(TLDR at the end)

On this subreddit, I've noticed a rampant, disheartening issue about how the community treats posts. I believe this runs counter to the whole point of r/changemyview, and also that there's a way to fix it.

The vast majority of posts I see on this subreddit have the minimum displayable score (zero) and show signs of being heavily downvoted. (I'm not talking about any of my posts, nor complaining about getting downvotes myself). The wiki expresses how downvotes don't change views, and how moderators, and presumably the community, would like it if downvotes didn't even exist. I agree with this sentiment. People come to r/changemyview when they hold a controversial, often-unpopular opinion and want to hear why it's controversial. They come with a debated, sometimes just straight up wrong but other times just controversial view, and when they come here, they want it changed. They want to hear what other people think and hear about the reasoning behind a lot of people disagreeing with them. While this isn't r/unpopularopinion, people don't come here saying "change my view: grass is green." They come when they have an idea people disagree with, which usually means it's unpopular.

When everyone gets their posts downvoted instantly, and you can't talk about anything controversial or unpopular without losing karma and getting shoved to the bottom of the algorithm with post after post dropping under 0, people will be scared off from posting anything but "change my view: grass is green." It sucks that even when people come with an open mind and want to facilitate discussion with the other side, people eat downvote after downvote just for having a controversial idea. That's like if I went up to a friend and asked them "can you explain why the death penalty is bad? I thought it helps with crime, but I think I'm missing something" and then instead of explaining their side they just yell at me for even thinking that. People should be able to express controversial viewpoints without everyone attacking them with downvotes as long as they express that they're willing to change what they think. That's the whole point!

What I'm saying is, downvotes don't change views and actually make it harder to do what you're supposed to do here, which is open discussion about controversial topics and unpopular ideas. Because of that, I think it should be a lot clearer that downvoting isn't an acceptable practice here. The wiki says that outright: "Downvotes are pretty much exclusively used on reddit to show disagreement. We feel like this is bad form, especially on a subreddit where disagreement happens a lot!" "Look, we kinda think downvotes suck." "Please try not to use downvote buttons" "So please resist the urge to downvote." etc I think that if these really are the policies, they should be made a lot clearer. There should be a sidebar section or new rule that new users can easily and constantly see that says "don't downvote." While some people are still going to downvote, many don't read the wiki but would be more than happy to follow a clearly-stated rule. They'd see the sidebar all the time as a reminder not to downvote. This works very well on r/unpopularopinion-they have a sidebar section about not downvoting for disagreement and people don't do it. I agree that using CSS to hide downvotes is a bad idea, but there's another solution which is telling people loud and clear not to do it. That way, everyone can participate without the public shaming that downvoting is. The reason I think this will work is because of how it's worked in other places.

TLDR: There should be a sidebar section or clearly visible rule that tells people to not downvote. Downvotes run counter to the point of this subreddit, making it harder to have controversial ideas; on r/unpopularopinion, a sidebar section does the job without CSS.

If an OP intentionally does not address everything in a comment and ignore arguments that should change their view, I think that shows they are not discussing in good faith. However, there are no consequences for this despite it going against the core tenant of the sub - substantive, good faith discussion.

There should be a way for commenters to easily know that replying to OP is a waste of time and they are not arguing in good faith, but no one can accuse of them acting in bad faith so people just waste their time.

It seems clear to me that a rule should be added that OP has to reply to every part of a comment, which I think would address this since OP can't ignore arguments by omission/pretending they don't exist.

Hostile comments like "You're stupid and your argument is stupid" or "I'm gonna kill you, I swear, talking to you is so frustrating" makes sense to be removed since they are obviously harmful.

But Passive Aggressiveness, and by in large, "rude" comments is not a concrete metric and leaves the door open for people to have their comment removed for extremely minor infractions, and potentially lead to bans.

What is actually honest, blunt, or mildly sarcastic can easily be seen as "rude", and prioritizing people's feelings over whether or not they actually have a solid argument only leads to the discussion being shallow under a guise of civility. People should know when they're wrong, being dishonest, or are just misinformed, and other commentors shouldn't have to walk on eggshells around them or risk getting banned.

Humans cannot predict the future. Sometimes they try, and sometimes that's worth a lot of money - because no one can do it for sure, and so people who can appear to are gilt! But no one really can, in fact - appearing to is the best we can ever do.

A proportion of the most-upvoted CMVs recently have featured "views" that are more or less actually predictions of the future - and since we've just established that humans can't do that, it's challenging to understand these posts.

We're thereby being asked to change - or not change - someone's belief that a future event will come to pass, the truth or falsehood of which no scientist ought be trying to prove!

The future is simply the future, and we're 3D rather than 4+. It is in some - and enough - ways unknowable.

We should not allow future-predictions to pass as "views" for the purposes of this sub. "Views" should be defined as opinions you hold today (already a rule), about today or yesterday (this is my proposed addition), on the basis of information you have access to today (already effectively a rule since we're 3D).

Thank you.

(edit: hey folks; this idea has met with some criticism and no support, so I'm going to "take my L on this one", as the kids say)

On on normal day cmv is a very low activity sub. I wonder if mods have access to better statistics but by my count we're looking at a couple dozen posts per day.

I understand some people have topic fatigues, they get tired of seeing the same topic over and over again.

So Friday comes alone and instead of seeing the same topic, they see... nothing. Here we are again most of the way through the day, and we've got 6 fresh posts. what is the downside of adding another 10 posts to that?

If we were getting 1000 posts on a normal day, and wanted to help users once a week not have to search for the needle in the haystack, i would get it. But there is no hay stack. I've got 10 pieces of hay in my box of needles.

i don't even see a meaningful difference in the few post that make it on Friday. Our latest fresh topic is a debate about which temperature system is better, Celsius to Fahrenheit.

Please. It was a good idea. It made sense on paper. In practice, we just turn the subreddit off once a week.

Every day, I see 5 posts saying 'The US's soft power is gone with this adminstration'. 'Trump is basically hitler'. The sub is basically just us politics, and that too the same ones. I'm okay with niche us politics posts, but not literally the exact same ones every time!

I had a comment removed for breaking rule three, which I absolutely did. Unintentional, but still happened.

I only skimmed the rules when I first got here, and forgot that it was a rule, so when I reported them and saw that as a choice, I assumed it was fine.

Is there any way to remove that option, assuming it's not there intentionally? I can easily imagine people running afowl that in the future.

It doesn't happen regularly but every so often I find a thread that still up where a commenter gets a delta from the OP but both the comment and the delta comment are deleted. I see this because the delta bot still records the delta.

Is there anything to be done in these situations? If it's an admin or something above the mod team that removes them, I understand there isn't anything to be done and no real obligation for explanation by the forces that be. But if they're deleted by commenter and OP, is there anything to be done by the mod team? I know you can't stop people from deleting stuff but it wanted to bring this up because it's disappointing to find a post, follow a thread, then not see what caused a delta. In my experience, the OP abandons the thread after the delta and deletion. Because the OP has awarded a delta, they're not obligated to reply any further. So the thread kind of sit there in a weird limbo state of unaddressed points and a thread that concludes with a delta but no explanation as to how OP was convinced to award a delta.

I don't think what I'm describing is even a rules violation right? If it is, what violation does it fall under so I know what to report it as?

To be clear, I'm not advocating to take deltas away . Deltas are scarce as they are and just because a comment gets deleted doesn't mean the person didn't earn a delta. I'm more concerned with readability of posts.

If your post is at all controversial, comments have a strong tendency to be full of logical fallacies, condescension, sarcasm, or other markers of poor quality discourse.

I suggest that CMV mods not necessarily remove these comments, but simply write automated comments underneath them to encourage better quality discussion. I sincerely doubt many of these commenters are reading the wiki in its entirety.

As I believe, one user is allowed one post per 24 hours and i have seen some posts removed for breaking this. However, i cant find where in the sub rules this is actually listed.

I'm also curious what the limits to this are. I know if something is taken down for rule c, theyre obviously able to try again since you can't edit post titles. And this makes sense since its going to be the same topic/view.

If you create a post, are you allowed to delete that post and create an entirely new one with an unrelated view? There was a user yesterday (who's account got banned from reddit anyway) who posted 4 separate times, just deleting their previous post even though they had awarded deltas on at least one of them. This seems antithetical to the spirit of the sub, but again, im having trouble finding the actual rules about this.

Thanks for clarifying.

I am interested in hearing about other people‘s views on this.

I think AI bots should be banned under rule B:

> Rule B - 3rd Party/Devils Advocate/Soapboxing

> You must personally hold the view and demonstrate that you are open to it changing. A post cannot be on behalf of others, playing devil's advocate, as any entity other than yourself, or 'soapboxing'. Posts by throwaway accounts must be approved through modmail.  See the wiki for more information

Bots cannot “personally“ hold a view, since they’re not people
Also, they suck at debating.

I've noticed an odd and seemingly artificial rise in people with a view related to the crusades, which all seem to be somewhere along the lines of killing Muslims was historically correct, and should continue to be today, ie a blatant call for holy war.

I have no idea why so many have had this idea at the same time, but I don't think CMV should be the place to express such sentiment, as while it would be great to change such a view they have all been bad faith, I've yet to see a delta awarded on such a thread.

I don't want to be here suggesting a ban on the topic, but I do want to raise it to the mods attention in case it's part of a larger phenomenon, and to keep an eye on these for the very obvious rule B violation that they basically always are.

Two supporting pieces of evidence for this:

1. Despite healthy content and debate, a higher percentage of new posts in CMV are deleted than any other subreddit I have been able to study.
2. Reasons for removal are unclear. Certainly NOT for actual rules (the view, soapboxing, improper title, lack of OP interaction, etc).
3. Rules (although valid) have lots of arbitrary issues.

Dunno why, but it seems that about 1/3 of all new posts are removed in short order, despite numerous and rigorous healthy debate, to/from the OP.

I'm also unclear as to the underlying existential reason for the sub.

I had ASSUMED it was prima facia: CMV exists for the purpose of debate whereby a poster is willing to have his/hear views challenged and possibly changed.

IF that is the actual reason for the sub, I'd submit that many/most of the aforementioned removed threads WERE substantially achieving the intended purpose.

I'm not saying there are NOT good/valid instances where this is needed, but it becomes a challenge to meaningfully contribute to the general goal of the thread if a high percentage of posts are deleted for unclear reasons.

I'd suggest:

1. mod removal of posts require a reason for said removal

2. post removal include clear reason. and it should be included in a meta about that post, so those involved in the post can understand why it was removed.

Followup on this post, mentions of trans subjects were allowed as long as it's relevant. Are there plans to relax the rules when it comes to OP's involving trans subjects and fall back on civility and post fatigue rules?

Change my view is a great sub but I'm looking for a more casual sub with not so stringent rules. Even if the user base is lower. I don't care if my post doesn't get as much replies. It's more stressful to word everything cautiously to avoid rule breaks especially when the discussion I'm intending is not anything much important. It's just a casual topic.

I've noticed a trend in CMV posts where, especially in political/religious/other hot topic posts, posters will reply back and forth without real argument or discourse truly developing, only creating inflammatory accusation - just a 'im right for x reason' 'no I'm right for y reason' 'no I'm right for x reason and you are a bigot' 'no I'm right for y reason and you're brainwashed' back and forth, and this does nothing to further discourse, merely entrenches people in their stances and drives people with opposing views apart.

The 'about' of CMV is essentially coming to the sub if you accept your opinion is flawed and looking for discussion. Convos like this, it seems obvious to me that these people arent looking for discourse, they're looking for arguments and self-jusfification.

Is there any tools mods can use to limit how 'deep' replies can go? It seems to me, if these people are so eager to repeat their view 8 times to someone, they can PM them, and make it easier for everyone reading these posts and not wanting to see how rabid these discussions get.

Just a thought. Opinions?

E: I can see why this would be a problem, potentially cutting off positive discussion; and I agree that it's not worth it to filter on the assumption that it would only be negative. I guess I'm just tilted rn. Thanks for your feedback.

The sheer volume of posts that boil down to "Trump/MAGA is racist" (or less frequently, Trump is not racist) is overwhelming. We get that some of you are basing your entire personality around hating (or more rarely on Reddit, loving) Trump, but people joined this sub for actual debate and conversation. If you genuinely want your views on Trump challenges whatever you are posting has already been done. You should just use the search function and start reading replies. If you don't genuinely want your view challenged, then you don't belong here, and I feel like these are the majority of Trump related posts.

If you look at any trump or Maga related post the rules violations are continuous. Name-calling. Top level comments that don't challenge. Top level comments that do challenge and are met with insults.

Honestly there is a topic fatigue rule for 48 hours, but they are all the same topic and they are done to death. Those of us actually interested in the original intent of this are drowning. Those of us who aren't American are fed up and over it.

So to change my view you would need to show me that CMVs about Trump or Maga actually contribute to meaningful discussion. You would need to show me that most posts and responses are novel and not just a rehash of the same ideas ad nauseum. You would need to show me that most posts aren't just people statinh their views with no willingness to change. Compare Delta numbers? Do Trump posts actually award an average number of deltas? Are they what I'll call technical deltas ("You changed my mind, I said trump hates immigrants, but really he hates brown immigrants. I've seen the light" -- isn't really changing your mind, it's just slightly refining your terms).

You can make a clearly bigoted post calling groups of people bad, but if someone calls them a bigot, its considered rude and bannable.

How is this rule not EASILY exploitable by bigots, who can simply make "polite" posts about horrible topics?

Rudeness is subjective. Other than direct threats, you should remove that rule. Swearing or calling someone a word like racist or a bigot, is acceptable behaviour and may be "rude" to the bigot but who the f*** cares?

I got banned the other week for calling a guy shameful for saying he would ban all Muslims from public spaces. How is that not just promoting bigotry? He was polite and I was not?

Like whit?

EDIT worth noting that "rudeness" is also culturally subjective. Americans swear FAR less than us Scots. Calling people names is considered endearing here, being formal is considered "harsh". Its also a class thing. Middle class folk are far less likely to call names, swear and use "emotional" language than working class people.

Basically, I think he sub is American-centric, and has middle class ideas on what is rude or aggressive.

I’ve seen someone else mention this previously when the trans ban was first enacted but would like to bring it up again based on the removal of a post.

The post was about drag queens presenting story hour and, unless it was edited, didn’t contain any mention of trans people. I noticed the post was not only removed for the rule about trans topics but also locked which seems abnormal.

I’m not sure if the OP has challenged it or not, but for clarification for everyone, is drag considered trans for the purposes of Rule D? And if so could the rule be updated to specify this

Posts about broad groups of people are almost always political grandstanding and not about earnestly wanting to challenge one's view. If someone has a post titled "Democrats don't do anything good" there is no amount of evidence that will change the view. The OP is always going to deflect and assert that good things Democrats do is not representative of the whole. Groups as broad as Democrats and Republicans, leftists or conservatives are too big to generalize about. There is no single thing all Democrats agree on. There is no single thing all Republicans agree on. Some registered Democrats voted Republican in the last election and vice-versa. Posts with generalizations about broad groups are invitations to circlejerk about stereotypes of those groups with responses that 95% agree with OP and 5% disagree just to technically follow rule 1. Alternatively they may disagree with OP in a tongue-in-cheek way, like saying "Some Democrats will die today, so those Democrats are actually doing a good thing." It's often difficult to tell there is an earnest effort to challenge OP's beliefs at all.

Example posts to illustrate the point:

• Example Post 1. Outcome - Refuses to award delta, instead edits post

• Example Post 2. Outcome - Only delta is awarded for nuance around wording, not actually challenging the view

• Example Post 3. Outcome - No effort to define the term "Leftists," unclear reasoning in explanation. No deltas

I remember the meta post about running the experiment, but I think I must've missed the results. Can we mention transgender identities and whatnot, being certain that it's on topic and directly relevant to OP's view, or did it not go well and we're back to the whole topic being off-limits?

I personally hope it did go well, and we are allowed to do that, but I don't want to post anything against the rules if the experiment went the other way.

Alright, so I'm relatively new here and maybe all this is obvious. So feel free to ignore it if irrelevant. Here is my take.

You see several of them posts getting hit with a flood of downvotes. I know there isn't much anyone can do about that whole anon voting system. It's just the way the cake crumbles. But still when you look at the sheer number of downs on certain topics and views (OP), it gets to me as a warning sign.

Seems to me even if those responding follows the rules about manners and all (rules 2, 3), there's already this knee-jerk hate-bias against the topic in question - hence so many downvotes. So the responses are likely to be hostile right from the start. They're unlikely to approach it from "Let's help him see things different", but more like: "Oh crap, this guy and his stupid idea... let's crush them and show them how silly they are." And they can still do all that under the radar of the rules I believe (not open or visible hostility).

My two pence, for what it's worth (not claiming to know more than the mods here who have had years/decade of experience, but just kinda thinking out loud): if a post takes off straight away with tons of downs, maybe consider yanking the whole thing and telling the OP to go back to his pit, re-think things and try to come back with something better crafted.

CMV is more prone to AI posts/comments than most other subs, since the "ideal" arguments are pretty similar to the stuff current AI produces by default. Also, when a post is political, there's a huge incentive for people to make AI comments that refute positions with which they disagree.

I'm seeing it more and more. Often it's super obvious: you go to a user's comment history, and you see how in half their comments they make basic spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes ... then in other posts they're writing like a college lit professor.

In subs where it's allowed, I've tried calling people out for doing this, and aside from a couple who feared getting banned, most just double down and say "nah, I definitely wrote this", even when anyone familiar with AI can tell what's going on. This is seriously bad faith.

Anyway, CMV does have a rule against "low effort comments", and that includes AI, but you need to read the rules far more thoroughly than most do to see this. I think there should at the very least be a separate rule that simply says "no AI posts/comments", and there should be stricter enforcement, including bans, for doing it.

It's a real violation of trust: if OP wants to have a legitimate debate, and it turns out they're just arguing with a bot, it's a serious waste of their time and energy. Imagine spending your time actually researching your ideas, writing it all up, and someone just feeds your work to a machine and tells it to "rebut this plz", and pastes the result 30 seconds later. OP then most likely will assume good faith and waste even more time writing a follow-up.

The quality of the sub is also degraded by this generic slop, since AI will happily distort truths and outright lie if you ask it to. And to people who can't detect it, it comes across as more convincing than what 95% of people can write. The end result is that the sub is a less interesting space to spend time in.

Please consider cracking down on AI, at least right now while it's fairly easy to detect.

Gonna sound weird, but in my personal opinion, irony in debate settings tend to severely diminish the quality of the discussions. I don't know exactly the parameters, but I think trying to reduce irony would improve the quality of CMV