't think Reddit really put enough thought into this. Even something sort of hacky like "super mods" who could curate posts onto the front page. In the end, the /r/science mods had cobbled the tools to notice the drop of users (and Reddit staff didn't run enough analytics to gauge the impact of their decision), and the call was made.
I don't think Reddit staff either has the numbers of admins or the tools to adequately make informed decisions about the impact of changes they make.
Subreddits and Reddit are in a symbiotic relationship. Most subreddits depend on the mainpage to deliver them eyeballs. Some subreddits depend on those eyeballs they receive from the mainpage to create good content and PR for Reddit.
Let's be honest, there's wealth of content on Reddit, enough so that users might not miss some content going missing randomly.
<Personal opinion starts here>
However, I personally believe that Reddit should cultivate stronger content than cat memes and animated images. Getting Stephen Hawking to answer questions from the public is, in my opinion (from a site culture and company PR perspective), more valuable than the 1000000th Star Wars prequel meme to appear on the front page.
Though I think a better comparison might be the eating habits one other people have made. Veggies might be better for you, but most people will choose to eat junk food. I just think that's sufficiently solved by natural selection.
The only way for popular forums to maintain interesting content is moderation. Otherwise the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few.
Which is all well and good, just don't portray your site as one where the users are in control of the content. This was the seed of all reddit backlash.
I wish.
The best subreddits are the ones like r/askhistorians, which are draconic in their moderation. As a result, the content is consistently extremely high quality.
> the top posts tend towards generic mush that is vaguely interesting to most, and extremely interesting to very few.
This is how HN tends to work, especially in regard to the comments. It's unfortunate.
I understand that by definition /r/askhistorians should have good moderation but it's insane.
My last straw was where I posted a link to a primary source in an relevant question thread 5 subthreads deep.
Moderation removed it because I should have provided more context. It should have been obvious what the context was from the thread itself and my answer was not at the first nesting level but 5th.
Mod agreed with me but did not restore my answer. So there went my time finding the source.
Okay, so if posting on /r/askhistorians is useless, then maybe the answers are well researched?
There lies the second problem. Answers are not that well researched.
I remember a certain question concerning Soviet economy in the 1980s.
The single approved answer appeared wrong to me and cited rather limited number of sources(ie chiefly official 1980s ones). Other alternative answers were deleted. My personal anecdata were screaming at me that the top answer was ridiculously wrong, but I had to spend hours of sifting through more up to date research to prove it. (cue https://xkcd.com/386/)
So why should I trust /r/askhistorians answer about something happening 300 years ago if they can't get it right about something happening 30 years ago?
Third: The low hanging fruit ie popular answers have been answered.
Literally hundreds of quality questions go unanswered on r/askhistorians for each quality answer. So it is pretty much pointless to ask a question there for some specific questions.
And there's at least one order of magnitude more subreddits catering to those people who aren't them.
Reddit removed some of their dark patterns, because those were the only tools they had, and now their content shows a net loss.
Reddit needs to stop making empty promises, show that they actually care about their moderators, and give them the tools they need. They're dragging their feet on helping mods curate this content and love to wag their fingers at the moderators who are working with rudimentary tools, but they sure do love to name drop the high profile posters they get.
For the most part, toolbox (r/toolbox) and RES were everything I needed. The redesigned modmail was a nice (but bright) update too.
In the end, I had my fun, a LOT of fun, but it started to grow boring.
I think what makes Reddit great is the small subs, especially now that defaults have been done away with, and the best / popular feeds are more commonplace.
The tools people talk about needing are truly for the massive, massive, subs like r/science, but I genuinely don't know how much longer those megasubs will continue to dominate for. Every change puts more eyeballs in the hands of mid size subs, and that's great.
I suppose my experience is not the same as those of megasubs, but hopefully my thoughts spark some interesting discussion, because I really do enjoy reddit.
Feel free to... AMA ;)
A certain degree of wise curation can be highly beneficial. We should all know that here. However, there is an accountability problem. Highly popular social media groups aggregate power, and power corrupts.
it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science".
Reddit should allow for curation-heavy groups, but these should be billed specifically as curation-heavy groups and they should compete with other groups. Something like /r/science shouldn't get to do that.
Abuse of moderator power is one of Reddit's biggest problems.
I'd say it's social media's biggest problem, but change moderator to insider.
/r/science should absolutely get to do that. And it's unmistakably up-front about the heavy moderation[0], much like /r/history[1] and other high-quality subreddits. IME that tends to be the dividing line between heavy moderation generating the site's best content and the worst: how clear, up-front and consistently applied the subreddit's moderation rules are.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_submission_...
I should clarify here. If a specific general topic subreddit like /r/science uses heavy moderation to make the best science-oriented subreddit, then this is great. There is a problem, however, when interests outside of the specific general topic start to leak in.
A key example is politics. If /r/science suppresses global warming denialism, I'd say this is all well and good. The lion's share of global warming denialism is simply a misleading misrepresentation of science. However, let's suppose hypothetically that /r/science started to suppress all mention of studies showing there is some influence of sexual dimorphism, this would be ideologically driven bad science. (A fair, non-extreme reading of nature/nurture reflects that biological reality is messy and that there is some influence from both.)
How does one draw the line? There can be only one /r/science, if /r/science should become ideologically subborned and biased, it effectively makes the whole voice of reddit science ideologically biased. The same question arises for cliques and cronyism.
I think /r/science should become something of an aggregation like /r/popular. This way, there isn't the temptation of power and corruption coming from the power over the generic name. Then different moderation groups can compete on an even playing field by their merits, like even handed-ness and intellectual honesty.
EDIT: In a way, it's the same logic as a judge ruling that the president shouldn't block people on twitter.
That's not an example that's a strawman.
> How does one draw the line?
/r/science has rules which are clear and which I linked.
> I think /r/science should become something of an aggregation like /r/popular.
Garbage?
> This way, there isn't the temptation of power and corruption coming from the power over the generic name. Then different moderation groups can compete on an even playing field by their merits, like even handed-ness and intellectual honesty.
And you can't see how competition for upvote volume at the expense of everything else would lead to plummeting quality?
An odd thing to say, considering that the two examples have opposing left/right political vectors. I think you are reacting to this discussion as if it were an attack on /r/science. I have nothing in particular against /r/science. It's just that using the name as an example is clearer than saying /r/some-generic-subject-area.
/r/science has rules which are clear and which I linked.
That is a good set of rules, which seem well constructed for the purpose of excluding such bias. /r/science has the particular advantage of being attached to disciplines/fields which have good intellectual hygiene. There are other areas of general interest which have the particular disadvantage of being attached to fields where cronyism and intellectual dishonesty are rampant.
And you can't see how competition for upvote volume at the expense of everything else would lead to plummeting quality?
You couldn't do it with upvote volume. AI isn't yet up to the task. Perhaps moderation is the only solution. (Perhaps metamoderation?) Reddit did luck out with /r/science. Other areas drew the short straw and are highly biased and crony-moderated.
That's a design choice. Generic broadcast is easier to implement than personalization. It's been known to be a poor design choice for large-scale social media since before USENET's Eternal September. It was especially clear each September before. But broadcast is easy, so here we still are on reddit/HN.
Personalization is the design concept that different people see different content in the "same place". Or even the same person, but at different times of day, with their varying preferences. When you want to relax with puns, you can see puns. And when you wish to ask or answer inexpert questions, you can do that. And when you wish to see only high-quality expert discussion, you can see only that. So shifts in demographics needn't destabilize communities. "When calculating my view, severely deemphasize input from people who have joined since September." Bad needn't drive out good.
We've known how to do this better for decades. And it's very important for society. But... here we still are. Here we still choose to be. Someone please please disrupt this.
Also I have problem with information diversity on r/popular. Even if you filter stuff you get junk content like funny gifs, porn etc....
r/science, r/news... etc are quality content and they should be present in popular.
Also bias against gaming community. My solution would be to add targeting for subreddits. Some people want more fun content, some more science, music. If r/popular would use it would be probably the best
Ps. I banned like 100 subreddits on r/popular and I gave up. Now I use regex to filter on r/all it works better than that...
The right response here isn't to punish subreddits that did that. It's to understand why they did that and provide them with an alternative solution. I'm sure the askscience moderators didn't like removing highly-rated posts. But they needed some way to promote AMAs and Reddit didn't give them the tools they needed to do it.
This is ultimately a massive failure on Reddit's part.
It's related to the economics of property taxes that scale with property values. Reddit created arbitrary scarcity in naming by allowing only a single subreddit of any particular name, but must work to implemented good economic policy (moderation is one form) to make sure that each remains a good citizen.
I've long favoured search (directed discovery) over streams, or perhaps a bit of quality-ranked search informed slightly by streams, but it's not what most channel-based, audience-size obsessed, advertising-driven sites are incentivised for.
Much my own interaction with HN is via search, and much that DDG bangs off Agolia's search interface. Google+ has seen a similar evolution, though with vastly inferior search tools.
It's possible to look at related discussions on a keyword or URL at Reddit, or to create multireddits aggreggating various themes. The discoverability and usability of these tools leaves much to be desired.
There's also the dynamic of Reddit's conversations and discussions, most of which are effectively dead after a day (much as on HN). It's all but impossible to have a meaningful long-term discussion there (or here). Ironically and counterintuitively, G+'s mechanics are exceedingly good in this area, though at far smaller scale -- discussions are limited to 500 comments. Much of that may be due to the specific advocacy of Yonatan Zunger, who likes (and is an excellent host for) such discussions.
Reddit has been favouring mindless crap for years, and it's showing badly. /r/science are fighting a futile rearguard action.
Our social networks reward mindless content.
If a social network doesn't provide any tools for a content creator to somehow highlight, "No, really, please take an extra look at this," and / or a way for content consumers to highlight, "Ooh, yes, last time I consumed content like that, I really, really liked it, so please highlight it," then the network is failing everyone.
I'm not even prescribing how that negotiation should take place. Different systems could come up with different solutions. If users have switched to /r/popular, to the exclusion of all else, then maybe reddit could offer users to flag some subreddits as having special permission to get their attention occasionally. With a Sensitivity that they could turn up or down. And then that content could be highlighted for them at the top of /r/popular.
> It's all very well saying "anyone can create a subreddit, if you don't like one, make another" but it's impossible to compete with subreddits sitting on common names, like "science".
These complaints, though both with merit, seem totally decoupled to me.
Sometimes you get handed changes in policy or tools. Sometimes you even get advance notice, but not always. You're expected to adhere to and enforce policies, but not always given good guidance on what that means or how to do it. They're otherwise mostly hands-off, letting you manage daily affairs yourself.
If you're a popular sub, Reddit administration will tend to meddle whenever it's convenient for them. They generally won't warn you or discuss it with you. They'll just do things as they see fit.
The net result is that unpaid moderators do the vast majority of the work to maintain communities, but admins have arbitrary power over everything. They're hard to reach for help, and often seem apathetic about your concerns.
I can only imagine that this must be what it felt like to worship the Greek pantheon.
1) Subreddit moderators know better than central HQ about their audiences and the best content. Reddit central HQ has statistical engagement data, but that easily leads to temporary optimums. Digg is the Class A example of how using stats to make decisions works really great right up to the moment it really doesn't.
A human focus on quality and relevance helps avoid that, and the subreddit moderators are in the best position to provide that. That's why Reddit created subreddits in the first place!
2) Reddit's algorithm stuck popular crappy posts to the top of subreddits for too long and did not give subreddit moderators the tools they needed to deal with that. So, duh, moderators had to figure out a way to work around that. Then they got in trouble for the work-around. But it all goes back to problems with the algorithm and tools.
Reddit's interace and algorithm does not properly distinguish between "ha, that's funny"(upvote) and "wow, this is amazing and deeply affecting"(upvote). Subredditors can do this if you let them.
3) In case Reddit leaders (and readers here) have not noticed, we are in early in a sea-change in how culture perceives and interacts with social media platforms. It's no longer enough to standup an algorithm and let the chips fall where they may. That will get you testifying before Congress and dealing with the FBI before long. If Reddit wants to play in the big leagues of social media, they need to start looking more than a few feet in front of them.
Reddit has a huge advantage over Facebook and Twitter in that they have developed an army of unpaid moderators who can feed quality on their platform. What's the first thing anyone says about joining Reddit? "It's all about finding the best subreddits for you." Not "wow what a great feed algorithm, in general."
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In short: the absolute heart of Reddit's value proposition is the subreddit moderators, and that will only become more true in the future.
10-20 years ago people made the same argument about .com domain names. Didn't turn out to matter then, either.
There's a difference between what people say they want (as interpreted by views, clicks, eyeballs), and what they want to want (as interpreted by values, what feels rewarding in hindsight, what they're glad they did later). I wonder if these algorithms will ever evolve to start serving up metaphorical vitamins instead of potato chips.
Good moderation is vitamins.
Nobody's arguing for an excess of anything. Obviously a completely locked down subreddit that rejects and deletes all posts and comments would be useless, but so would one that's completely unmoderated.
Not necessarily. Reddit used to have some of those as running jokes. /r/blackfathers and such. Disagreeable uses are still uses.
> Allen admitted to the Daily Dot that he deleted popular r/science posts so AMAs would be more prominently featured. But he argues the controversial action was required for his posts to gain widespread visibility.
Don't think Reddit is in the wrong here...
Did he really just say that post manipulation is allowed when he personally values the content and expected it to be accepted?
Reddit is so covered in arbitrary rules as it is. It's harder to get a post to stick on Reddit than it is here on HN sometimes, and HN isn't even for general discussion like Reddit is.
Now we're finding out that the social media website with the most red-tape and outright hostile attitude towards it's userbase deletes user content to substitute self-promotional content produced by organizers?
I think it's time to find an alternative. Reddit wreaks of hostility towards users. It's the online equivalent of a park bench with coin operated spikes to deter homeless people.
This sounds bad, but you have to realize that:
- The AMAs had very high-profile guests, and it's easier to attract those guests if you can promise high visibility
- Moderators have very little tools to curate and promote contents that they view as valuable.
Why do moderators need tools to promote content they view as valuable? Isn't that what the upvote button is for?
These are moderators. Volunteer enthusiasts of the communities they moderate. They have no stake in Reddit and they get nothing regardless of what content gets seen by who. They're job is to make sure nobody breaks subreddit rules. They aren't supposed to be purveyors of content on a social media platform.
If I want to see structured, planned, and promoted content I'll go to CNN or Politico or NYT. I joined Reddit to be a part of a community that aggregates and promotes crowd-sourced content based on popular opinion.
Giving moderators tools to control the content beyond what they need to enforce the rules is manipulation of the underlying purpose of Reddit, and should be disallowed.
This isn't a Facebook page for a business that serves a purpose. It's an online forum whose purpose is to aggregate and rank crowd sourced content with crowd sourced input. Adding a "To The Top" button for moderators defeats the purpose of Reddit.
The upvote button leads to Logan Paul and walmart. If that's what you want, there are plenty of unmoderated subreddits which provide that.
> These are moderators. Volunteer enthusiasts of the communities they moderate. They have no stake in Reddit and they get nothing regardless of what content gets seen by who.
They absolutely have a stake in the community they are nurturing actually working and leading towards the outcome they're looking for. Folks moderating /r/science want /r/science to be good according to their criteria of goodness, which are unlikely to be the same criteria used by moderators of /r/aww, /r/antm, /r/SWARJE/ or /r/SubredditSimulator/, all of which are different from one another.
Moderators are not unemotional robots doing busywork for a faceless corporation.
> They're job is to make sure nobody breaks subreddit rules.
Their "job" is to create and foster communities, moderators define subreddit rules in the first place.
1) The site starts with transparent rules. The users are in power. Data access is open and easy. The user interface is friendly.
...the site becomes popular...
2) Rules become a secret. Power is taken away from the users. Data access becomes limited and more complicated. The user interface becomes bloated and hostile.
I really hope we will manage to get decentralized social media off the ground. It sucks that even after years of work, the content creators and community builders have nothing to show for it. They are just slaves to the platform owners.
One advantage of the systems that web fora largely replaced — mailing lists and usenet — is that content and presentation are not coupled, so each user can use their own preferred interface.
That's wrong as /r/popular explicitly excludes a bunch of sub-reddits. While one could see it as the Reddit staff catering it to what's "popular", a more cynical view is that the entire concept was created to shape the definition of "popular". It's pretty easy to tip the scales when you're the one managing them.
Separately, does The Daily Dot have any sort of editing or review process? "Huffman" is misspelled "Hoffman", extra confusingly in a direct quote from him.
Presumably some of these changes had to do with removing e.g. r/The_Donald's ability to spam the front page. This article is really incomplete without talking about the problems that the new rules were designed to solve.
Full reply : https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8khscc/rscience_wi...
Edit: looks like it’s been changed, thanks!
Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
The article title in this case is arguably both, so we changed it to use a more neutral phrase from the article. That's always the best way to change a title, btw, when you have to. Articles nearly always include some neutral representative phrase that describes what they're about, and it's much better to find a 'native' one that way than to make up a new title oneself. Trick of the trade.
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That kind of stuff made me unsub r/science . It was turning into a cesspool of narrowminded busybodies. Kind of reminds me how StackOverflow is.
> Additionally, Reddit stopped allowing what Huffman calls “post manipulation” to highlight certain content. Moderators at r/science and other popular subreddits have been accused of deleting highly ranking posts to push individual items to the top of their page. From there, they would gain visibility and receive upvotes to be featured on the main page.
I'm not sure about removing posts I've never noticed that on r/science. But just because I have not witnessed it doesn't mean it isn't true. I do have to say in post comments all the jokes, anecdotal stories (I'm guilty!) or bickering are quickly removed and that seems appropriate for the science. Let actual verified scientists answer genuine questions or make comments in a post's comments section.
This seems like both sides have good points but one side is the overall owner. The majority of subreddits have abysmal moderation quickly locking what the mods can't be bothered to moderate. Locking posts stifles debate it's just pure moderator laziness.
Just FYI, there's no question if it's true. The mod admitted it in the article:
"Allen admitted to the Daily Dot that he deleted popular r/science posts so AMAs would be more prominently featured. But he argues the controversial action was required for his posts to gain widespread visibility.
“[deleting posts] is a consequence of the nature of the user base’s interest in science,” Allen told the Daily Dot. “Meaning, if science is put in front of them, they [Reddit users] like it. But they don’t go seek it out. That’s for stupid cat pictures and other relaxing things. Science isn’t.”"