“I run the world’s largest historical outreach project and it’s on a cesspool of a website.” Moderating a public scholarship site on Reddit: A case study of r/AskHistorians
I haven't been able to sit down and start reading through this paper yet, but the title alone hints at the difficult situation and conflict that they're dealing with. Like you said, it's really...
I haven't been able to sit down and start reading through this paper yet, but the title alone hints at the difficult situation and conflict that they're dealing with. Like you said, it's really important to them that they have access to new people, because they think of the subreddit as an "outreach project".
They want a significant number of new people to be able to discover the content from their subreddit, which almost requires them to be attached to a larger platform. The downside with that platform being Reddit is that a lot of those new people are assholes, idiots, or otherwise try to make the subreddit worse when they end up in it, which is why they need such constant and heavy moderation.
The head mod of /r/ChangeMyView tried to start his own site separate from Reddit, and even had employees and funding for it, but it doesn't seem to be going well at all. They re-branded it to Ceasefire recently, but it looks like there's only been one new thread posted in over 2 days (and it looks like you can't even view the site without logging in any more, which is a bad idea on its own). They did still keep the subreddit running, which makes it much less likely for people to move, but it's still a good example of how hard it is to get people to switch platforms.
I was thinking about this concept too. I'm sure there's a more technical term for it, but I was thinking of it in terms of "shopping mall" versus "standalone store". If I go to the mall, I can...
I was thinking about this concept too. I'm sure there's a more technical term for it, but I was thinking of it in terms of "shopping mall" versus "standalone store". If I go to the mall, I can walk and browse through different stores without the intention to buy something, looking at items I wasn't necessarily planning to get in a variety of different domains. A standalone store, however, is something I'm likely going to for a specific purpose, and even if I do browse there, my exposure is much more limited because I'm only examining the items that particular store focuses on.
reddit very much operates like a shopping mall, which is what gives many of its communities their lifeblood and why something like /r/ChangeMyView would have trouble moving away -- a lot of their traffic was probably mall-walkers, not direct shoppers. On the other hand, this is also why reddit's longstanding refusal to handle the worst parts of the site was so negligent. Without any minimum standard, reddit let a lot of terrible, awful ideologies crosspollinate, creating the "cesspool" identified in the study.
So, I'm the author of the study (I sent a message with to dubteedub with my u/SarahAGilbert account so they can confirm). I really like this analogy. Before I got involved with AskHistorians (I'm...
So, I'm the author of the study (I sent a message with to dubteedub with my u/SarahAGilbert account so they can confirm). I really like this analogy. Before I got involved with AskHistorians (I'm actually a mod there now too), they did a census and found out that the "mall browsing" you describe is how most people access the sub. There's a small core who go to the sub and browse from its home page, but most only see questions when they're upvoted and pushed into their home feed or r/all—which presents a huge challenge because it takes a long time to properly answer a question and people get pissed waiting. In addition to the comments we remove that I talk about in the paper (because I was given access to them for one particular thread), we also get cranky modmails and really nasty reports.
There's definitely been talk about moving sites. It came up during my interviews (which I did back in 2017), but ultimately the audience and the network effect are hugely important. There's also the educational aspect to it to. Reddit allows the sub's experts to reach an particular audience and share information and perspectives that they might not otherwise be exposed to.
Oh hi, Sarah. Good to see you here again! I especially appreciated the mall analogy because I've used the exact same one before, but in a different context: as a way of explaining why it's so...
Oh hi, Sarah. Good to see you here again!
I especially appreciated the mall analogy because I've used the exact same one before, but in a different context: as a way of explaining why it's so important that the hateful communities get deplatformed and pushed off the mainstream sites (which is more like what @kfwyre mentions at the end).
A lot of people like to argue that it doesn't really matter if subreddits get banned from Reddit, because they'll just move to 8chan/Voat/Ruqqus/whatever-the-cool-hate-speech-platform-is-right-now, so you're not stopping the community from existing anyway. But those people really don't understand how significant it is to have them mixed in with all the "normal" content on a mainstream site, and how that lends a feeling of legitimacy to it that it doesn't deserve.
I've said that it's like allowing neo-nazi recruiting booths in a mall. Letting them exist alongside all the legitimate businesses gives the impression that they're one too. It also gives them the ability to recruit the "mall-walkers" who didn't specifically go out looking to join a hateful group, but are open/vulnerable to joining if they stumble into one. But if you kick them out so that they have to do their recruiting from the internet equivalent of a dingy basement in a dark alley, it makes it much more difficult for them. Deplatforming isn't useless just because they can go somewhere else.
I like it in that context too, and I couldn't agree with you more. Deplatforming works. The assumption that the truth will come to rise to the top in a free marketplace of ideas misunderstands how...
I like it in that context too, and I couldn't agree with you more. Deplatforming works. The assumption that the truth will come to rise to the top in a free marketplace of ideas misunderstands how people arrive at personal beliefs. You can throw all the empirical research you want at and anti-vaxxer and they won't change their mind, because it won't assuage their fears nor does it align with their values. I've observed similar interactions with free speech absolutists: you can show them all the research in the world that says that deplatforming can reduce extremism, but because it doesn't align with their values (and they often aren't the ones who experience negative effects) they won't accept it as a viable tool.
Deplatforming QAnon communities before they got out of hand is probably one of reddit's greatest successes. Other platforms, like Facebook and Instagram didn't, and its taken off there and becoming increasingly (and worryingly) mainstream.
So, there's a good chance I've seen you say this, forgotten that you specifically said it but kept the idea in my head, and then parroted it back to you here as if the idea were my own while...
I especially appreciated the mall analogy because I've used the exact same one before
So, there's a good chance I've seen you say this, forgotten that you specifically said it but kept the idea in my head, and then parroted it back to you here as if the idea were my own while genuinely not realizing that you were its genesis. Looks like I've committed accidental plagiarism!
I don't know about that, I just searched my own comments for "mall" and only found one time I've ever done it on Tildes, which was here (disclaimer: thread is pretty bad overall and mostly a big...
I don't know about that, I just searched my own comments for "mall" and only found one time I've ever done it on Tildes, which was here (disclaimer: thread is pretty bad overall and mostly a big argument with a later-banned user, wouldn't recommend spending time reading). (Also, that's the only other time I've ever used the word "dingy" here)
Oh, wow! Congratulations on completing your study and getting it published! I know that takes an astonishing amount of work. Given your expertise with online communities, I'm curious whether you...
Oh, wow! Congratulations on completing your study and getting it published! I know that takes an astonishing amount of work.
Given your expertise with online communities, I'm curious whether you have insights that would apply to Tildes here. Is there anything you think our community should know to help us in achieving a positive and productive digital space?
Thanks! Qualitative research is an especially slow process and I'm really happy with the paper and how its been received. Honestly, it's been a while since I tuned in and even longer since I...
Thanks! Qualitative research is an especially slow process and I'm really happy with the paper and how its been received.
Honestly, it's been a while since I tuned in and even longer since I actively participated, and since the community's probably grown and developed in my absence, my Tildes knowledge is too out of date to provide any community specific insights. Plus, all the stuff I would normally suggest, like absolute freedom of speech being problem, Deimos has already done. Or things like, "listen to and support your moderators" aren't really relevant to Tildes yet, or perhaps ever, if I'm recalling the moderation plan correctly.
Personally (as a user rather than a scholar) I found myself drifting away because while Tildes was overwhelmingly a good space, at the time there was only one, maybe two users who were identifiable as women (Kat's the one I remember, but I think there was someone else too). It's hard to explain the effect that has, other than maybe lonely? I'd defaulted to my typical habit of choosing a male or gender ambiguous username when I created my account, but regretted not choosing something more female sounding after. I wonder if I had, perhaps it would have signaled to the other "hidden" women, "hey, I'm here!" which would have felt a bit less isolating for all of us. But even with Tildes' emphasis on civility, it's hard to overcome habitual precautions you take to protect yourself from the usual problems associated with being a woman on the internet. Building an online community from scratch and encouraging participation is hard and its even harder still to build it among populations that aren't always treated kindly outside of special interest groups, especially when you're also contending with ~30 years of baggage.
I appreciate your honesty and for bringing this up, as I think it's crucially important for our community. We've actually had a few conversations publicly, and I've had a few privately, about how...
I appreciate your honesty and for bringing this up, as I think it's crucially important for our community. We've actually had a few conversations publicly, and I've had a few privately, about how Tildes can be damaging or isolating to the women who are on it. Unfortunately, in my time here, I've seen several women leave the site or fall away from it, much as you did, presumably at least in part because it isn't a welcoming and inclusive space for them. Sexist talking points and behaviors still come up here, and the site and its discussions, even when operating without a specific gendered focus, are still overwhelmingly male.
I wish I knew what we could do about this, especially because what we've gotten wrong with regards to women I feel we've gotten right with regards to LGBT people. I have never felt safer or more welcome as a gay person anywhere on the internet than I have on Tildes. I'm not pigeonholed for it; I'm not treated like a unicorn; I'm not subject to abusive PMs or patronizing dismissals of my identity; I'm not relegated to my one tiny corner and told to stay there. Instead, I feel like we're included at large in the site, and our voices carry weight on issues beyond just our experiences. It's not uncommon for me to see LGBT users commenting to each other on non-LGBT issues, making this site regularly pass a sort of queer Bechdel test. When I think about how much their visbility matters to me as a member of that community, it puts into clear focus for me how a lack of representation of women on the site can be a negative experience for the women who are here.
(This isn't directly relevant to this thread, but since I just mentioned Ceasefire in here, I figured it makes sense to add this follow-up here) They sent out an email today with the same content...
(This isn't directly relevant to this thread, but since I just mentioned Ceasefire in here, I figured it makes sense to add this follow-up here)
I'm not really in the mood to dig into Fiesler et al.'s methodology but this does not match with my experience with Reddit. Anecdotally (but based on thousands of hours of using that bloody...
Indeed, in their study characterizing Reddit’s rules, Fiesler et al. [23] found that 48% of their sampled subreddits did not have any posted rules
I'm not really in the mood to dig into Fiesler et al.'s methodology but this does not match with my experience with Reddit. Anecdotally (but based on thousands of hours of using that bloody website), I would say it's quite rare to come across subs with no rules at all (enforcement is, of course, a different matter). I wonder if they cast their net a bit too wide and included too many 'ghost' subreddits in their analysis.
Reddit's free-speech white male culture
To be clear here, do you mean here that Reddit has a culture of [free-speech, white males] or that free speech itself is to some extent white and male?
Speaking from personal experience, dead subreddits will accumulate in a slightly bizarre fashion spam posts in foreign languages. I imagine this could've severely skewed their analysis. I know...
had zero posts, or were in a language other than English
Speaking from personal experience, dead subreddits will accumulate in a slightly bizarre fashion spam posts in foreign languages. I imagine this could've severely skewed their analysis.
I think a better way to rephrase it would be to call Reddit a techbrotarian culture.
I know exactly what you mean, I tend to call it 'Hacker News Libertarianism'. However, by my estimation, it hasn't been the predominant political stance of most of Reddit for years now. For better or worse, the days when you could assume that the average person on Reddit would know who Richard Stallman is and what the value of sizeof(int) would be on a standard x86 PC are long gone, and the political culture has changed with it. To the extent that Reddit has a political stance these days, it's mostly the same liberal moderate leftism of Twitter but tinged with a bit of the old-school /r/atheism style pro-intellectualism (being conspicuously excited about rocket launches and consciously angry about fundamentalist preachers).
I haven't been able to sit down and start reading through this paper yet, but the title alone hints at the difficult situation and conflict that they're dealing with. Like you said, it's really important to them that they have access to new people, because they think of the subreddit as an "outreach project".
They want a significant number of new people to be able to discover the content from their subreddit, which almost requires them to be attached to a larger platform. The downside with that platform being Reddit is that a lot of those new people are assholes, idiots, or otherwise try to make the subreddit worse when they end up in it, which is why they need such constant and heavy moderation.
The head mod of /r/ChangeMyView tried to start his own site separate from Reddit, and even had employees and funding for it, but it doesn't seem to be going well at all. They re-branded it to Ceasefire recently, but it looks like there's only been one new thread posted in over 2 days (and it looks like you can't even view the site without logging in any more, which is a bad idea on its own). They did still keep the subreddit running, which makes it much less likely for people to move, but it's still a good example of how hard it is to get people to switch platforms.
I was thinking about this concept too. I'm sure there's a more technical term for it, but I was thinking of it in terms of "shopping mall" versus "standalone store". If I go to the mall, I can walk and browse through different stores without the intention to buy something, looking at items I wasn't necessarily planning to get in a variety of different domains. A standalone store, however, is something I'm likely going to for a specific purpose, and even if I do browse there, my exposure is much more limited because I'm only examining the items that particular store focuses on.
reddit very much operates like a shopping mall, which is what gives many of its communities their lifeblood and why something like /r/ChangeMyView would have trouble moving away -- a lot of their traffic was probably mall-walkers, not direct shoppers. On the other hand, this is also why reddit's longstanding refusal to handle the worst parts of the site was so negligent. Without any minimum standard, reddit let a lot of terrible, awful ideologies crosspollinate, creating the "cesspool" identified in the study.
So, I'm the author of the study (I sent a message with to dubteedub with my u/SarahAGilbert account so they can confirm). I really like this analogy. Before I got involved with AskHistorians (I'm actually a mod there now too), they did a census and found out that the "mall browsing" you describe is how most people access the sub. There's a small core who go to the sub and browse from its home page, but most only see questions when they're upvoted and pushed into their home feed or r/all—which presents a huge challenge because it takes a long time to properly answer a question and people get pissed waiting. In addition to the comments we remove that I talk about in the paper (because I was given access to them for one particular thread), we also get cranky modmails and really nasty reports.
There's definitely been talk about moving sites. It came up during my interviews (which I did back in 2017), but ultimately the audience and the network effect are hugely important. There's also the educational aspect to it to. Reddit allows the sub's experts to reach an particular audience and share information and perspectives that they might not otherwise be exposed to.
Oh hi, Sarah. Good to see you here again!
I especially appreciated the mall analogy because I've used the exact same one before, but in a different context: as a way of explaining why it's so important that the hateful communities get deplatformed and pushed off the mainstream sites (which is more like what @kfwyre mentions at the end).
A lot of people like to argue that it doesn't really matter if subreddits get banned from Reddit, because they'll just move to 8chan/Voat/Ruqqus/whatever-the-cool-hate-speech-platform-is-right-now, so you're not stopping the community from existing anyway. But those people really don't understand how significant it is to have them mixed in with all the "normal" content on a mainstream site, and how that lends a feeling of legitimacy to it that it doesn't deserve.
I've said that it's like allowing neo-nazi recruiting booths in a mall. Letting them exist alongside all the legitimate businesses gives the impression that they're one too. It also gives them the ability to recruit the "mall-walkers" who didn't specifically go out looking to join a hateful group, but are open/vulnerable to joining if they stumble into one. But if you kick them out so that they have to do their recruiting from the internet equivalent of a dingy basement in a dark alley, it makes it much more difficult for them. Deplatforming isn't useless just because they can go somewhere else.
I like it in that context too, and I couldn't agree with you more. Deplatforming works. The assumption that the truth will come to rise to the top in a free marketplace of ideas misunderstands how people arrive at personal beliefs. You can throw all the empirical research you want at and anti-vaxxer and they won't change their mind, because it won't assuage their fears nor does it align with their values. I've observed similar interactions with free speech absolutists: you can show them all the research in the world that says that deplatforming can reduce extremism, but because it doesn't align with their values (and they often aren't the ones who experience negative effects) they won't accept it as a viable tool.
Deplatforming QAnon communities before they got out of hand is probably one of reddit's greatest successes. Other platforms, like Facebook and Instagram didn't, and its taken off there and becoming increasingly (and worryingly) mainstream.
So, there's a good chance I've seen you say this, forgotten that you specifically said it but kept the idea in my head, and then parroted it back to you here as if the idea were my own while genuinely not realizing that you were its genesis. Looks like I've committed accidental plagiarism!
I don't know about that, I just searched my own comments for "mall" and only found one time I've ever done it on Tildes, which was here (disclaimer: thread is pretty bad overall and mostly a big argument with a later-banned user, wouldn't recommend spending time reading). (Also, that's the only other time I've ever used the word "dingy" here)
Oh, wow! Congratulations on completing your study and getting it published! I know that takes an astonishing amount of work.
Given your expertise with online communities, I'm curious whether you have insights that would apply to Tildes here. Is there anything you think our community should know to help us in achieving a positive and productive digital space?
Thanks! Qualitative research is an especially slow process and I'm really happy with the paper and how its been received.
Honestly, it's been a while since I tuned in and even longer since I actively participated, and since the community's probably grown and developed in my absence, my Tildes knowledge is too out of date to provide any community specific insights. Plus, all the stuff I would normally suggest, like absolute freedom of speech being problem, Deimos has already done. Or things like, "listen to and support your moderators" aren't really relevant to Tildes yet, or perhaps ever, if I'm recalling the moderation plan correctly.
Personally (as a user rather than a scholar) I found myself drifting away because while Tildes was overwhelmingly a good space, at the time there was only one, maybe two users who were identifiable as women (Kat's the one I remember, but I think there was someone else too). It's hard to explain the effect that has, other than maybe lonely? I'd defaulted to my typical habit of choosing a male or gender ambiguous username when I created my account, but regretted not choosing something more female sounding after. I wonder if I had, perhaps it would have signaled to the other "hidden" women, "hey, I'm here!" which would have felt a bit less isolating for all of us. But even with Tildes' emphasis on civility, it's hard to overcome habitual precautions you take to protect yourself from the usual problems associated with being a woman on the internet. Building an online community from scratch and encouraging participation is hard and its even harder still to build it among populations that aren't always treated kindly outside of special interest groups, especially when you're also contending with ~30 years of baggage.
I appreciate your honesty and for bringing this up, as I think it's crucially important for our community. We've actually had a few conversations publicly, and I've had a few privately, about how Tildes can be damaging or isolating to the women who are on it. Unfortunately, in my time here, I've seen several women leave the site or fall away from it, much as you did, presumably at least in part because it isn't a welcoming and inclusive space for them. Sexist talking points and behaviors still come up here, and the site and its discussions, even when operating without a specific gendered focus, are still overwhelmingly male.
I wish I knew what we could do about this, especially because what we've gotten wrong with regards to women I feel we've gotten right with regards to LGBT people. I have never felt safer or more welcome as a gay person anywhere on the internet than I have on Tildes. I'm not pigeonholed for it; I'm not treated like a unicorn; I'm not subject to abusive PMs or patronizing dismissals of my identity; I'm not relegated to my one tiny corner and told to stay there. Instead, I feel like we're included at large in the site, and our voices carry weight on issues beyond just our experiences. It's not uncommon for me to see LGBT users commenting to each other on non-LGBT issues, making this site regularly pass a sort of queer Bechdel test. When I think about how much their visbility matters to me as a member of that community, it puts into clear focus for me how a lack of representation of women on the site can be a negative experience for the women who are here.
(This isn't directly relevant to this thread, but since I just mentioned Ceasefire in here, I figured it makes sense to add this follow-up here)
They sent out an email today with the same content as this post: Ceasefire might be shutting down
Like I said, it's only been 3 weeks since they re-branded and launched mobile apps, but they're obviously not getting the level of adoption they'll need.
I'm not really in the mood to dig into
Fiesler et al.'s methodology but this does not match with my experience with Reddit. Anecdotally (but based on thousands of hours of using that bloody website), I would say it's quite rare to come across subs with no rules at all (enforcement is, of course, a different matter). I wonder if they cast their net a bit too wide and included too many 'ghost' subreddits in their analysis.To be clear here, do you mean here that Reddit has a culture of [free-speech, white males] or that free speech itself is to some extent white and male?
Speaking from personal experience, dead subreddits will accumulate in a slightly bizarre fashion spam posts in foreign languages. I imagine this could've severely skewed their analysis.
I know exactly what you mean, I tend to call it 'Hacker News Libertarianism'. However, by my estimation, it hasn't been the predominant political stance of most of Reddit for years now. For better or worse, the days when you could assume that the average person on Reddit would know who Richard Stallman is and what the value of
sizeof(int)would be on a standard x86 PC are long gone, and the political culture has changed with it. To the extent that Reddit has a political stance these days, it's mostly the same liberal moderate leftism of Twitter but tinged with a bit of the old-school /r/atheism style pro-intellectualism (being conspicuously excited about rocket launches and consciously angry about fundamentalist preachers).