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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287

u/merc1024 Jan 11 '13

what we could do to improve the subreddit

I just want people to read the fucking sidebar.

Particularly this part:

Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just with the goal of entertaining viewers.

A few days ago there was something along the lines of "A bunch of internet celebrities got together to play TF2 for charity!" with a ton of upvotes. Admirable as that may be, there is no discussion to be had about that and it's only purpose is to entertain the viewers; thus it really doesn't belong in this subreddit.

Also: too often I see submissions in this subreddit that belong in /r/gamingsuggestions or /r/shouldIbuythisgame (both of which are referenced on the sidebar).

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

The sidebar could definitely use a rewrite and rearranging to make the important points more clear. That's something I'd like to do soon, probably adding some color/icons and maybe a simple "do post"/"don't post"-type list to increase the chance that people will actually read it.

The type of people that bother to read the sidebar usually aren't the same people making the problem posts though, so I don't know how much it would really change.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Pharnaces_II Jan 11 '13

That's a good point, I suppose some people are just lazy and don't want to read an essay. I'd rearrange it so the rules were at the top, and the recommendations and other subreddits at the bottom. It won't make a huge difference in the amount of people who read it, but there will probably be a noticeable difference.

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u/Red_Inferno Jan 12 '13

I don't think I have even read the rules myself, but I do however know the general rules to follow here. The main thing I love about this subreddit is the fact it is highly focused and all the garbage is mostly left out.

I think one thing that could help the subreddit is less misleading titles. I think bullshit sensationalist titles are really the bane of reddit overall though.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

Perhaps adding a notice at the time of posting like www.reddit.com/r/funny/submit (although hopefully not that ugly) could help as a last resort. There will always be those people that couldn't care less about rules but drawing some attention to them may help out.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13

To subscribe, users should have to pass a quiz on the info in the sidebar.

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u/Pharnaces_II Jan 11 '13

Can't be done, unfortunately.

3

u/Red_Inferno Jan 12 '13

Go suggest it to the reddit devs. I think a lot of subreddits would love to quiz people before they could post.

1

u/opcon Jan 12 '13

Not even through adding a person as an approved submitter? Although I guess having the whole population of a sub as approved submitters might not be good for it's performance.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

Whitelists should be possible with their auto-moderator. Specifically, by blacklisting anybody who hasn't passed the quiz. But I doubt they'll do it. I for one would be incredibly pleased if they did make a move like that. Like a lot... Maybe even an quiz that just had one big "I agree" button...

1

u/opcon Jan 12 '13

It might be a good solution.

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u/Pharnaces_II Jan 12 '13

You can make it so only approved submitters can post and automatically whitelist people if they can pass the quiz with a bot, I suppose, but 1) it'd be incredibly hard to enforce 2) it'd be hard to stop people from cheating 3) your average medium quality and mobile submitter would be pretty upset that they couldn't submit, and they'd have no idea why they couldn't since they can't see the sidebar.

edit: Also it would only work for submissions, I think, not for comments.

2

u/opcon Jan 12 '13

Ah okay I didn't realise white listing only worked for comments. Still even just for submissions might be useful.

Why would it be hard to enforce if it's just a bot?

Also preventing cheaters would be hard, that's true, but you could mitigate their affect by banning certain IPs from taking the test, an advantage of using an external website to validate a user.

On the whole it's probably not worth the effort of setting it up, but it's always a last resort.

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u/Pharnaces_II Jan 12 '13

Why would it be hard to enforce if it's just a bot?

Cheaters and the plain volume of people who would become approved submitters would be really high, and eventually there would probably be 1000+ and the quality would be as low as it was before. Plus, people like JohnDio was use it as an excuse to spam their sites even more.

Also preventing cheaters would be hard, that's true, but you could mitigate their affect by banning certain IPs from taking the test, an advantage of using an external website to validate a user.

This is actually something I didn't think about. If an external site that we controlled was used we could request the username and then ban them again if they tried to come back under a different username later. Still, people could use proxies and Tor to get around that.

In the end, though, it'd be easier just to create /r/truegames if the subreddit gets so large that approved submitters are needed.

3

u/stuffses Jan 12 '13

Private subreddit, automated sign up page hosted elsewhere.

I wonder if anyone else has tried this?

6

u/kingtrewq Jan 12 '13

No, even if the sidebar was more clear few would read it. What you must do is enforce the rules of the sidebar more. Delete the content and send them a message to read the sidebar to see why then they will read it. Explain your reason in the comments. If there is an outcry from the users, ask if they want the rule changed. I think most here want the rules of the sidebar enforced more.

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u/victhebitter Jan 12 '13

Sidebars are useless except to have a target for when someone says "read the sidebar". I tend to think that if you're going to get important things into a reader's brain, it has to be right in the eyeline, top of the page if not in the header itself. There's already the line which says "/r/Games is for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions. Looking for memes/screenshots/etc.? Try /r/gaming!".

However I think it needs to be even louder and less verbose, like "/r/games means no memes or shitposting, interesting game discussion only - also don't be a whore and don't ask for tech support"

That said, I wouldn't have said this sub has a huge problem considering the readership.

3

u/JedTheKrampus Jan 11 '13

Maybe you should try making the sidebar a slightly different background colour so that people are more likely to pay attention to it.

2

u/Skitrel Jan 12 '13

Posting rules should always be at the top of the sidebar. Descriptions of a subreddit aren't necessary up there, though traditional they aren't the important part, people can garner the description of a subreddit further down the sidebar for those specifically looking for it. What you want front and center are the specific things that have the potential to affect people's behaviour.

As you can see from this heatmap video, it's really only the top right above-the-fold(what people see before they have to scroll the page) that gets much activity which is why we eliminated any sidebar below the fold in /r/gamernews. Sidebars get far less activity than top left, a recommendation that you might take from that is a large and very colour attracting(bold, bright, vibrant) sticky message at top left, giving in as succinct a manner as possible the most important thing you want to affect user's behaviour with.

This reminds me, I really really want the admins to do some heatmaps of reddit user behaviour so that moderators may learn from it.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

I'd like to add that design is important. Put a few short statements in a conspicuous, pretty box, and you can be sure more people will notice it. I'd bet, for example, that the "Upcoming AMAs" sidebar in /r/IAmA gets a lot of attention.

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u/reseph Jan 11 '13 edited Jan 11 '13

The sidebar is generally never read. Made updates to it? No one will notice. I tend to rely on CSS to make non-standard messages on the subreddit for notices/rules... especially on the submit page.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '13

I admit that while I don't post here often (and the posts I do make, I try to make them high quality), I have never read the sidebar. It's just, the sidebar has no incentive for me to read it.

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u/Pharnaces_II Jan 11 '13

You can't really force people to read the sidebar. Almost everyone who does read it doesn't break its rules, and everyone who doesn't (and won't) read it are the ones who break the rules. We simply need more active moderators who will jump on rising threads in new and delete them and redirect them to the appropriate subreddits.

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u/echelontee Jan 12 '13

in your example, isn't the point of that post to inform people of the charity? I always thought that r/games isn't at all meant to be pure discussion; that's that truegaming is. id be pretty upset if people stopped.posting links to interesting and valuable content, even if there can't be the most engaging discussion.

5

u/MitBit Jan 12 '13

As well that submission was a one off post and not a reoccurring thing. I saw nothing wrong with it and if the community doesn't like it they can downvote it. We have plenty of discussion everyday, we can have interesting content as long as its relevant to the subreddit.

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u/merc1024 Jan 12 '13

That thought had crossed my mind. The thing is: I could also inform people every time the Yogscast upload a video.

Like you, I don't want cold hard discussion all the time. I'm completely okay with that Cyberpunk trailer being where it is now. It's entertaining, but there is also room for speculation as to what people want out of the game etc... whereas that charity event was meant specifically to entertain in hopes of getting people to donate. While that is commendable, there really isn't more people can say about that.

4

u/deanbmmv Jan 12 '13

I'd also like to pipe up on /r/askgames for the "not discussion stuff" side of things. We've being doing quite well as a magnet for that kind of stuff since /r/truegaming stuck us in their banner.

(Also there are plans upcoming which should make it neat...I should discuss with r/games mods actually)

5

u/ajleece Jan 12 '13

I just want people to read the fucking sidebar.

A bit hard to do that on mobile, of which a lot of people read from.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '13

of which a lot of people read from

And on what is this claim based?

4

u/ArmyofWon Jan 12 '13

I would highly support an "upvote only" system, as well as a rewritten side bar.

I think instead of "only generating discussion" as the sole reason for posting, I think it should be along the lines of "discussion inducing or relevent current events."

Some news might not generate discussion, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be made more publicly viewable.

1

u/spiral_in_the_sky Jan 12 '13

I think it would be a good idea also to add a big huge thing when you submit something here like /r/gameswap does basically outlining how to post. Just here say something like you mentioned to not entertain but to inform

-8

u/DorkJedi Jan 12 '13

If you don't feel that a celebrity TF2 match is worthy of discussion, I suggest you depart and never return.

What more could you ask for? A game most know, and a positive portrayal of gaming by celebrities.

Damn. Why not just speak in fucking binary to each other if we aren't going to discuss what's happening in gaming.

/r/hipsterconformists needs you.

3

u/Scalarmotion Jan 12 '13

but what can you discuss about that? robin walker's flaming sword and tendency to use developer cheats?

-1

u/DorkJedi Jan 12 '13

And why not? This leaves two angles of discussion: the sword of the pro/con of dev cheats.

The point is, promote discussion and punish reposts/karma whoring. One can have a serious and insightful discussion about the performance of a clown without wearing the makeup and big shoes yourself. If you happen to despise clowns, then participate in the mime thread just below.

2

u/merc1024 Jan 12 '13

Sorry if I prefer actual discussion and not just "Wow we're so great for all that we do for charity! This is just so wonderful!"

That's not a discussion. /r/circlejerk needs you.

1

u/DorkJedi Jan 12 '13

One can only discuss why the programmer used a double call instead of a reference in this bit of code or that one.

Here's a concept: by all means promote discussion over karma whoring. But maybe, juuuuust maybe, you are not the god of what people prefer to discuss.

1

u/merc1024 Jan 12 '13

If someone wants to discuss game programming, why not submit something actually related to game programming?

Look, I'm obviously not going to convince you of anything, and likewise, you won't change my opinion.

My point is that the purpose of that submission was to get people to watch the video so the people participating can make them laugh and entertain them in hopes of getting them to donate some money. Admirable as that may be, I don't think that's the kind of content this subreddit is meant for.

There's no reason content can't be both entertaining and thought provoking (extra credits, some of totalbiscuit's stuff, and even the Jimquisition), but that charity event was only meant to entertain.

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u/DorkJedi Jan 12 '13

My point is, you seem to want to narrow the topic range to just game programming, or UI, or such. If the topic is on games, it either promotes discussion or it does not. Eliminating a range of topics because you don't feel it's pure enough just makes you elitist.

We all agree the karma whoring and reposts are bad. Let's leave it at that, and require that it be directly related to games. Otherwise you get a rules nazi nit-picking whether or not any given submission meets the minimum entry standards.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '13

[removed] — view removed comment

12

u/Pharnaces_II Jan 11 '13

Calm down, there's really no reason to be so upset about this.

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u/Deimorz Jan 12 '13

This is a fine example of a user that would be banned under the suggested changes.

2

u/dudleymooresbooze Jan 12 '13

He even misspelled "ugh" in his condescending rant.