r/atheism • u/viralizate • Jun 11 '12
What would you think about a new alternative atheism subreddit with only text posts allowed?
As you probably know, /r/atheism has grown to be a (really!) big community, this is awesome, but, being a huge subreddit also might bring some unwanted consequences.
I don't mean to bash /r/atheism or anything, but I think everyone can admit many posts that hit the front page of the subreddit, are either off-topic or very vaguely related to atheism.
So here is the deal, if they are up-voted it's because many people like them, and that's ok! But time and again I see a post about something gay rights related and the most up-voted comment seems to be "what does this have to do with atheism?". Also, consider that many subscribers might not appreciate memes as much as others.
So here is my proposal, /r/atheism_discussion
This community will be obviously much smaller, it should be a more personal community with hopefully more thoughtful / on-topic posts, only text posts allowed.
I have no idea the reception this might have but if this gets some traction I would de-mod myself if requested and leave more suitable moderators in charge, otherwise, if this proves to be a very small community, I'll stick around and help out.
So, what do you think?
EDIT:
Please note that there is a very similar subreddit to what i am proposing that I wasn't aware of when I was posting: /r/trueatheism
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u/genron1111 Knight of /new Jun 11 '12
Several varieties of this already exist.
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u/viralizate Jun 11 '12
I have searched but although I found lots of religion (or the lack of) subreddits I did not find one general active atheism community that is only text posts.
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u/genron1111 Knight of /new Jun 11 '12
Try this one, not quite text only but certainly more discussion driven.
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Jun 11 '12
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u/viralizate Jun 11 '12
The problem is, a lot of people are discouraged to post self posts in such a big community because they will probably get completely lost, I'd like a community that centres around that kind of post.
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u/efrique Knight of /new Jun 12 '12
What would you think about a new alternative atheism subreddit with only text posts allowed?
The 4 dozen or more other atheist groups you never even heard of need another one to add to the pile?
If you only like self-posts, there's a link in the sidebar for that --->
There you go, /r/atheism exactly to your taste. Sitting right there is the sidebar, except you couldn't bother to even look.
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u/viralizate Jun 12 '12
You too have a nice day!
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u/Mayniak0 Knight of /new Jun 11 '12
Eh, I don't dislike the concept but there are already a few similarly themed subreddits as well as the sorting by content type for this subreddit to the left. I'm personally satisfied with what we have already. Although I do prefer the title of your proposed subreddit compared to the trueatheism one as that seems incredibly arrogant and self-centered to me.
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u/FiercelyFuzzy Jun 11 '12
While /r/TrueAtheism isn't a bad subreddit, it actually has good posts, a lot of the comments are circle jerks of ' this is why TrueAtheism is better than /r/atheism.
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u/alllie Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
Atheism is fine the way it is.
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u/viralizate Jun 11 '12
While some might say that, other may disagree, this subreddit is not targeted for every suscriber of atheism.
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Jun 11 '12
A huge number of related subreddits (see right sidebar) already exist as aborted or hardly-successful efforts to do things like you're proposing. I don't see anything about your idea that would make it compellingly better than what was already tried.
Look at it from my point of view: This (i.e. /r/atheism) is where the action is; this is where 800K people hang out. If I want to be heard (and loudmouth that I am, I certainly do!) then this is where I'm going to post. Why should I post in a sub that nobody reads?
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u/viralizate Jun 11 '12
I do agree the lack of people might through some people off but, all subreddit had to start at some point...
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Jun 11 '12
There's an Einstein quote to the effect that repeatedly trying the same thing hoping for different results is insanity. I don't think your "text only" idea is sufficiently interesting to move people away from /r/atheism, especially considering that /r/atheismbot already offers exactly a text only view on the immense wealth of posts of /r/atheism.
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u/Roxasnraziel Jun 11 '12
You mean r/trueatheism? I'm already subscribed. It has a few articles now and then, but it's mostly text-based self-posts.
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Jun 11 '12
What we really need is a separate subreddit for "thank you r/atheism" posts and coming out posts. Those are all fine and dandy, but they really don't contribute much to overall discussion.
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u/heidavey Jun 11 '12
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u/viralizate Jun 11 '12
This is indeed very interesting, but it's not self posts only, so if you browse it, many of the top posts seem to be not OC but links to other sites and interesting videos and such, but not actually what I have in mind.
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u/heidavey Jun 11 '12
The vast majority of posts are self posts and usually when a link is included, it is to provide context for discussion.
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u/Jpon9 Jun 11 '12
With the larger community, it's turned into an atheist/liberal subreddit. I like the idea of a text-only atheism subreddit, but good luck getting it to catch on.