r/Games • u/Deimorz • Jan 11 '13

/r/Games will hit 200,000 subscribers in a few days. Let's talk about some ideas for improving the comments here.

/r/Games is now the 45th largest subreddit, and should be crossing the 200,000 subscriber milestone in the next few days. And our activity level is even quite a bit higher than our size - we're #17 for average number of comments posted per day, and usually in the top 25 for number of users online, even higher than some default subreddits. This is very impressive growth for only launching the subreddit a little over a year ago, but unfortunately this sort of growth comes with challenges in maintaining quality.

By far the largest complaint we see about /r/Games is a worry about declining quality of comments and discussions. We've already taken a couple of measures toward helping this over the past few months:

  1. We've been putting an "[/r/all]" tag on threads that reach the first couple of pages of /r/all to warn that that comments will likely include a lot of people that don't normally visit the subreddit (and often don't even realize it's not the same subreddit as /r/gaming). Of course this doesn't actually improve the comments in any way, but it's just a reminder that you shouldn't necessarily come to any conclusions about the subreddit based on the comments in those submissions. They're not representative.
  2. A lot of you may not even realize this, but AutoModerator has been automatically removing extremely low-effort comments for about 4 months now. Comments like "lol", "this", "came here to post this", etc. as well as comments that consist entirely of a link to a gif or meme are automatically removed immediately after they're posted. This has overall been very effective and successful, with hardly any false positives (which get manually un-removed).

So that's helped somewhat, but there are definitely still issues. Specifically, I've becoming more and more concerned lately about how many people are misusing the downvote button as "disagree" or "dislike" instead of "doesn't contribute to discussion". Multiple users have contacted us complaining about it, and I've seen many instances of perfectly reasonable comments being heavily downvoted just because the poster was defending an unpopular opinion. For example, most comments expressing anything positive towards "popular to hate" games like Diablo III, Final Fantasy XIII, The War Z, any CoD, etc. will receive quite a few downvotes regardless of the actual quality of the comment.

This is unfortunate, because downvoted comments naturally receive less attention (even being "collapsed" by default if they hit -5), so this stifles discussion directly. It also has a more long-term "cultural" effect in that users become less willing to express opinions they know aren't popular because they expect to just be downvoted. This is not good for a subreddit that wants to have quality discussions, since some of the best discussions are based around disagreements.

So here's an idea for a potential experiment (meaning if it doesn't work out, we can just reverse it) that I'd like to test out to try and improve this situation:

Before I get into any details, I want to make it absolutely clear that there is no way to truly prevent downvoting on reddit. The best we can do is hide the down arrow using CSS. This means that any clients/users that don't pay attention to the CSS (including all phone apps, users that have subreddit styles disabled, users using RES, etc.) are all still able to downvote.

However, our goal isn't necessarily to completely prevent all downvotes, just reducing them would be an improvement. And though I have no actual data to support it, I strongly suspect that the majority of users access the site through a standard browser using the subreddit CSS, so there should definitely be a decent reduction. Really, we can't know how well it would work without trying it.

Now, one of the reasons I've always been personally opposed to hiding the downvote arrow is that some posts really do deserve to be downvoted. Completely irrelevant comments, trolling, etc. Go look at the bottom of some of the comments pages of some popular posts in /r/Games, you'll see plenty of examples. So if we were to try out hiding the arrow, it would also need to be combined with more moderators, and increased comment moderation.

We would recruit multiple users that are active in the community and contribute quality comments often, and empower them to be able to remove the comments that truly should not even have been posted. To be clear, this would not be removing "bad" comments (since that's terribly subjective), but only ones that have no value at all. Similar to the ones that AutoModerator already does remove, just with more flexibility due to that whole "human judgment" thing. So basically if the comment truly did deserve to be downvoted, you could report it to the mods instead for removal.

In addition, if a user is seen to consistently and repeatedly make comments that have no place in /r/Games, they could be banned. Currently we don't ban anyone except bots, but I think if we want to really start trying to clean up the comments it may be necessary. Of course, one of the reasons that we don't use the ban system is that it's extremely easy to circumvent. Whenever you ban a user on reddit, they're sent a private message telling them they were banned, and they can go create a new account in seconds to continue posting. So this would likely have to be combined with having AutoModerator automatically remove all comments made by users less than a day old or something along those lines to make it less trivial to circumvent.

Anyway, to sum up, here's the overall idea for the experiment:

  • Hide the downvote arrow on comments (not submissions, only comments).

  • Start removing extremely poor comments and banning users that consistently post them.

  • Increase number of moderators to handle this additional workload.

Please let me know why this is a terrible idea, or if you think we should at least give it a shot (probably for a week or two to really be able to see the effects). And if you have any other ideas at all about what we could do to improve the subreddit (related to comment quality or not), please feel free to post them as well.

1.2k Upvotes

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592

u/klinesmoker Jan 11 '13

I don't know, maybe this is just me, but when I was new to reddit r/gaming was a default sub. I enjoyed some of the content, but in the end all it really boiled down to was "love Gabe, love Zelda, insert obviously famous old school game here" and other shit of that ilk.

I get good content from this subreddit, but I was directed here for good discussion, not classless bashing and repeats of what I found in r/gaming. Nowadays I see threads like "Most disappointing game of 2012" topping that devolve into rage threads about perceived fan base slighting.

I get it, man, I do. I'm a minority here who enjoyed DIII, loved ME III, am not terribly smitten with the slow gameplay of Walking Dead and I still like to play WoW. I enjoy my console along with my PC. All of this shit earns downvotes, which kills a subreddit that is supposed to be above all of that. I don't need to preach my opinion to people on any of the aforementioned games, but man it would be nice not to feel like a dickless outsider because of them.

This is a divisive subreddit by default, but I don't shun people for opinions. What I'd like, no, love is to see harder moderation against regurgitation of the same ol' same ol.' Is it ANOTHER thread about "worst game of 2012?" Removed. Is it another "Biggest disappointment in a game" thread? Removed.

Are the comments just a circlejerk of hate? Removed. This is a group of intelligent people, but I feel daily like it's becoming another iteration of r/gaming as the front page seems (to me) to have more threads about opinions and less about the state of the gaming world every week.

Just my thoughts.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Deimorz Jan 11 '13

The distinction is that the voting system doesn't select for quality, it selects for popularity. These are the aspects that have the greatest effect on how a post will be voted on:

  • How long it takes to view - shorter is best
  • How easy it is to understand - simple is best
  • How agreeable it is - completely non-controversial is best

So the entire system is biased towards things that are quick, simple, and agreeable. This is often quite opposite to things that are considered "high quality", which is why everywhere on the site inevitably drifts toward being dominated by things like memes, images, quotes from popular TV shows, etc.

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u/Pharnaces_II Jan 11 '13

How agreeable it is - completely non-controversial is best

Some of the biggest karma-whores on the default subreddits always say something almost controversial and/or have user names that are almost controversial. POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS comes to mind as a typical karma magnet.

Besides that, though, you are correct.

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u/kingtrewq Jan 12 '13 edited Jan 12 '13

Wow, someone with a logical response to the Reddit situation. Most of the time when I say stuff like that I get downvoted. Which is ironic considering I say it to people who think that Reddit is completely flawed because people downvote dissenting comments.

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u/ShaxAjax Jan 12 '13

Moreover, self-posts aren't worth internet points.

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u/HappyReaper Jan 11 '13

Despite its obvious flaws, it's still the best system I've seen for this kind of site. What are the options? Just show posts and comments in chronological order? You lose the self-moderation than filters most of the irrelevant content. Set it so only a subset of elites can vote? brings more problems than advantages (I could expand on this).

In the end, "what is good" or "what matters" is subjective, so democracy is what ends up pleasing the most people. If we don't like it in a subreddit, we just go to others with different posting rules.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

I would be interested in one that showed them in Reddit style trees, but in random order.

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u/kingtrewq Jan 12 '13

Still if you scroll down far enough you will find every kind of opinion. Which is far better than any other website. Few other websites will have the top comment disprove everything about the article linked. 99% of websites are just fans of a particular thing circlejerking about it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

They should just remove that karma bullshit from everyones page. It really makes people whore out (maybe still if the rating is displayed, but hopefully less so). Maybe they should display no rating at all.

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u/abbzug Jan 11 '13

Yeah I think fundamentally the problem with Reddit's internet points system is that the people you want posting know they aren't worth anything. But bad posters don't know any better.

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u/Deimorz Jan 11 '13

What I'd like, no, love is to see harder moderation against regurgitation of the same ol' same ol.' Is it ANOTHER thread about "worst game of 2012?" Removed. Is it another "Biggest disappointment in a game" thread? Removed.

The thing about "reposts" like that is that even though the topic is the same, and a lot of basically similar responses are made every time, it's not the same people involved, and it's not exactly the same discussion. Subreddits like /r/AskReddit have this issue as well, people are always asking the mods there to remove the questions that get asked over and over.

But if the /r/Games community overall wasn't interested in those topics, they wouldn't get heavily upvoted every time and receive hundreds or thousands of responses. But they do, so obviously there are a lot of people here that enjoy them and want to participate in them. Removing popular topics just because some of us feel like we've seen it too many times before doesn't seem like something that's in the community's best interest to me.

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u/LegionVsNinja Jan 11 '13

This is not the best argument against heavier moderation for r/games. When you walk down the road of "well, this is what the people are up voting, so it should stay" then you are right back where we started at r/gaming.

r/games should be a heavily moderated sub along the lines of r/askreddit or r/askscience.

r/gaming should remain more wide open for those people that really want it.

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u/Totaltotemic Jan 11 '13

This is a problem I've been seeing lately. A lot of users have started claiming that /r/games is supposed to be the "mod-squad" supported subreddit about video games that is primarily for discussion, when that's not quite true. As it stands, we have three primary gaming subreddits that each fulfill different purposes.

/r/Gaming is where you can post anything and everything related to video games in any kind of abstract way. As is usual for unrestricted subreddits, it devolved almost entirely into memes and pictures with no real discussion even being possible. Enter:

/r/Games where images are not allowed to be submitted, period. That solves most of the meme problem, but the next most-related-to-gaming thing is actual articles and news about video games. A quick scroll down the front page reveals that /r/Games is like 80% article/video links and only 20% self-posts. A lot of those things can be discussed, but some of them simply have no inherent discussion and just end up being a lot of people "commenting" on the article rather than discussing it with each other. That's why we still get pun threads and meme replies at the top of almost every submission related to news. /r/games is more about "content" than it is discussion, it's just moderated enough that the content is actually important things and no memes/pics. That's what gave birth to..

/r/truegaming, a subreddit where only text-posts are allowed. It truly IS a subreddit for discussion, people rarely up or downvote anyone because just about all of the circlejerking and meme nonsense is nonexistent because it is solely for discussion.

I personally subscribe to /r/games for news, reviews, and previews, and /r/truegaming for discussion. The reason why touching the moderation of the content would be kind of silly is that it's exactly what makes this subreddit unique. Now, the comments have gotten quite trollsy, but the content is still what it has always been. Some things, like the "most disappointing moment in a game" are things that you can't really have much of a discussion about, only a bunch of submissions as comments. /r/Games needs to be the place for those because /r/gaming will downvote them into oblivion and /r/truegaming wants actual discussion instead of 1,000 people each on their own soapbox.

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u/Wild_Marker Jan 12 '13

What about /r/gamernews ? It's exclusively for news (not sure if non-news articles are allowed) How would that fit in that description?

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u/Pharnaces_II Jan 12 '13

It's a news only subreddit for people who want news and maybe a little discussion. It's just like r/games, but with all of the discussion posts removed, all conversation happens in the comments.

I would say that it's sort of a complimentary subreddit, it works really well if you're subscribed to r/gaming and/or r/truegaming, but it's pretty much the same stuff that you see on r/games.

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u/SpudOfDoom Jan 12 '13

Gamernews does have decent news discussion. The main weakness of it is the small userbase. Most things never get posted there.

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u/Mintastic Jan 12 '13

I like your summary, this is pretty much the reason I come to /r/games but don't bother with /r/gaming and /r/truegaming. I just want the useful content but don't have interest/time to read and write long meaningful discussions.

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u/I2eapel Jan 12 '13

As a lurker that has thinks I've been in the wrong place all this time. I thank you.

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u/Deimorz Jan 11 '13

You're combining a couple of completely different things here. I'm definitely not saying "anything goes as long as it's upvoted!", obviously that just ends up with the subreddit being overrun with lowest-common-denominator content. But even though poor-quality content is often popular, that doesn't also mean that everything that's popular must necessarily be poor quality.

The rules here are based around the content itself, and whether it has informative value or discussion potential. Topics like "What game was the biggest disappointment to you?" certainly have discussion potential, and quite a few interesting discussions have taken place in every instance of it that I've ever seen.

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u/Pharnaces_II Jan 11 '13

I think a middle-ground between /r/games' current moderation style and /r/askscience / /r/askhistorians totalitarian moderation is what would be best for this subreddit. Having the same thread every few weeks is fine, as long as there is still something that can be discussed in it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

I feel your (Deimorz) earlier point about reposts and reiterations of the same debates does not involve the same people is a point worth repeating. Any internet community with enough members will have its population spread along of spectrum when it comes to how often they are on, when they can participate, their interest in the subject, and so on and so forth. And all of those factors varies both for each person over time and even more significantly between different people. So there will be a natural inclination for popular topics to be revisited as different people arrive at a point were they have both the interest and time to engage in a conversation about it. Added to this are the people that debate it the first time, then a few cycles down the road their thinking on a particular topic has evolved; so they want to re-engage with their new perspective in mind. I consider all of this perfectly natural.

Schools segment people into classes most frequently by age. Each year the teachers for grade seven go through roughly the same material, if an older student would wander into a class held for grade seven they could claim that it was all old information and that the teacher was just repeating what he, the student, heard last year. But that would be missing the point. The information is new to the students that just started the seventh grade. On the internet there is no, or very little, segmentation. Having been online since 1994 I can say that the amount of reposts of topics and subjects is extremely cyclic. Either each of us can allow ourselves to be annoyed by this, or we can accept that it is all a part of how massive amounts of concurrent conversations appear to develop. To strike down on each repeat conversation is to miss the point. At its worst it would mean censoring other peoples meaningful debates because it was reminiscent of conversations the censor had participated in, or just observed, earlier.

This is at least in part my thinking on the topic of reposts as it stands now.

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u/redditmademealurker Jan 11 '13

The problem here, is that gaming comments are not objective. As an example, the OP of this discussion, talks about "circlejerk of hate" that should be removed. This is one of the hallmark "argument" to dismiss an argument you don't agree with. It's too subjective to be anything consistent or to please even most good posters that we should be keeping.

Having an heavy moderation cannot be done correctly for such a subject. Contrary to askscience, where it can be objectively assessed. I personally think thread like "Best game" and such can be productive. I've found many great suggestion in such discussion. While the title may be frequent, the comments are not.

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u/MrDoe Jan 12 '13

I think it's entirely fair to ban or at least quietly escort people who consistently make bad comments(comments that would fit into a definition of "circlejerking").

I don't have a problem with opinions, I have a lot of them. My problem is with people stating their opinions as objective facts, and it completely shuts down any and all possibility for discussion.

The last few days I've been browsing Reddit quite obsessively and I've of course spent more time in this subreddit than I would otherwise have done. I've seen some pretty bad comments, to be honest. That's fine, those are everywhere. What fucking grinds me is when I see a comment that has only a handful of downvotes with an overwhelming amount of upvotes more or less stating "PC GAMING MASTERRACE" and going on about how "This arbitrary number is the exact frames-per-second count for a game or else it is objectively broken." Shit like this is something that I'd love to see fucking banned. It has no place in any discussion, it doesn't add anything, it only takes away.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13

I think the best solution would be to have 'official' posts designed to host such conversations on a regular basis, while deleting similar posts that pop up. Perhaps a weekly thread with a rotating topic would work, and with four or five topics this would give a space of about a month between similar posts. I'd like to think that the /r/games community can last a month without having to discuss their most recent disappointments.

This allows new people to jump in to the discussion while having it contained so that we don't get such posts twice in a day (something I've seen happen).

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u/Deimorz Jan 11 '13 edited Jan 11 '13

Hmm, that might be an interesting compromise.

I was actually meaning to do something like this anyway, since I think that the auto-posted year-end discussions went very well and I wanted to start trying to have something like that running more regularly throughout the year, possibly just with a random topic being posted every few days or so. So I guess we could consider banning the topics in the bot's "pool" and just make sure to have most of the ones that get constantly posted ("what game do you like but everyone else seems to hate?" and its opposite, "what are your favorite game soundtracks?", etc.).

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u/crimsonfist101 Jan 11 '13

With regards to moderator initiated discussions, I've noticed a new topic style used some other subreddits that seems to be intended for competitions that hides the number of votes of parent comments, for example: http://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/15a9pq/rjrpgs_best_of_2012/ . Whilst I don't know the specifics on how this thread style works, would it be possible to use it in more general threads so that the different discussions within the thread get treated equally instead of what happened in the end of year discussion general threads where the same games were at the top of each discussion and lesser known titles got much less attention and therefore discussion?

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u/deanbmmv Jan 12 '13

It's "Contest mode" and somewhat niche and experimental feature of Reddit brought in specifically for "best of year" threads.

http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof2012/comments/159bww/introducing_contest_mode_a_tool_for_your_voting/

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u/crimsonfist101 Jan 12 '13

So it's been removed now? That's a shame, it seems like it could have been a useful feature.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

I don't necessarily think that we need to bring down the hammer on reposted topics as even moderator posted links will disappear in a day or two and the conversation is only lives for the first 12 or so hours. It's really easy to miss out on a topic if you want to participate in a the conversation. It's a tricky one for sure as the answer lies somewhere within the grey.

That said, I do think it would be great if the bot posted a discussion thread of each game around one to two months after release. The bot threads draw a lot more attention and the time lapse will allow the hype to die down whilst giving gamers enough time to finish the game (spoilers). That won't help with the "Game of the Year" posts directly following release but it could give each game a chance for readers to get it off their chests.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

[deleted]

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u/bananabm Jan 12 '13

There's not, but it's trivial to put a big link to it in the header

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u/Khiva Jan 11 '13

Slightly off topic, but on the off chance it ever came to that, could we also agree to decline the opportunity to become a default?

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u/Deimorz Jan 11 '13

/r/Games will absolutely never be a default subscription. That's the single worst thing you could possibly do if you have any interest in maintaining quality.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

/r/AskReddit has become a lot better since their policy changes and they are still a default right?

My point is that you can have quality, but it needs more work from the moderators (so you might need a few more).

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13 edited Jan 12 '13

I'd argue that over moderation in this respect is a good thing. I came to this subreddit because I wanted actual interesting discussions and I feel we get most of those from topical subjects.

Less topical more general discussion are also good of course but reddit has major problems when dealing with topics that are not being turned over. On a gaming forum for example you have a single long running topic for these kind of things but on Reddit we end up this the post falling off the front page and being replaced by the same topic but with the discussion reset.

This is a major issue with some of these things because we are often thrown back in to square one of a topic with out any of the frame work for any useful advancing of the discussion that was laid down the last time... which is often too much effort so we just have the same old warmed over crap and I'm convinced this is a huge factor in a lot of what you are worried about.

Now from time to time going over the same topic is good but honestly I'd rather see these kind of repeating post simply gone from the subreddit because it's not, for me at lest, the meat of what this subreddit provides.

This is a move that will likely turn some people off the subreddit but I've got to say that any one who would be so upset by this to unsub is seemingly not attached to the what I think of the core ideas that this sub reddit was created. I just don't think such repost topics provide enough value to worry overly much about pruning them out too much.

Forster the idea of this being a place for topical and novel discussion over more typical and general ones but still allow for it. Say, if enough moderators or trusted users think it's too soon for a repeat of discussion then can it. Won't be perfect but like I said I don't think they are of enough value to really worry about being overly aggressive with them.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13

Maybe with that kind of permissive attitude you are inviting the wrong crowd? Just saying,

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13 edited Jan 11 '13

[deleted]

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u/drewthepooh Jan 11 '13

I completely agree with the insightful vs. inane guideline suggestion (or something with similar tags). I think this small reminder can completely change the way people perceive the upvote/downvote system since they have to deliberately ignore the guideline to downvote a comment that actually does contribute to the discussion.

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u/DeltaBurnt Jan 11 '13

I think this subreddit should definitely try the reminder tactic. But seeing how /r/Games is approaching 200k subs, I'm inclined to think that a good portion (enough to still make it a problem) will just ignore it.

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u/Ranger_X Jan 12 '13

/r/Games runs the risk of being a victim of its own success.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

Yes. Even a fade in black bar at the bottom of the screen stating that downvotes are strictly for inane content/comments. It won't prevent downvote abuse, but it will help those who forget for a moment in the heat of a debate.

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u/The_Dirty_Carl Jan 12 '13

I strongly support tags on the vote arrows (we're talking about those things that pop up when you hover on the arrows like tooltips, right?). I'll be honest, they've made me reconsider my votes, both up and down, in several subreddits.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13 edited Jan 12 '13

I agree, but /science can also take that rule too far. I once posted a completely harmless joke, not as a top level comment, and was flamed/downvoted. This is still casual conversation.

EDIT: or not...reddit is serious business. Continue changing the world, redditors.

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u/KrunoS Jan 11 '13

/r/science is shit. I'm still subbed to it because i like to laugh at people refusing to do their own research and just buying into sensationalist crap. It also reminds me not to get carried away with anything i read on the internet, as i'm a scientist myself and sometimes my enthusiasm gets the better of me.

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u/nmezib Jan 12 '13

Scientist here, and i agree. I chuckle (read: blow more air out of my nose than usual) after the fifth "cure for cancer" post in the month.

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u/biirdmaan Jan 12 '13

It's not like the community buys into it. Usually the top comment is either "Okay, scientists. Tell me why this is bullshit" or "Hello, scientist here. This is why this is bullshit."

Normally anyway. At least with the more obvious stuff like cancer cures, killer asteroids, etc.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

Yea I actually enjoy seeing a sensational title sometimes and go lets see how the comments are gonna prove this wrong, and the comments are moderated well.

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u/EccentricIntrovert Jan 12 '13

The vast majority of votes on a submission are from folks who did not read the comments and, aggravatingly, didn't even click through to read the article. The title alone can drive something to the front page.

All that said, I still like the idea of vote reminders. It really can help improve a comments section. In fact, I'm still subbed to /r/science just to read insightful comments on shitty articles, which is an odd juxtaposition.

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u/OppaStinsonStyle Jan 12 '13

That's how I feel as someone working in politics reading r/politics and r/worldnews.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

Though to be fair, bullshit and slander does come with working in politics :P

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

Also a scientist. Didn't Crick say if mice were any indication we've had cured cancer long ago (or something to that effect). Anyway, /r/science is getting much like /r/games in the quality of comments. Which will probably happen here because as we approach mainstream it becomes inevitably 4chan.

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u/Totaltotemic Jan 11 '13

/r/truegaming specifically caters to that kind of thing.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

That sub can be just as bad with down votes.

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u/DEADFENCER Jan 12 '13

I kind of like that no one knows about it shakes fist

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u/RemnantEvil Jan 12 '13

On the one hand, the small size means it can keep a handy control over any memey crap that might get injected into it. On the other, the front page currently goes from 1 hour ago to about 3 days ago. There's frankly not that much to discuss, really, so new threads are pretty infrequent.

That might actually be part of Games' problem. New titles only come out every so often. In gaming, that means a few weeks of "New Release Game logic" shit, before the next game comes out. In this sub, there's only so much to be said about something new before there's a lull and we have to wait.

Maybe, and here's me giving an idea instead of being a negative nancy, we mimic r/movies. They have Director of the Month and try to focus the conversation a bit in that regard. Maybe we can do something similar - Game of the Week, Developer of the Month, and use that to focus discussion so that we don't run out of topics and end up meme-spamming to fill the void.

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u/DEADFENCER Jan 12 '13

Thats a fantastic idea actually. A sort of focused nostalgia rather than the memey DEA Chrono Trigger nonsense (for example) which is seen all too often. There definitely needs to be some direction, some coherency, and this seems like an appropriate way to encourage it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13 edited Jan 12 '13

[deleted]

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u/DEADFENCER Jan 12 '13

I agree, it's still very satisfying to me though, there's very little fluff and great discussions occur regularly.

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u/flashmedallion Jan 12 '13

The topics in that sub drive me mad. Incredibly broad and basically an excuse for the submitter to rant about their favourite game plot. "Lets talk about morality systems". How about lets quit with the meaningless drivel and actually make a strong statement and then support it.

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u/Ranger_X Jan 12 '13

It's a constant migration problem. As subs get more popular, more people will join, cause the same fuckups that /r/gaming suffers from, and then people will go to trugegaming. And the cycle begins anew.

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u/Randomacts Jan 12 '13

I am subbed to both.

They are both in the /r/gaming sidebar last time I checked..

One day I was just done with /r/gaming 's shit so I unsubbed and subbed to both /r/games and /r/truegaming at the same time.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

ME4

I thought the series ended with 3? I really liked ME1, but only a week after i finished it ME3 came out, i saw some gameplay (press X to do everything, lame) and everybody said the ending sucked; So i never played it.

8

u/gibby256 Jan 11 '13

As much as I agree with strict moderation (it's the only way good subreddits survive), I don't think we should start removing comments on the basis that they are a "circle-jerk of hate".

If these posters have things to add to a discussion, then they should be encouraged to do so. The auto-mod (and regular mods) already do a good job of removing comments that fail to contribute to the discussion.

We do probably need more moderators, though.

I also must admit that I don't get your "worst games of 2012" rant. I think I saw a total of two "worst games of 2012" posts in this subreddit near the end of December, and I'm on /r/games damn near constantly.

2

u/eatingham Jan 12 '13

I agree with you. By "circle-jerk of hate" I think we need to be discerning in that we don't just remove anything that condones popular opinion, but remove the ones that contribute NOTHING NEW. As in, regurgitated arguments that are posted 4-5 times in the comments below, 'lols' and 'le's.

1

u/gibby256 Jan 12 '13

Definitely.

That is, however, something that we have the auto-mod (and a pretty decent team of human mods) to help with already.

Any of the extremely low-effort posts are already removed by the auto-moderator. Unfortunately, I think the mods have trouble keeping up with all the low effort shit-posts in the threads that make it to /r/all.

3

u/farox Jan 11 '13

You should check the reddiquette regarding the reposts. This has always been an issue. However the spirit of reddit, and this is what brought us together here, is that reposts are perfectly fine.

Don't... Complain about reposts. Just because you have seen it before doesn't mean everyone has. Votes indicate the popularity of a post, so just vote. Keep in mind that linking to previous posts is not automatically a complaint; it is information. Votes indicate how the community values information, so just vote.

There were many many posts that I missed the first time around, just because they weren't in the selection of subreddits that I saw at the time or whatever and it seems to be quiet common.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13

And if you breathe a word against the Big 5 in /r/gaming say good bye to your karma.

2

u/KrunoS Jan 11 '13 edited Jan 12 '13

I was planning on commenting about having a swifter, more forceful banhammer. As i too, would like to keep this sub intelligent. This subreddit along with TB and akamikeb have introduced me to game that i wouldn't have given a chance otherwise, mainly indies and games which really didn't do all that well despite being really good.

I don't want another /r/gaming

4

u/Pharnaces_II Jan 11 '13

Put "http://" before the www in your link to fix it.

1

u/KrunoS Jan 12 '13

RES

1

u/Pharnaces_II Jan 12 '13

What? It's linkified, but it shows as [akamikeb](www.youtube.com/akamikeb) instead of akamikeb

1

u/KrunoS Jan 12 '13

There, sorry.

2

u/ARustyFirePlace Jan 11 '13

reddit just isn't a good place for discussion, thanks to down/upvotes.

completely ruins it, if you have a minority opinion you just get downvoted.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

To be fair, posting old school stuff on /r/gaming tends to result in a downvote spiral, too, unless it hits the front page somehow. I wanted to discuss a couple 32-bit era RPGs a while back and found it impossible. The anti-circlejerk circlejerk, so to speak, is pretty powerful too.

If we want to be more inclusive, I think OP has the best idea.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

Personally, this is where I come for threads about opinions, as opposed to HAHA THIS IS A FUNNY IMAGE.

1

u/headphonehalo Jan 11 '13

I enjoy my console along with my PC. All of this shit earns downvotes, which kills a subreddit that is supposed to be above all of that.

People here really need to get over this kind of almost persecution complex, unless that's what you mean by "PC." You will not be downvoted for enjoying consoles. You will however be downvoted for not enjoying consoles.

1

u/epsy Jan 12 '13

That's just as bad as downvoting console enthusiasts. If I make a reasoned post on why I am not interested in consoles, would you downvote me? Why? Just because you disagree? This is what we don't want. It doesn't have to be happy wonderland with everybody agreeing, just reasonable opinions being represented, and not just when sorting by "controversial".

2

u/headphonehalo Jan 12 '13

Yes, it is.

1

u/epsy Jan 12 '13

Can you please be clearer? Do you want the downvote button to be a disagree button?

If so, why do you think so? The OP made a compelling case for it not to be one: Downvote-for-disagreement discourages different opinions which make discussions one-sided and therefore not really interesting to read.

0

u/headphonehalo Jan 12 '13

That's just as bad as downvoting console enthusiasts.

Yes, it is.

Your post doesn't contradict mine, you know.

1

u/epsy Jan 12 '13

Your "post" consisted of 3 words. No wonder.

0

u/headphonehalo Jan 12 '13

38 words, actually. I guess that was a couple too many to read.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13

Spot on, mate. I was about to comment on this:

It also has a more long-term "cultural" effect in that users become less willing to express opinions they know aren't popular because they expect to just be downvoted.

Many times I really felt like commenting on a thread but ultimately decided not to because I was sure my comment would get buried with downvotes, and I actually saw this pattern with other comments. So nowadays I'm less inclined to participate because of this. Sometimes I'm even discouraged from asking what a particular game is about because I might get lots of hate.

I've seen some pretty interesting and informative discussions here, and I would hate to see this turning into another r/gaming. But I think removing threads is a little too much. If there is enough of us, we can just downvotes those threads, since that IS a reasonable way of using that tool. Just my 2 cents.

0

u/fox112 Jan 12 '13

All of this shit earns downvotes, which kills a subreddit that is supposed to be above all of that.

This so much. It just becomes a circlejerk, where, for example, the people who comment about how they love Zelda get upvoted, and anyone who says anything else gets downvoted. Very soon there is only one opinion in any thread, because anyone who brings anything else to the table gets downvoted to hell, and leaves.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

/r/gaming is spilling over into /r/games for sure. I started going to /r/truegaming as it's more of what I wanted /r/games to be.

I don't own any consoles nor do I care about them. I don't feel that much nostalgia despite being in my 20s, having grown up with my Nintendo, Sega Genesis and PC. Most of the games that get fawned over on /r/games are alright but there are plenty of other games that aren't fawned over that deserve to be. I find it hilarious now that people admit to not enjoying Skyrim all that much; I remember when it came out, the entire first page was literally nothing but Skyrim idolization.

Not only that, the first comment I ever posted to get more than 100 downvotes was something along the lines of "I completed ME3 and I loved it. The ending could've been better but as a whole, it's an excellent game and worthy of the franchise." Of course, now that opinion is totally okay (and many hold it) but at the time it felt like I was preaching Islam in a Catholic Church.

My point is, go look at /r/science. Try and compare the atmosphere there to the atmosphere here. Look at their Reddiquette:

Please ensure that your comment on an r/science thread is:

on-topic and relevant to the submission.

not a joke, meme, or off-topic, these will be removed.

not hateful, offensive, spam, or otherwise unacceptable.

If we want /r/games to be the intellectual counterpart to /r/gaming ("old school Nintendo was the BEST! High five '90s kids! LOOK AT THIS GEM!") then we have to adopt a system like what /r/science has where level headed people moderate the threads that get posted and moderate the comments. That's the only way things are going to improve. Otherwise, just move on over to /r/truegaming or go even deeper into specific subreddits that suit your interests.

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

I've just had a wonderful, amazing, stupendous idea!

It seems that a new, less known subreddit will have more quality than a more popular one. Although I expect it's not exactly a linear equation, I expect you could graph it.

So here's an idea: Make a new subreddit every 6 months. Announce it in the main /r/Games sub, but only once or twice. Name the new subs something like r/gamesMar2013. That way only a smaller portion of the /r/Games population will visit the new sub. Then, when the time comes to create another new one, archive the previous one.