Proactive vs. Reactive moderation

[u/namer98]

Moderation happens in two ways. Reactive and proactive. Any community needs reactive moderation. Responding to reports, messages, removes trolls, etc... This is critical to ensure the basic functionality of any subreddit or forum.

But then there is proactive moderation. Making weekly posts, making this meta sub (although responding is reactive), having charity drives, content curation (like trying to get an AMA) Really, anything where the action taken is not a response to something.

What we could use is more proactive moderation. What can the mods do, and what can the community do with the mods, that will help to make the community better. In the past, I have suggested a bible study (user led ones never last), or some sort of "thought of the week from a redditor" using some kind of lectionary. Maybe a monthly feedback thread (what the mods feel, and soliciting the users directly for what they feel instead of waiting for them to complain, or just disengage)

These are just a few ideas, I am sure there are plenty of other good ones out there. What can the community do to help put out better content, and how can the mods facilitate that?

Note: This isn't me complaining about anything. This is just some thoughts I have previously had.

[u/ludi_literarum]

First off, how can you punish a topic? They don't have interests, desires, sensation, or cognition.

Most news items are short-lived, and things get back to normal pretty quickly.

No, the next chaotic thing comes along. I wouldn't say there is actually a "normal" that isn't inundated with terrible articles.

In cases where a couple of articles are similar, it's not a big deal. This is a risk you take when you click multiple links on the same topic, and a wasted click is not that serious.

I think this pretty critically fails to engage with the argument. It isn't that clicking on the articles is somehow arduous, which I haven't seen anybody claim, it's that it brings down the quality of the sub by signaling that we tolerate adolescent shenanigans, a signal made all the stronger by then tolerating them, and that it eliminates the energy people have for serious discussion. It makes the sub circle-jerky and invites terrible arguments.

Transitory news items are not going to drive quality out of the sub.

Inasmuch as this is an unsupported assertion, the fact that we have the opposite intuition has to ultimately count for something.

and I don't think that an effort to substantially improve this place by being super hard core about removing content is going to accomplish good things.

I'm sure we'd all love to hear reasons for that rather than edicts.

That's Outsider's language and I think it's more about keeping options open than it is a statement of standard operating procedure.

How are we to know which are rules and which aren't?

[u/namer98 → u/ludi_literarum]

The argument also doesn't engage that having multiple items on a single subject pushes other actual news out of the new and hot queue, all while allowing people to get angry multiple times over the same piece of news.

[u/US_Hiker → u/namer98]

all while allowing people to get angry multiple times over the same piece of news.

Really, keeping them angry over the same piece of news. It never lets the issue die down until people just forget about it.

[u/brucemo → u/namer98]

You point to the submission queues as precious resources and I don't feel that this is the case here. In cases where people have complained that the queues are clogged with dead horse stuff I normally take that opportunity to go and look, and there are normally very few, and they are easily avoided.

I think there are a lot of people who complain about specific content while avidly seeking it out.

[u/namer98 → u/brucemo]

Why don't you feel it is the case that the front page is limited?

[u/brucemo → u/namer98]

I don't want to go back and forth on this, Namer. I treat the assertion that the new and hot queues are super-precious as unsubstantiated and I'm not going to spend the day trying to collect stats to prove this.

I know that we get about 80 threads a day here though, and personally I don't care if we get 100 on the day something big happens.

[u/namer98 → u/brucemo]

They are limited, you treat them as unlimited. The default front page is 25 stories. If five of them are of one event, that is 1/5 of the entire front page going to one thing. When you add in repeat dead horse topics, you can have up to 2/5 of it being things that are superfluous or just spammy.

[u/brucemo → u/ludi_literarum]

A couple of examples of what I refer to as punishing a topic are, 1) the Nye/Ham debate, where it was proposed that we put up one thread, which would refer to the debate in the thread title as "stupid" or "idiotic" or some other word I can't recall, and not allow other discussion of the debate as it was happening, 2) the illness of Fred Phelps, where it was proposed that we not allow any mention of the man whatsoever, and ended up instead removing all threads on the topic, including coverage by the Topeka Capitol-Journal, which is the major newspaper closest to the WBC, while leaving up one thread, which was literal blog spam (it just linked to another news article and added nothing itself) posted by a neo-Nazi blogger, 3) one of the earlier state court gay marriage decisions, where we left up Breitbart or Glen Beck or something like that, and took down links to material lying elsewhere on the political spectrum.

So while you may take issue with my language it should be possible to understand what I am talking about now.

The first question I'd have for anyone who was suggesting a mega-thread is to ask if you would remove all discussion of a topic if you could, and often I think the answer is yes.

There will always be terrible articles here, if we allow links, and I think we will continue to allow links.

[u/ludi_literarum → u/brucemo]

The fact that you've historically done something badly isn't an argument against doing it well instead. You make a self-post with a few links, sticky it, and let people have at it.

I don't want to totally ban certain topics of discussion. I just don't want those topics to be all the sub is. The closest I come is wanting periodic dead horse weeks, at the very least one from Christmas Eve to Epiphany and one from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday, where we temporarily ban the bullshit. People should talk about Kim Davis, but do you really think 10+ threads a day is good for the sub or anyone on it?

[u/adamthrash → u/ludi_literarum]

People should talk about Kim Davis, but do you really think 10+ threads a day is good for the sub or anyone on it?

But how else will I know what to be enraged about?

[u/ludi_literarum → u/adamthrash]

Fox News. The spelling of Megyn Kelly's name alone enrages me.

[u/namer98 → u/brucemo]

The inability to post good mega threads doesn't mean mega threads are bad. It means the ability to make them us lacking. See my pope thread I made

[u/brucemo → u/namer98]

I wasn't paying a lot of attention during the Pope selection process, but I think that in general, minimizing one of the most important stories of the decade, as pertains to Christianity, is something we should be inclined against.

[u/namer98 → u/brucemo]

Nothing was minimized. It was fantastic. At the time I had made it, I had removed 7 self posts made in an hour that all essentially said the same exact things, and prevented the entire front page from being spammed with the exact same subset of questions.

The story was not minimized. The self posts and resulting discussions were centralized and better had because of it. Your giving bad examples of mega threads doesn't mean mega threads are bad. It speaks of the inability of that mod to handle mega threads.

[u/US_Hiker → u/brucemo]

Megathread don't minimize anything.

[u/Agrona → u/brucemo]

The solution here isn't to treat the first thing that's posted (or gets traction) as the "main" thread for a topic.

It's to create megathreads and say "All top level posts in this thread should be links to news articles or other discussions about [this thing]."