Hacker News Reader

Comment by senttoschool | Hacker News Reader

>Large subreddits have their issues with transparency I agree but what are you trying to suggest? Reddit-appointed moderators? If so, you are in for a rude awakening.

I would create a system where moderators have far less power, and that Subreddit members can vote on rules, posts being deleted, etc. The system would be much more democratic. Members would also be able to challenge moderator actions or even reverse moderator actions.

As of right now, Reddit has a problem where moderators have too much power. On top of that, moderators aren't being paid so they can't be controlled.

View on HN

Neat, then the trolls who already ruin many discussions would instead ruin whole subreddits. Just so people wouldn't get their feelings hurt when their ridiculous conspiracy theories get deleted.

There are conspiracy theories, and then there is soothsaying... It's one of the weird quirks of our culture that the former is considered bizarre, and the latter is considered ~logical/fine.

Possibly relevant:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-well-known-human-achieve...

No "soothsaying" required. Look at every single "free speech" platform. They're horrible places that push away most people other than those on the extreme fringes.

> No "soothsaying" required.

It is for your beliefs (about the future and ~millions of people you've not met) to be correct.

Tautologies are handy too, but it's easy to not realize one is dealing with them.

You never played any online MUDs/games with votekicking enabled, I take it?

This always ends with a power clique banding together to vote everyone else off. "Just for lulz," of course.

There is no solution to this except mutiny. Ban the corrupt leader and elect someone favorable. Delegating rule to the mob is tried-and-failed.

Played CS 1.6 religiously.

However, you can base the democratic system based on the reputation of the user, rather than total number of votes. CS1.6 did not have these advanced systems in place.

Everything should be settled by scoutzknivez

That's called the tyranny of the majority and it is absolutely not the point of small community creation on Reddit. Imagine you create a reddit and put it work to make it popular enough to get attention only to have some other group come in and say 'thanks we'll take it from here' and take away the community that you created and completely change it's dynamics.

>Subreddit members can vote on rules, posts being deleted, etc. The system would be much more democratic.

If you've never been into one of those "we let the upvotes decide" subreddits, then you don't realize that they inevitably turn into a tepid, unfocused grey blur of samey garbage. Moderators are necessary to keep a subreddit on track.

Democracy on a platform known for having thousands of bots and more popping up all the time seems unlikely to perform as desired.

How do you suppose a single or 1-5 human moderators can cope with bots better than the collective subreddit members?

Or do you think that some bots will be so human like that they can't be distinguished by other subreddit users, but they can be distinguished by moderators?

I would limit first-offense punishments to max 7 day bans. And to shadow-ban a post (versus locking it) for a first offense I'd require it be done by a Reddit admin, and then only for things such as site-wide rules violations.

Maybe it's a good thing that they can't be controlled?

Sure. They can't be controlled because they do it without monetary payments. But it's not a good thing that they can't be controlled when a sub gets to a certain size.

At some point, large subreddits become important to the internet and they outgrow the moderators.

You know how some founders are great when the startup is small but is completely incompetent when the startup grows and scales? Then VCs bring in "adults" to run the larger startup? Yea. It happens on subreddits too but founding moderators can't be kicked out as far as I know.

> They can't be controlled because they do it without monetary payments

... from reddit. Some are probably being paid by organizations, businesses, or even countries. And others might be monetizing their sub-reddit in some way (e.g. some of the crypto or investing sub-reddits).

That's right!

All the more reason to create a more democratic and transparent system.

When crypto scams and exchanges were failing left and right, mods for official crypto exchange subreddits were deleting and censoring posts or shutting the subreddit down completely - leaving no place for bag holders to communicate and coordinate with each other.

Heck, even on HN, we could use a more democratic and transparent system. Right now, I'm convinced that HN blocks selective negative posts about Y Combinator.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com