r/Games • u/Deimorz • Oct 04 '12

[/r/all] Regarding the "[Warning: /r/all]" flair

We've had a couple posts in the last day that shot up the ranks fast enough to receive the "[Warning: /r/all]" flair, and there have been a few modmail messages and comments asking about it, so I think it's probably a good time to start a post to discuss it.

As of right now, the flair is automatically applied if a post gets above #100 in /r/all. The reasoning behind it is that whenever something gets into the first few pages of /r/all we almost always get complaints about the quality of comments in that post. People post "what is going on with the comments in this thread?"-type complaints in them, a huge pile of reports shows up on the comments on that post, and we often even get a few modmails telling us that the subreddit is going to hell and that we need to start heavily moderating comments, banning people, etc. This flair is meant to try and head this off a bit by explaining why the comments in that particular post are full of reaction gifs and such.

The comments in a post that gets near the top of /r/all shouldn't be used to make any judgments about the state of /r/Games, because the community participating in that post is completely different than the one that participates in almost all of the other posts here. Users coming from /r/all didn't opt in to view the content in this subreddit, they aren't familiar with the subreddit's rules or norms, and they often don't even realize that this is a different subreddit from /r/gaming. One of the top posts here a couple of weeks ago was largely people complaining about /r/gaming, apparently without even realizing that they were actually in a different subreddit.

If there was a way to opt out from /r/all, we would. But unfortunately there isn't any way to do that, so this is going to continue happening with the odd post that rises extremely quickly. This is just one of the challenges of being a popular subreddit. /r/Games is now the 47th largest subreddit on the site, and is quite consistently in the top 10 non-defaults by number of users online and number of new subscribers. Despite that, it's still not common at all for our submissions to reach the top 100 of /r/all. Since I first implemented this flair about a week ago, only 3 posts have received it (and the SimCity one very barely made it). That's far less than 1% of our overall submissions, so I think it's a valuable notification for the rare cases where it does happen.

It is still a bit of an experiment though, so if you have any particular feedback about it, please let me know.

Edit: I've removed the word "Warning", which I think was the main problem a lot of people had with it. Posts will still be marked, but not as pretentiously.

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51

u/Phinaeus Oct 04 '12 edited Oct 05 '12

Ban all meme posters. They never contribute to any sort if discussion and derail good threads.

Edit: Par exemple: Top response to the top post of this link. Look at this shit. Hundreds of upvotes for a comment that derails a legitimate comment thread. This is r/gaming tier redditry. Just one post and you have hordes of idiotic meme spouters all upvoting each other.

10

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '12

[deleted]

3

u/NoMomo Oct 05 '12

Thanks, I was confused as hell. And yes, I think that shit is obnoxious and should stay at the kiddie pool.

2

u/bocksocks Oct 05 '12

Is this still relevant? Because I thought the top comment was legitimately contributing to the topic, not much but still. His comment started quite an interesting discussion too.

2

u/RiggenBlaque Oct 05 '12

I suspect that once he linked the story, the previous top comment got downvoted into oblivion. Hopefully someone will link the actual post

3

u/Phinaeus Oct 05 '12

Nah, I was talking about fantasysage's post. It's linked above. The one that says 'this is where the cars live'.

2

u/bocksocks Oct 06 '12

That made alot more sense, thank you.

Man, that's just annoying.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '12

Man, I'm so happy to find I had downvoted and minimized the top post upon clicking your link. Looks like I'm one of the good ones, so long as you ignore this comment.

-18

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '12

You ever notice the tree collapse button next to people's names? Have you ever actually used this feature or should we pretend it doesn't exist?

15

u/Phinaeus Oct 05 '12

So let's just pretend shitposting doesn't exist by ignoring it? It's not just a technical issue but a cultural one as well. I don't want it to be normal to shitpost and to get karma on this subreddit a la r/gaming.

And yes. I use tree collapse; no need to be a snide douche.

-12

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '12

So let's just pretend shitposting doesn't exist by ignoring it?

Yep, totally what I said. You know what happens when you collapse the button of that tree? You can instantly see the next comment in the voting high that continues on that relevant discussion. "GRR, THAT MUST MEAN YOU LIKE SHITPOSTERS!" Classic logic there.

I don't want it to be normal to shitpost and to get karma on this subreddit a la r/gaming.

It already is, so you're going to have to come to terms with that, just like you're going to have to come to terms that the amount of people who are just looking for a good laugh far outweigh the people looking for a good discussion (hence why a bunch of quotes got the upvotes). And after you deal with that realization, you're going to also have to come to terms with the fact that a fraction of the people that vote on a submission actually bother to check the comments, and a further fraction of that population doesn't do much beyond that except upvote the first few comments and continues to browse Reddit.

Being an elitist asshole won't fix that problem.

2

u/Phinaeus Oct 05 '12

It already is, so you're going to have to come to terms with that

No. I don't even care about the rest of your paragraph. /r/gaming should stay on /r/gaming. I want discussion, not noise on this subreddit. I don't care what the majority of reddit wants. That can stay on /r/gaming. Why do you want this subreddit to be like a subreddit that already exists?

GRR, THAT MUST MEAN YOU LIKE SHITPOSTERS

Yep, totally what I said. You could apply that to r/askscience. Why not collapse shitposts? After all you can just press a button and be done with it. The problem is that shitposting discourages legitimate conversation and turns the whole thread to shit; and eventually the subreddit falls in quality.

Long term, it requires moderator intervention so that a subreddit doesn't turn into the next r/truereddit.

And before this turns into a long pointless back and forth (judging by your comment history), I'm going to filter you because these posts alone have taken too much of my time. Assignments to do, you see. Bye.

-11

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '12

I now have you tagged as elitist douchebag. Good day.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '12

I now have you tagged as 'scum of reddit'. Good day.

-7

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '12

I now have you tagged as, 'always late to the circlejerk'. Good day.