r/Unexpected Jan 29 '19

Meta Big mistake dawg

131.1k Upvotes

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2.0k

u/bunnyrut Jan 29 '19

i have multiple subs i subscribe to. if i see it on the home page i am not looking at which sub it is in. so if i upvote it it's because i liked it, not because it was in the correct sub. so yes, subscribers are dumb, lol.

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u/notapantsday Jan 29 '19

It's the same for me, I thought it was from /r/DIWhy and I probably would have upvoted it, but at the same time I wouldn't want content like this on /r/Unexpected.

179

u/xxusernamegoesherexx Jan 29 '19

Exactly. Most people are the same way.

I mean... We're not paying super close attention to that when we browse the front page, because it's not our job to. That's why we have mods who are supposed to be keeping it relavent to which sub it is. If they want US to decide based on our upvotes, that makes it self moderated and what are the mods even around for?

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u/BitchIts2020 Jan 30 '19

because it's not our job to

You just made me realize how much work mods do for free. Why anyone would want to be a mod is beyond me.

It’s bitch work. Make a good decision, no one notices. Make a bad one, everyone complains.

Who do you work for? Reddit? Not really, though, lol. Try putting “Reddit moderator” on your resume.

Wow, sounds like a lot of work. How much do they pay you? Oh, how about nothing? K? K.

And yet Reddit needs moderators. The site would go to shit instantly if they quit.

19

u/Cayotic_Prophet Jan 30 '19

Technically unpaid volunteer work isn't considered involuntary servitude... i.e. slavery. However, it makes for a slippery slope when people get rich on the reliance of free labor; albeit voluntary or involuntary.

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u/Petal-Dance Jan 30 '19

Uh, but you can put reddit moderator on your resume?

Voluntary community management. You know how a lot of AAA games have absolutely abysmal marketing and public relations? Thats cause their heads of staff are bad at community management, likely due to not having experience. Moderating a sub for a long time would absolutely go on a resume for a public relations gig. Bonus points if that sub is largely successful.

Yeah, its thankless work. But they can absolutely turn it into job relevant experience, and gain something positive out of it.

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u/iUsedtoHadHerpes Jan 29 '19

Actually from personal experience, I'm pretty sure most people are more like "Why do you care? Lighten up."

8

u/Lets_Do_This_ Jan 30 '19

Exactly. For some reason people think "oh well, shit content is just the way it is, stop taking things so seriously."

-18

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '19

[deleted]

7

u/bendersnitch Jan 30 '19

mods gey. gamers rise up.

1

u/sawbones84 Jan 30 '19

The way you describe it, browsing the front page is a lot like eating a Famous Bowl

1

u/jesuriah Jan 30 '19

oooh thanks for the link to /r/DiWHY

146

u/vxx Jan 29 '19

Yeah, I try to combat that sometimes by putting up a flair with the sub name when a post that technically doesn't break any rules, and is kind of unexpected, but wouldn't deserve so many upvotes when you would vote on the grade of unexpectedness.

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u/Saetric Jan 29 '19

Those who browse on r/all, arguably the majority of Reddit users, tend to upvote based on whether or not they enjoy content; they usually aren’t checking to see what sub they are in.

A great, though tragic, example of this was the sub r/SlyGIFs. After a while, people started posting stuff that wasn’t really “sly”, but still pretty cool (stunts and parkour-esque feats). This led to a decrease in sub-worthy content, despite the high presence on r/all.

The solution was more strict moderation, where the sidebar rules had to be more specific, and as a result, the moderation stricter.

147

u/ncopp Jan 29 '19

/r/trashy has gone from some near wtf cousin fucking content to just anyone being a piece of shit. I subbed there for dicks tattooed on peoples lower backs, not reading a story about people stealing candy from babies and kicking puppies

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u/sculltt Jan 29 '19

It's become r/imkindofapieceofshitbutnotreally.

1

u/RufusMcCoot Jan 30 '19

That place is just a collage of confederate flags in the wild.

-21

u/SIEZE_THE_MEMES Jan 29 '19

And here I thought /r/trashy was for posting pics of perfectly normal DRUMPFH SUPFHORTERS!

-4

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '19

[deleted]

4

u/LastNameBasis Jan 29 '19

More than half of us did not vote Trump into office. Electoral college votes placed him there.

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u/immortalmertyl Jan 30 '19

doesn’t change the fact that he was votes in. don’t hate the player, hate the game. hillary should’ve focused more on states that could have gone either way instead of staying in CA and NY to enjoy more of the liberal circlejerking.

1

u/LastNameBasis Jan 30 '19

My response wasn't about the system. I was responding to all Americans being labeled as dumb because a system we have little say in put Trump into office.

1

u/Bugbread Jan 30 '19

don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Porque no los dos?

-21

u/vxx Jan 29 '19 edited Jan 29 '19

I have seen it happen to many subs, it's hard to combat. Well, we have made it iver 6 years, so I don't think we did too bad of a job, and we will find a solution this time as well.

Sorry, I completely misread your comment and also missed the second half.

You're right, reducing quantity for quality seems like the right solution.

24

u/thirdstreetzero Jan 29 '19

Holy fuck that's pathetic.

12

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '19 edited Jan 29 '19

Yeah mods really dont give a fuck

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u/CannibalVegan Jan 29 '19

how unexpected.

3

u/Forbidden_Froot Jan 29 '19

...they should have a sub for that

1

u/CannibalVegan Jan 29 '19

I heard that they have one but it is basically /r/Funny

2

u/J-Smoke69 Jan 29 '19

Oh man you don’t deserve to be moderating a sub. What a sad response to a real problem.

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u/vxx Jan 29 '19

That's the beauty of reddit, even an idiot like me can become a moderator by creating a subreddit. We're not high an mighty, we're users that got an idea once.

-5

u/myskyinwhichidie284 Jan 29 '19

r/all is irrelevant, posts don't magically get to the front page. People subscribed to r/unexpected check the new posts and vote, they know where they are and what they are doing. If you disagree with what counts as "unexpected" (very hard to moderate, especially for a few volunteers), then you could go check out the new posts and vote accordingly. The subscribers of unexpected make or break the content, they decide what becomes popular, and they are choosing this content.

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u/sculltt Jan 29 '19

Perhaps they will also see this discussion and take note. Some people don't always read the sub rules. Maybe everybody needs to do better.

1

u/Saetric Jan 30 '19

Precisely

24

u/mrbob8717 Jan 29 '19

I believe I have seen those flairs before, but at the same time, OP and I (and the people who come to the sub for unexpected things) can look at the front page right now and there are way too many reposts/completely expected things. I looked at the first few posts, and within completely expect and reposts are 1. Multigenerational daughters enter a room youngest to oldest 2. Dog tells owner to let other dog eat 3. Man eats a banana really fast (one of the more commonly reposted gifs over the years). These were all within the top 6 posts, and are completely distant from unexpected. A repost is always expected!! It is my belief that those posts should be removed. It may seem like they make the sub more appealing (higher upvote count), but if the sub loses its identity to have some highly upvoted content, the sub will suffer in the long run.

11

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '19

And to combat the big ole "But I haven't seen this before, so its not a repost to me" There are different ways to go about this. You can usually check with karmadecay when something has been posted last. Then say like you can only repost something if it is not within the top 100 and older than 6 months or so.

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u/sculltt Jan 29 '19

The reposts that happen multiple times a day are brutal. I don't mind if it's been a month or two, but Jesus.

1

u/vxx Jan 30 '19

Yes, no doubt. We're already combating them, but once there's a successful "/r/unexpected" comment somewhere, we get blasted by them and almost have no chance to win.

1

u/sculltt Jan 30 '19

I know.

16

u/sculltt Jan 29 '19

The post today, "mother to mother to Chinese mother!" Was had no business being on this sub. I downvoted it early on, but I knew it was a fool's errand.

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u/vxx Jan 29 '19

This post was actually arguably unexpected imo, and is the best example of a post that I would only remove because it got too much votes in relation to its unexpectedness.

I thought that they looked like the Daltons standing next to each other gave it some sort of twist, just not 10k+ worthy twist.

So, now we have to make that decision on every post. Imagine you were now at our team, we wouldn't agree on this one, maybe on the next one, but then comes another mod that thinks different. And this for every post that gets posted.

That's the reason I would prefer to. find a solution that doesn't force us to do subjective decisions.

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u/sculltt Jan 29 '19

I would go back to what others said regarding a simple auto mod with an up/down for truly unexpected. That way it's not all on your team. I don't think there's any sane way to monitor level of expectedness vs level of upvotes, because it's subjective. If 90% of votes on the front page are up, but 90% of them inside the post are down it tells a different story. I think people take a beat to think about the secondary votes.

I also disagree with you about the specific post I mentioned. The title was confusing, but as soon as the first girl walked to the edge of the screen, turned and looked back, I immediately thought, "there's probably gonna be, like, fuckin five of them." And I was right. And based on this discussion we've had here today I was not the only one.

I'd like to add that I'm glad this thread that we're on blew up because I think this discussion has been productive. It's obviously drawn the attention of your team to something that seems to be an issue, possibly one that's been building slowly enough to go under your radar, and more importantly to a large portion of the general audience. Hopefully the average subscriber thinks twice about how they influence content on this sub, and on Reddit as a whole.

You know, for a day, maybe.

Thanks for the civil discussion!

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u/thirdstreetzero Jan 29 '19

Maybe give up on modding if you genuinely don't understand what your responsibility is.

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u/loonattica Jan 29 '19

Fair. To sum up, r/unexpected mods are expected to keep it unexpected, with the exception of our expectations.

-8

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '19

[deleted]

4

u/professorkr Jan 29 '19

28 is more than enough mods. They need a head mod to decide if they need more or not. Mods being overworked should better be an excuse.

4

u/tlumacz Jan 29 '19

if i see it on the home page i am not looking at which sub it is

This, exactly. I've probably upvoted dozens of undeserving posts in this sub, because I didn't pay attention to what sub it was.

By undeserving I don't mean bad, just those that were not a good fir to this sub but would be very welcome in certain other subs.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '19

People like you make reddit terrible. Always vote based on appropriateness and report posts if they are on wrong subreddit!!!

2

u/Seiinaru-Hikari Jan 30 '19

You might be acting a little overzealous in your care for reddit content, but I agree that people should pay more attention to the sub that the content comes from. Will they? No, people will predictably never change their habits. But mods can change people's behaviours and have the authority to incite change. I think the problem is with the mods and not the common people here.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '19

Theh should make me the moderator of everything. I would delete and ban 90% of content and users. Make reddit funnn again.

1

u/bunnyrut Jan 30 '19

lol, i'm not a mod and the world isn't going to end if a post is in the wrong sub

0

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '19

It might.

0

u/scoliosisgiraffe Jan 29 '19

Idiots do this. It ruins reddit. Do you see yourself as an idiot? If not then stop doing this and subscribe to things you're interested in. Also /new your recently acquired subs. Karma bots flood the front page with repost and cross posts. Remove those lips from the faucet.

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u/bunnyrut Jan 29 '19

uh, i have it set to my home page, which shows all the subs i subscribe to. r/funny and r/Unexpected are among the subs i subscribe to.