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Comment by revscat | Hacker News Reader

This episode exposes a weakness in Reddit's overall structure, namely the opaque process whereby moderators are chosen. When domains are banned completely and against the wishes of the broader community it shows that Reddit's otherwise democratic processes can be fairly autocratic.

The solution is a system where users can vote on who is a moderator. Between this and /r/worldnews Banning of Russia Today it is apparent that moderators have far too much power over the content of various subteddit's.

Such voting could be limited to once per month, and two users who have a certain karma. There might even be an opportunity for a competitor site which does this very thing.

Edit: The number of moderators should be a function of the number of subscribers as well.

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If users were really disturbed by that change, a new subreddit would simply be created which allow these domains.

There's a reason premium domain names go for a high price: having generic-words for domains is big value. Similarly r/politics is a big deal. Gaining traction on a new subreddit would be a big issue in and of itself even if one set out to create a new politics subreddit.

I'm really enjoying, by the way, that Mother Jones is banned. Mother Jones has a self-alleged left stint to it -- but at least they come right out and say it. Contrast that with Rupert's WSJ (hah, its /op-ed/ pieces are right now on r/politics front page!)

Since having been bought by Rupert WSJ been leaning more to the right [1], is WSJ going to get banned by r/politics too now?

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/business/media/14carr.html...

Since having been bought by Rupert WSJ been leaning more to the right

The WSJ is far more liberal than it was a generation ago.[1] The WSJ is sort of Bloombergian in its outlook. Also, Murdoch is not American. Most people consider the UK Conservatives left of center of even US democrats (eg, signle payer healthcare), so again even if Murdoch was pushing the US toward the EU right, it would be moving the the US left. (Another reason why these words are sort of ill-advised). Of course, he's actually Australian. So YMMV.

[1] And frankly the NYT link is arguablly an opinion piece.

> Also, Murdoch is not American. Most people consider the UK Conservatives left of center of even US democrats

Uhmmm, you do know that Fox News is also owned by Murdoch? And clearly it is thereby evident that the logic you're operating on is not really working?

Second point, Murdoch is Australian. Right wing of Australia, in parts, can be quite comparable to America's right wing. Consider the considerable opposition to immigration policies, there being lots of racist activity (foreigners being referred to as "boat people" -- something that was a key issue in the last election cycle). Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest person, is routinely in the news saying ridiculous things, like how people should work for $2 a day [1]. But all of this is actually immaterial, since we shouldn't be generalizing. It doesn't matter what popular politics are in Australia or UK, Murdoch could have radical or reactionary views no matter where he is from.

[1]: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/05/business/la-fi-mo-ri...

see my reply to e40

The WSJ is far more liberal than it was a generation ago.

The WSJ is far more conservative than it was before Murdock bought it. My friends that get the paper delivered are disgusted by the slanting of the news, since the purchase.

The Journal's editors stress the independence and impartiality of their reporters.[27] In a 2004 study, Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo calculated the ideological bias of 20 media outlets by counting the frequency they cited particular think tanks and comparing that to the frequency that legislators cited the same think tanks. They found that the news reporting of The Journal was the most liberal, more liberal than NPR or The New York Times.

This just demonstrates it is important to baseline. Secondly, the editorial page and the reportage are not monolithic. I'd be pretty skeptical of anecdotal claims, especially of the type outlined in that NYT link.

The WSJ was also a pro/fessional tool, when it was owned by DowJones, and had a different purpose in life than a paper like the NYT.

Certainly not a requirement.

Look back into the reddit dark ages at the /r/marijuana /r/trees schism, for instance.

That does not address the imbalance of influence moderators have. Also, asking some 1+ million subscribers to switch is inefficient when a process could be implemented which addresses community concerns.

Users do vote: with their subreddit subscriptions (also PMs to moderators, and/or text submissions complaining about policy). I don't get the sense that this was unwanted from the community either.

I don't know if this makes me biased, but I for one welcome fewer low-quality, link-bait, and/or recycled-story articles.

> "I don't get the sense that this was unwanted from the community either."

It was unwanted. The mods' announcement was even downvoted to zero by the community:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1pedlv/concerning_...

But the users are idiots. The users on the thread you linked think that filtering out shitty new sources is some kind of right-wing conspiracy.

r/politics is the opposite of a place you would visit for reasonable political discussion. It was so bad that it got dropped from the list of default subs, and even before that, people created accounts just to filter out stuff from that sub. The sub needed quality control for a really long time, and now it's finally getting it.

> But the users are idiots.

Since mods come from the userbase, what does that say about the mods?

> The users on the thread you linked think that filtering out shitty new sources is some kind of right-wing conspiracy.

Some do, sure. Many others, including ex-mods, see it for what it is: censorship.

A couple problems with your analysis: the population down-voting that post was preselected for those who had not already left/unsubscribed as /r/politics went downhill for the last couple years.

"Censorship" is a biased word, usually chosen by people who don't like what's being enforced. I would perhaps use the word "filtering" and it's perfectly common in a lot of subreddits. I don't think "censoring" is fair because all the same topics and events will still get discussed. The theory being that now, discussion starts with - on average - better reporting.

> "Censorship" is a biased word

Only to someone in favor of censorship.

Filtering is not always bad, especially not when it's done transparently, and in pursuit of a better community. To claim that filtering out those low-quality sites, when there are many higher quality sites covering the exact same topics, in just as timely a manner is somehow equivalent to censoring Google results in China - is just disingenuous.

> Filtering is not always bad

That wasn't the issue. The issue was the word 'censorship' being perceived as a biased word. Only censors or those with the predilection to censor would think the word is "biased".

If your position is that the word censorship does not have a negative connotation, I don't know anyone who would agree with you, including, it would seem, your earlier comments.

I'm positing that filtering has neither a positive nor a negative connotation; that all information gets through anyway, it's only low-quality sources of the same information that are filtered; and that calling it censorship in a comment inappropriately pre-disposes the reader to a negative reaction.

> This episode exposes a weakness in Reddit's overall structure

Except this was a good decision.

If anything it exposes the fail of Reddit's voting system such that theses emotive magazines that directly tap the human brain for uplinks needed to be banned rather than not voted up.

Although it all depends, is Reddit just a money making machine? So allowing people to constantly reinforce bad behaviours might be seen as good from a company level?

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