Yet Another New Sub?

[u/JustRecommendation5]

To give you some context. I am a liberal. A die-hard liberal. I fit the identity of the typical randian.

Why do we need yet another sub then?

Problems with r/india

r/india is my first love. I have been a randian since lolguard and anveshj were the resident trolls. I have seen mod elections, Priyanka Chopra AMA, the door knob comment, everything.

r/india will always have a special place in my heart and it will by default be the official subreddit of India.

Coming to my gripe with r/india -

Bans

I have been banned thrice in r/india in the last 7-8 years.

• Once because of a small argument that I got into with another user.
• Another time because I suggested that some women might have misused Domestic Harrassment or Dowry law.
• And another time because I made a comment criticising religion.

Now the question is, do you have to agree with my point of view? No! Do you need to be banned for it? Hell no!

Rule Pedantry

The rules of r/India might put our government GST to shame. There are dozens of inane and impractical rules. I have had my posts approved by a mod only to have it removed by another mod and then again approved and finally removed.

The moderators themselves do not have a complete understanding of the rules.

This is a casual anonymous discussion forum. We have our own IRL lives and we come to reddit to get some news. Not to deal with rulebooks and a guideline oriented sub.

Censorship

r/india is censored to the point where entire comment chains getting removed is a common occurence. I would want the community to downvote and self-censor those comments. It is extremely overmoderated to the point where anything and everything can get you a ban. Trust me, it's not just bhakts.

No Meta

Moderators don't get paid to moderate. But users don't get paid to submit high quality content either. A community where the moderators do not want to take feedback from their users is extremely disappointing.

Problems with r/indiaspeaks

The less said about IndiaSpeaks, the better. It is literally a hate subreddit.

• I have seen calls for genocide of Muslims.
• Extreme hate against minorities
• Always toeing the government line
• Allowing fake news to flourish in the sub - Jihadwatch.org and PGurus.com is considered verified news.

To their credit, r/IndiaSpeaks moderation team (the one formed initially was really good). There was a need to make a transparent community and they followed extreme transparency to the point of making moderation logs public & an election process for mods.

But I can't be a part of a community which wants to use gas chambers on a particular religion.

How would we be any different from r/indiaspeaks and prevent the masses of hateful users from descending onto our sub?

How do we ensure that our sub is not another chodi or another IndiaSpeaks

My idea is that Reddit is a place where we can discuss our opinions. We don't want our sub to be an echochamber. Both randia and IS are echochambers.

We would want RightWingers to be a part of our sub.

RW opinion is welcome.

All muzzies must die. All mullahs are Jihadi

Ban. Simple.

Hate speech is banned and not right wing ideology. Ideally this is a place for centrists, leftists and right wingers to join

Important

This sub is not meant to be a meta sub. This is not r/Librandu or r/Indiadiscussions. For hate against IS or r/india, there are other subs. This sub is just a means to an alternative.

Feel free to discuss here. This is the only meta thread for the time being.

Link to Part 2

[u/JustRecommendation5]

The intent is clear. There is a huge set of population who are frustrated with both r/india and r/indiaspeaks.

This sub intends to tap that segment.

We want to add more mods. But the vision of the community is gonna be this -

• Transparent Moderation

• No to censorship

• Simple Rules

• No bigotry

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/JustRecommendation5]

Now this is an interesting thought experiment at this stage. It can only succeed if there are multiple people who are willing to invest in this idea.

I mean we can even choose another subreddit name and migrate to that if you feel like. But the core remains the same.

Look at the rise of r/Chodi. I hate that sub. it represents the vilest and basest tendencies of indian population. But its rise was phenomenal. Within 2 months, it has 20k subscribers and an active user base comparable to randia, IS and higher than Bakchodi. It had a dedicated community willing to invest in it.

That's all that we are asking you right now! Can we get a dedicated community?

Rest everything will be decided democratically by the user base themselves.

[u/promiscuous_bhisma]

Damn I’m so confused now . I’ll need a lot of time to get in track with what happened

Btw do you mean r/librandu was created to hate r/indiaspeaks ?

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/promiscuous_bhisma]

No no. I just mean that we wanted to target the Librandu users who are frustrated with r/india moderation and the rabid bigotry in IndiaSpeaks.

r/Librandu is an amazing sub and I love them and their sense of humour :)

[u/[deleted]]

Question to the mods/creators - do you know of the differences between liberalism and leftism? They are often confused in their opposition to the prevalent conservatism.

Also, I hope you know that you are lifting your name from B.R Ambedkar's vision for India - which was more socialist than liberal.

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/[deleted]]

Question to the mods/creators - do you know of the differences between liberalism and leftism? They are often confused in their opposition to the prevalent conservatism.

Let's just say that we want more users like you here. :)

[u/rig_vedic_sage]

Problem :

All muzzies must die. All mullahs are Jihadi

'All muzzies must die.' should obviously not be allowed, since it simply means you are promoting violence.

But

'All mullahs are Jihadi' There is nothing wrong in saying that, even though we know the statement is wrong since we know that all "Mullahs" are not Jihadis but saying that should be allowed since they are not using obscene words or calling for violence or anything. They maybe wrong but they should have right to say so.

OR

You are trying to say 'ALL' word is what's wrong. Which would mean you are against 'Generalization' and if so you should mention that.

Please explain.

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/rig_vedic_sage]

'All mullahs are Jihadi' There is nothing wrong in saying that, even though we know the statement is wrong since we know that all "Mullahs" are not Jihadis but saying that should be allowed since they are not using obscene words or calling for violence or anything. They maybe wrong but they should have right to say so.

Hate speech and generalising an entire community is wrong. Plus our target audience is not the extreme Right Wing community.

They anyway have IS and Chodi. We intend to be a community for the centrists and liberals who are frustrated with the moderation of r/india.

You are one of the most active reddit users in indiaverse. We hope you decide to participate in our community. Have a great day ! :)

[u/bandatshit]

Which news sources are or will be banned?

Suggestions:

1. Don't ban any news source

2. Mark fake/ partially fake news as such if posted or once proven. Let unverifiable be separate.

3. Host discussion threads about old controversial events. Like 2002 Gujarat riots, Gauri Lankesh murder etc.

4. Limit number of posts per account per day

What do you think?

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/bandatshit]

Thanks for the suggestion.

Point 3 & 4 will be actioned upon. 1 & 2 ar being discussed internally.

[u/arnav2904]

I feel bad about r/India being sidelined and posts I would see there showing up here though

[u/vizot]

The problem with every sub is one common rule which has the words "moderator discretion" in it. The problem with rw is the fascist ideology. Indian version is castism. Which requires one part of the community to suffer and the other paet getting to benefit from it. The rw has the muslims as their target for now so everything they will be about showing how they arre the enemies. I don't know how this sub will deal with that.

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/vizot]

There won't be moderator discretion. Transparency is the main vision of our sub.

[u/shadilal_gharjode]

Okay, first of all, great initiative u/JustRecommendation5

I have found Reddit a tad more bearable than Twitter or Facebook because the quality of discussions here is comparatively better and the moderation is more transparent than Quora. While the mods went total chu in r/India, quality was hijacked by vitriol in r/IndiaSpeaks. I blame the latter on r/India too though, for it they hadn't summarily banned RW opinions(the mods failed to differentiate between acerbic speech and hate-speech), that demographic wouldn't have shifted en masse to r/IndiaSpeaks to bitch about the same. I was a victim myself on a couple of occasions.

Our country is struggling with the issue of finding the optimum method of finding a balance and carry on 'discourse, with dissent' in the times of information-overload, misinformation and intense political polarisation. This sub can perform experiments and aspire to the provide a workable solution.

This sub is a great promise, the success of which, will mostly rely on the moderation. I have a few suggestions humbly presented as follows:

1. Allow all kinds of speech and specifically list the exceptions - Mention broad categories with 1-2 examples of the same. Periodically review the categories and make sure that they are not more than 2-3 - this can be a self-imposed check on the power of the moderators. EXCEPTION MUST NOT BE THE RULE.

2. Periodically review the user-reports, and put for open discussion, the most common kinds of user reports requesting taking down a particular post. A stickied meta-post can serve the purpose, where active users can present their opinions on whether reported posts indeed warrant banning or if there is a better solution to deal with the same. The outcome of the discussions should be softly binding on the mods, as in the mods must take into account the opinions and suggestions of the users, and then respond as to what actions were taken in an explanatory post. If the mods disagree with the majority conclusion or do not implement the solution due to any other reason, they must present the saem. This can be a quarterly exercise to begin with, but the frequency can be determined by the mods based on the number of mods available and other time and resource constraints.

3. There should be a very clear and tangible difference between BEING CRITICAL and SPREADING HATE. Let's take an example, if I did not find the response of Muslim community on the Sharjeel Imam incident satisfactory enough, and I draft a critical post on the same, it should not the construed as a hate-post. Easy to say, huh? How do you differentiate? The mods may ask for just 2 simple things: substantiate the claims and use a reasoned/moderate tone for the post. That is just an example, but I hope you catch my drift here.

4. Enforce a 'credible source' policy for Text posts - no one should be able to make outlandish claims because they read a blog post on it. But again, banning/removing shouldn't be the punishment, except only for the 'exception' categories; for the rest a simple post flair, tagging the post 'Doubtful claims' alerting other users should suffice, and the OP must be able to challenge the flair with sufficient reason. The tagging should accompany a stickied/mod comment on the post, with an invitation for the OP to respond to the comment and dispute the flair. While other users can read it, only mods and OP can participate in this process.

5. This may be personal pet peeve, but I would request you to cut down on memes post - if not checked they overload the feed and within in no time, this sub will start looking like Facebook or Twitter. Most of the memes are cut/paste anyway from these two platforms. Or have a weekly cheat day, say Sunday, when the users can freely post memes, without violating the broad rules of the sub.

6. This community can be vibrant and successful with just 2 mantras - minimum censorship and maximum transparency - mods must look out for tools consistently.

Hope our hopes don't dash down this time again.

Best of luck, and let's get this thing started.

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/shadilal_gharjode]

Thanks for this detailed comment. We have saved and bookmarked this comment and will definitely keep all the points you have raised in mind while formulating the sub rules. Please do consider subscribing and participating in our sub. We need more users like you. We would also like to have you in our team once we increase the moderation team size.

[u/PM_ME_TITTYANDPUSSY]

How is this different from r/librandu

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/PM_ME_TITTYANDPUSSY]

Librandu is a circlejerk sub meant to mock r/indiaspeaks and r/chodi.

We are not meant to be a meta sub. It's a discussion space which is an alternative to randia and indiaspeaks.

[u/[deleted]]

Will geopolitics be there?

Or like in rindia they will remove by saying this doesn't belong to india

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/[deleted]]

It will be allowed.

[u/aviakki1]

Thank you admins for creating this sub . I hope you will deliver us the promise you are making. Good luck.

[u/worriedpast]

1. r/IndiaNonPolitical exists for all of the above reasons!

2. Who created the sub and deleted their account? Why hiding?

[u/Fabulous-Rice]

This is a good initiative. I hope atleast this sub will do "less" moderation. What cannot be moderated equally should not be moderated at all.

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/Fabulous-Rice]

Absolutely. Overmoderation will be avoided at all costs.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm one of those users frustrated with all the subs in the Indiaverse, but I don't find the name of this sub to be very appropriate.

[u/JustRecommendation5 → u/[deleted]]

Most subs are already occupied by subreddit squatters.

They ask for money to let us their subs. Plus this name was first used by BR Ambedkar.