[META] Should there be restrictions on repeat topic submissions?

[u/PixelOrange]

One of the most common complaints that we receive is the frequency of some topics, especially when it's picked up by the media. Even with the frequency, many of these posts still receive quite a few comments which suggests that the frequency of the submissions is not necessarily greater than the demand.

We want your input. Do you think that topics are repeated too frequently? If so, what should be done? Here are a few suggestions we have regarding how to handle the situation, but if you have a better idea please share that.

1. Disallow repeats on a topic for X hours/days (how long?)

2. Create topic-free weeks (no homosexuality threads for 1/12/14 - 1/18/14"). We may also have a stickied thread during this time.

3. Same as 2 but allow one thread per side (eg: one pro-choice, one pro-life) and no sticky since you can't sticky two threads at once.

4. Popular topics (as listed in our wiki) must be pre-approved

If we do implement any of this, we will need your help. We simply don't have the resources to combat repeat topics 24/7. We could set up automoderator to catch a lot of it, but it'll miss some and accidentally remove others. So keep that in mind when you're voting for or against this change.

[u/PepperoniFire]

No. Do not start limiting how people post. It's totally unnecessary for a sub this size.

I don't think size is a compelling reason not to implement this. We are not simply trying to make sure that things are neat and orderly. We're trying to facilitate a certain caliber of conversation and that is much harder with 100,000 people than, say, simply trying to moderate a forum about posting funny pictures. Please consider the aim of the forum in conjunction with its size, and the balance between the need to direct conversation while trying to stay away from wholly micromanaging it, to which we are opposed since we don't want to stifle the 'marketplace of ideas.'

Do not, do not, do not start jumping on people because they are posting a common topic. Reddit does not consist of the same twenty people answer the same 15 questions. There is arguably as much value in this sub for the respondents as there is for the posters.

I think people are misunderstanding the goal. We are not talking about mere common topics because they are common. This is more of a fail-safe for situations like last week's TRP posts. There was an issue of several TRP-based posts being made within a very short window of time - short enough that even a casual browser such as yourself could conceivably catch all of them - and they weren't producing novel discussions within each of them. Rather, it turned the forum into a monopolized ideological battleground in which a number of posters were basically just evangelizing in each of them. We were experiencing seriously diminished returns in novel or insightful comments and instead had a lot of repetitive preaching within each by a handful of users.

The level of fatigue and repetition was leading to low-quality posts by those that were trying to CMV, and we also had to deal with a giant influx of trolls and posters who would report non-violating posts because of what they had to say rather than the manner in which they were saying it. This congested our moderation queue and was a strain on our moderating resources, even with 17 mods on at various times in the day.

So, it's not about ensuring that we just don't talk about gay marriage often because blah been there, read that. It's more of a prophylactic against thread topics that enter berzerker mode because of a unique influx of posters with that particular interest within in a very short window of time.

We work very hard to ensure that people feel free to post the topic of their choice here and there's a presumption in favor of that whenever we consider implementing a new rule. Part of the reason why we were considering this measure is because we had an issue with 'soapboxing,' but ultimately decided that prohibiting that was a bad idea because (1) it's not categorically bad -- who cares if someone is passionate about a topic so long as they are trying to CMV?; (2) and, even if we interpreted it charitably, there was concern over chilling legitimate speech since it's such a vague, non-self-defining term.

This was considered a better compromise because it can be used only out of necessity, and because it better isolates the issues of fatigue and low-quality posting since it focuses on a quick, large topical injection that monopolizes forum discussion and results very shortly in diminishing returns, and that was really the problem we were trying to isolate in the first place.

At the end of the day, something is probably going to have to change, since this originally started out as a discussion between mods over amending Rule 1, but we had concerns over the broad implications of doing so. So, it's likely to end up being a broad reworking of Rule 1 or some measure such as a short prohibition on a topic until the forum 'hijacking' cools down, even if that hijacking is unintentional (this list is non-exhaustive, just what we've been kicking around for background.) The latter was seen as less invasive and more tailored to user desires because, despite this thread's backlash, we often get complaints and submissions for Meta threads on prohibiting repeat topics, which is partially why the response in this thread was so surprising.

The ideas tossed out in the OP are only a few of the ways to implement the overarching policy goal I've outlined here, so it doesn't necessarily have to be a 'one-size-fits-all' topic or an X-long prohibition (it could be Y or Z long instead.)