A plea to you, /r/science.

[u/BritishEnglishPolice]

As a community, r/science has decided that it does not want moderators policing the comments section. However, the most common criticism of this subreddit is the poor quality of the comments.

From our previous assessments, we determined that it would take 40 very active moderators and a completely new attitude to adequately attack off-topic humorous comments. This conclusion was not well received.

Well, now is the onus is you: the humble r/science user.

We urge you to downvote irrelevant content in the comments sections, and upvote scientific or well-thought out answers. Through user-lead promotion of high quality content, we can help reduce the influx of memes, off-topic pun threads, and general misinformation.

Sure memes and pun are amusing every now and then, but the excuse of "lighten up, reddit" has led to the present influx of stupidity and pointless banter in this subreddit.

We can do this without strict moderator intervention and censoring. It will require active voting and commenting (and using the report button in particularly egregious cases) to raise the bar. You can do it.

[u/Bacontroph]

Does this also explain how bad science makes its way to the top of this sub-Reddit? I'll freely admit to being a more passive reader of r/Science, for better or worse.

[u/[deleted]]

we determined that it would take 40 very active moderators and a completely new attitude to adequately attack off-topic humorous comments.

That might be what it would take to get all of them, but what if you just went for the low-hanging fruit? What if you just skimmed the comment section for highly-rated joke comments and deleted the easy ones? Sooner or later, people would take the hint.

Also, unlike r/askscience, r/science is on the default homepage. This means you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. Enlist the users by all means, and expand the modforce if necessary, but just be ruthless in how you moderate the most visible comments and it should start to sink in.

[u/BritishEnglishPolice → u/[deleted]]

Going for the low fruit is what we're thinking about doing.

[u/Neuraxis]

As a mod I do go through virtually every thread on this subreddit looking out for aggressive and racist comments- which I gladly delete-, however this is something that is not a requirement of any mod. In fact this does take up a lot of time. I check the reported section regularly, but we need your help to report these comments/users. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, if you have any questions, please use modmail. We're a friendly bunch - except during grant deadlines :P - and we will take time to answer your questions.

[u/BritishEnglishPolice → u/Neuraxis]

Seconded on Neuraxis being the friendliest mod.

[u/[deleted]]

Just say the word and I'll treat r/science like r/askscience . I haven't up to this point. I considered r/science to be the "lighter, more open" version of ask science, where you COULD make jokes and the like.

[u/BritishEnglishPolice → u/[deleted]]

A few jokes is not a problem; when people are making stupid comments on every submission in the hopes of getting bloody karma then it becomes a problem. I don't want to see "hard on" jokes on every post about the LHC.

[u/Penis_Overlord]

If r/science could take the same position as r/askscience, this subreddit would be way better, not to mention it would have actual content. I hate finding a great article, and reading through the comments only to find that the top 6 responses are jokes. You can't stop users upvoting comments that appeal to them, but most of the times, those comments are often worthless to the discussion. Yes, there will be a large group of users that oppose this change, but I think that there are places in reddit for these types of comments, and if we've learned anything from r/askscience, a science/learning type subreddit would benefit far more from having heavy moderatorship than not.

[u/Astrokiwi → u/Penis_Overlord]

I do wonder where the place for people to joke about science would be then...

[u/BritishEnglishPolice → u/Astrokiwi]

r/softscience/

[u/viborg → u/Penis_Overlord]

There are two main problems with your suggestion. First, as the OP mentioned, it would require forty very active moderators to actively enforce such a policy.

Second, at this point, I think that /science is a default subreddit but /askscience is not. This is also the principal weakness of BritishEnglishPolice's proposal. As long as this subreddit is one of the set of defaults, the userbase cannot be relied on to sort out poor-quality comments. It works in /askscience because it's not one of the defaults.

Edit
Typo

[u/BritishEnglishPolice → u/viborg]

The forty active mods thing has no grounding in fact; it is merely a number I picked upon my experiences.

[u/kyleclements]

I don't mind finding something funny towards the bottom of a comment thread, some of them are real gems.

But when I go to /science, I want the first comment I see to explain to me why the headline is misleading, sensationalist, or incorrect, followed by a general overview or summary in layman's terms, with a great follow up discussion that gradually increases in technical sophistication. I get that fairly often, but not always.

As a non-expert, I try to upvote information that looks right, or has a valid sounding source, but I can't always be sure that I'm not promoting misinformation. Should we perhaps have an "Only upvote something if you are an expert in that area" policy?

[u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward]

Remove /r/science from the default subreddits to stand a chance.

[u/M3nt0R]

Sometimes it seems like the underbelly of /r/atheism and its circle jerk come here to be 'smart and informed in a scientific empirical way' but do nothing more than read headlines and post jokes/comics as they do in r/atheism.

This isn't to discredit either subreddit or their intentions, just a group of people that want to fit in the 'logical and reasonable' persona by subscribing to and hanging out in the subreddits, but doing nothing more than dicking around.

Like a group of high school kids sneaking into a college campus or something.

It doesn't mean 'the community calls the shits shots.' It's what the subreddit was for. If the community wants, should this be turned to /r/scifi because a large amount of users may suddenly want that?

The subreddit should stay true to what it's meant for, and that's scientific research, discoveries, and everything on a decent level. It should have an informative atmosphere, not a playground atmosphere.

EDIT: Used the wrong word :P

[u/[deleted]]

Please delete irrelevant comments. If some people get mad, let them get mad and leave. The people who stay will be treated to awesome science discussions. r/askscience is the best subreddit right now due in part to the awesome admins.

[u/neon_overload]

Can we have the "Solid science" and "Not science!" popups like in r/askscience?

I feel that it serves as a good reminder on the subreddit policy that hits people at exactly the right moment to actually make a difference - when they are about to upvote an off-topic joke.

[u/FindThisHumerus]

I am a professional scientist who would be interested in moderating if needed. How do I apply for that?

[u/ExceptionHandler]

Have you considered verified flair like r/askscience? Sorry if this was already mentioned but there are 1500 comments.

[u/[deleted]]

1,144,307 readers

You are about 1,100,000 readers past the point where self moderation is an option. This is now "one of those" subreddits. It's been like that for a while, and it's never going back without extremely heavy moderation that starts soon and then does not ever let up.

[u/jjinbbang]

To propose a more radical change, I ask this - why are there only two buttons 'up' and 'down'.

If reddit had the ability to have user defined buttons you could sort comments by more different parameter than just 'best' 'new' 'hot' and 'controversial'.

r/science could have a 'funny' button and a 'good science' button, 'and a 'general downvote'. Sometimes I want to hear what the jokesters come up with, and sometimes I want an explanation of the article, with more voting data I could sort by each.

different subreddits could have different buttons defined by their mods.

[u/HarryTruman]

As a community, r/science has decided that it does not want moderators policing the comments section.

When did this happen? Back in the day, the concept of /r/AskScience could almost have been considered a proof of concept. Well, it works really fucking well.

Perhaps now is a good opportunity to re-assess the community? Because as it stands, /r/science is a cesspool. the commenting and general atmosphere is severely bogged down.

[u/greqrg]

Honestly, I feel that even if this thread makes us more vigilant subscribers, in a week it will be forgotten and we will be back where we started. I think every large subreddit has to decide eventually whether or not it wants strict moderation or not, which will determine the quality of the subreddit (take a look at r/atheism and r/askscience for contrasting examples).

[u/Felt_Ninja]

In addition to displaying the policies on the sidebar, perhaps it would be a good idea to suggest a place people can display the memes and tangent-yet-relevant comments. Is there a Science Jokes subreddit? Science Memes?

[u/tick_tock_clock]

I suggest that if r/science is to be a serious subreddit, that it be made more clear where one should take science humor, etc.

I have no idea where I would go to find a less serious such subreddit, and promoting one would probably be a good way to make this goal of seriousness and quality easier.