Interesting. I feel like I've been fighting for this for a year, having nearly come to blows twice, and then suddenly "I win." If I may ask, what was the cause of your change of heart?
It wasn't this influx of users. If you recall, I gave you a heads-up regarding it in a PM a couple of weeks ago. Actually, I brought it up for discussion about six months ago while you were on hiatus. I'm not against everything you like.
Huh. re-reading the PMs again it's a little more clear. Let's see what you do with it. Having been accused for the better part of four years of being a "power user" (on a site where nobody really is) it'll be interesting to watch the social dynamic on a site where "power users" are 99% of the experience.
>Having been accused for the better part of four years of being a "power user" (on a site where nobody really is) it'll be interesting to watch the social dynamic on a site where "power users" are 99% of the experience. I always thought the backlash against "power users" (whatever that means) on reddit was absolutely fucking ridiculous. According to the average redditor, a power user is someone who... uses reddit a lot. I think. If that's the case... what's the big deal? "Power users" make or break a community. They are the ones submitting new posts. They are the ones commenting on the threads. They are the 10% who are essentially creating all of the content that the other 90% consumes. They are the ones moderating those communities to make sure the trash and spam never see the light of day. I like hubski because it makes that user dynamic very clear from the start. The content on your feed is determined by the users you follow. It's blatantly obvious that the "power users" are the ones making your hubski experience an enjoyable one. Not to mention, if you don't like what the power users have to say, fuck them, don't follow them, don't comment on their posts. Follow the people you like, and your hubski experience will reflect that.
Where Power Users Come From Reddit's creators did a piss-poor job of explaining what karma does. They did this, I think, because if it was fundamentally obvious that it did nothing they feared it wouldn't incentivize the proles. And, as Reddit's model is based on the power of link aggregation, the "game" everyone wants to play serves Reddit better if they favor link karma over comment karma. There's nothing that anyone can see about a Reddit user easily beyond their name and their scores. So, names and scores become the coin of the realm - assuming you care about the game. As the majority of Redditors don't understand just how easily the game is played, and as they've been on for a few months and have yet to crack 10k comment karma, and as the more time they spend on Reddit the less human and proud of themselves they feel, they naturally presume that anyone who "Reddits better than they do" is 1) a neckbeard loser 2) a cheater. Combine that with the fact that Reddit's culture is such that if you "reddit well" and don't moderate something, you aren't doing your "civic duty." So now the neckbeard losers and cheaters are rigging the game. Obviously they're here to keep citizens down. Obviously they're committing all sorts of fraudulent malfeasance in order to have such high scores. And obviously, since their name is on the right hand side every time you click on comments, they have "power." What makes it even worse is that the responsibilities and abilities of moderators is poorly understood by the rank and file and rarely explained by the staff. So the godlike powers of moderators are presumed extant by the average user, to the point where they get pissed off if you don't use your nonexistent powers to improve their user experience. Into that gap jump a whole bunch of people who really just want the website to be cooler, but the website gives them exactly zero tools to accomplish it. So what do they do? 1) they collude. 2) they write up blacklists. 3) they gather in private subreddits where the proles can't watch them. 4) They become much closer to other moderators than they do to the people whose content they moderate. 5) Moderators end up going full Stanford Prison Experiment where the imaginary line between "moderator" and "user" is enough to excuse dehumanizing, disrespectful behavior, which exudes from the very pores of the majority of the moderator class. In short, Reddit's code makes no provision for power users, but Reddit's functionality requires power users, so Reddit conjures power users from the aether. "Reddit has no power users" was true until No Pics Day. After that, the plebe/prole divide on Reddit became stark. I'll bring this up again - your entire SFWPorn network is deliberately hostile to the average user. You excuse this by saying "well become a moderator." But what about people who just want to submit pictures? Your solution is "enforce the rules so that you can bend the rules." In effect, you're saying "become a power user." I don't think you thought of it that way, and I think that's why we've come to blows over it so much. There are lots of people on the earth who are not uncomfortable with authority. I'm not one of them. I strenuously dislike having to say "mother may I" before I do anything, and I deeply resent having the ruling be subject to arbitrary whim. Nonetheless, that structure - "dance for the moderators such that they may grant you a boon" - is the backbone of Reddit. And it pisses a lot of people off. Reddit users hate moderators for the same reason they hate movie studios, they hate record labels, they hate cable companies. Moderators don't give anything - they take. Theirs is a reductive contribution - the best thing they can do is separate the wheat from the chaff. The problem is that there is no USDA guide to delineate "wheat" from "chaff" and on the Internet, someone is going to have a different opinion from you always. Combine that with a website where the most fundamental thing you can do is "vote" and it stinks of tyranny. It stinks to high heaven. The guys who understand the system? Power users. The guys who run afoul of the system? Rank and file. et voila. Instant hatred. If you really wanna see how bad it is, go start a new Reddit account. Don't tell anyone who you are. Using only the information presented to you in what is readily obvious from your front page, submit a link. Now message a mod to get it out of the spam filter that you're invariably in. Now wait for them to release it. Now watch it die anyway because the Nights of the New hate everyone. Now wait a day and watch the very post that you submitted 24 hours ago jump up to 3000 points in /r/pics because ALL_CAPS_UNDERSCORE_OBSCENITY with eleventy million points just sailed right through the very gauntlet you don't even understand yet. You'd hate syncretic, too. You'd hate all of them. Now imagine if you knew that four of the top 20 accounts on there were group accounts. Reddit didn't used to have power users, yet it persisted in hating them. As a result, Reddit conjured power users to hate… and they are worse than anything Reddit could have imagined.
This is fascinating. I'd never though of moderators as required power users, but that's exactly what they are. To be honest I hadn't thought much at all about reddit's structure until recently. Having said that, you are angry about this. You sound furious, and I only partially understand why. I assume you've been a mod on Reddit, and obviously your involvement in it and passion for these kinds of sites fuels that anger, but I really wanna know what it's directed towards. You tend to be right (by which I mean I tend to agree with your points) but I'm never particularly upset by them.
Separating the world into "us" and "them" allows "us" to do terrible things to "them" with a clear conscience. On Reddit, "They" are the ones who keep things running for the benefit of "us." And because that line goes uncontested, "us" doing horrible things to "them" is a spectator sport. I once told someone that his post did not abide by the rules of a subreddit devoted to "favors". My mistake was I did so impolitely. I couldn't say anything without a hundred downvotes and dozens of hatemail PMs for several weeks. All in good fun, though, right? I mean, why would I bother establishing a subreddit devoted to helping people out if I didn't want to be called a niggerfag jewcunt by every knuckle-dragger on the Internet for refusing someone the option to ask for several hundred dollars' worth of design work for free? Particularly when a few of the designers in that subreddit were homeless so what did they stand to lose?
I see what you mean- if you're doing something which is mildly unpopular on a place where you can't ignore people and there's 0 cost to communicate then when the community grows so does the absolute number of people who hate you. That is an extremely reasonable concern, especially considering your popularity on both sites. Have you had any trouble like that on Hubski? I know that you and mk don't agree on everything, but it doesn't seem much like he's ruining your experience of the site on a daily basis.
Alright. I'm glad I'm following you. You're pretty on top of things.
Quite honestly, that's by design. There is a learning curve, a barrier to entry. If you want to submit in our network, you need to read the sidebar, read the FAQ, and even then, it's still largely subjective in a lot of cases which subreddit a picture "belongs in"... so users submit, they get their image removed, and most likely have a conversation with a mod about it. Usually several conversations until they get the hang of things. The users who are hostile about it - who cares? No, seriously. I ban them and move on. There are two million redditors and only a few of them willing to put in the blood sweat and witchhunts necessary to be a good moderator. If you cuss out one of my mods because they asked you to post your image in a different subreddit, you are less than dirt to me. I've been through it too many times - we all have, really, any experienced moderator - that at this point, if the user isn't willing to play ball, they can go back to /r/pics for all I care. The SFWPorn Network is designed to do two things - showcase pretty pictures, and breed moderators. If you never submit an image, like 99% of the userbase, you will be perfectly happy. When you cross that barrier into a submitter, and you do it frequently, the system is designed so that eventually, you will most likely become a network moderator... and it's very effective at it. Of course, not everyone wants the responsibility, and that's fine. The small class of users who want to submit things but don't want to read the rules or listen to the mods... they may as well not exist for all I care. As you know well, I used to view reddit through rose-colored glasses. After almost two years of moderating, I don't anymore. Since the defaults have blown up, it seems like most redditors are crude, vulgar 14 year olds who would sooner call you a faggot than thank you for anything.I'll bring this up again - your entire SFWPorn network is deliberately hostile to the average user.
Twice your moderators have PM'd me to answer questions about photography raised by users in their subreddits. Three times they've asked me to cross-post my work to other subreddits. Yet I refuse to play because this: Is condescending, insulting and derogatory and I won't stand for it. You aren't judging my ability as a photographer, you're judging my ability to abide by your arbitrary taxonomy. You're judging my ability to cowtow to mad hatters. You're seeing how high I jump when you shout at me because you see shouting at me as your privilege. Who cares? The moderators in your network that wish I was still submitting. Here's a lake your network will never see: Not because I don't think it's worthy, but because I don't think your network is.even then, it's still largely subjective in a lot of cases which subreddit a picture "belongs in"... so users submit, they get their image removed, and most likely have a conversation with a mod about it.
And that's the point where I usually say, "Feel free to unsubscribe." I built /r/EarthPorn up from nothing. I grew a network that began as three scrawny subreddits with only a few thousand subscribers between them into the quality photography powerhouse that it is today, with 40+ subreddits, hundreds of frequent submitters and several hundred thousand users. /r/EarthPorn will have 200,000 subscribers very soon. It became that large and successful because I promoted the hell out of it, and ran it with an iron fist from day 1. There are no polls, there is no community outreach, you do what the moderators say, or you can leave. Most of our users like it that way. The ones that don't, well... they left.Is condescending, insulting and derogatory and I won't stand for it.
Have done. Good riddance. Here's the part you're missing: you're overseeing a subreddit ostensibly dedicated to sharing images, but your core mission is actually "censor images." Your core skills are "talk about images" and "classify images" and your highest-ranking images are generally not OC. Because Corbis or Getty aren't half the dicks you are. And /r/DoesAnybodyElse will have 160,000, despite the fact that their charter is essentially "kill the subreddit." In other words, your "growth" is only marginally better than a group of people dedicated to killing growth. And here's the amazing thing. Flickr is dead. Instagram is masturbatory lo-fi. Deviantart is teen sketches of Manga. Yet somehow you've managed to keep the SFWPorn network from becoming THE imaging community for the Internet even as /r/IAmA lands Obama. Do you think they have any less of an iron fist than you do? I don't. I think they're less arbitrary. So keep patting yourself on the back. But when your goalposts are "we've had less explosive growth than Reddit as a whole" I think you need to recognize that even grading on the curve, you're falling far short of success. exactly.And that's the point where I usually say, "Feel free to unsubscribe."
/r/EarthPorn will have 200,000 subscribers very soon
The ones that don't, well... they left.
A lot of that has to do with the name. The majority of redditors use reddit during work or school. Lots of work and school networks block anything with the word "Porn" in it. There are other reasons, such as our refusal to worship imgur (anything rehosted is removed). That's all irrelevant, though. I don't think you understand how I moderate most of my subreddits. In subreddits like /r/TheoryOfReddit, where the community was essentially handed to me, I take my mod duties very seriously. We discuss every rule change long and hard, we get community feedback, and we have a very large mod team for a moderately sized subreddit, meaning more community representation. I feel like I have a responsibility there. If I didn't, I wouldn't have accepted the moderator position. Not to mention, that subreddit is actually productive. It isn't just devoted to eye candy or humor. Most of my subreddits, however, are subreddits that I created myself. They did not exist before I typed their name into the "create a subreddit" box and hit submit. I'm talking about subreddits like /r/EarthPorn and /r/reactiongifs. They are also usually "low-effort content" subreddits... images. It started when I used to browse /r/pics on a daily basis. I got sick of the chaos, and I started to create subreddits that would siphon off one type of image or another, either to improve /r/pics by removing crap (/r/reactiongifs), or to filter out the good content so I didn't have to wade through the memes and image macros that dominated /r/pics at the time (The SFWPorn Network). I made the rules exactly how I wanted them, and I submitted the type of content I wanted to see there, and I added the mods that I wanted to add there. Reddit policy is that mods are gods in their own subreddits, and the top mod is Zeus, so I acted accordingly. They are essentially moderator playgrounds, and the subscribers are free to come and go as they please. Sure, we all want to see the subreddit thrive, but we also want to have fun doing so. That's very important. No one's getting paid. If you aren't having fun, why bother? As you know, getting called a niggerface jewcunt isn't fun, so we ban those people. And then if they send a mod mail cussing us out even more, we reply in nothing but reaction gifs. That, my friend, is fun. I never wanted The SFWPorn Network to be THE imaging community on the internet. I wanted it to do exactly what it's doing now - provide "eye candy" images in various categories for easy consumption. That's it. When I go to /r/EarthPorn I want to see a landscape - not a waterscape, not a cityscape, not some abandoned farmhouse. I want to see a natural landscape. If I wanted to see those other things I'd go to /r/WaterPorn or /r/CityPorn or /r/AbandonedPorn. If a moderator thinks a picture is in the wrong category, they remove it. If we could simply move it to another subreddit, we would, but you know that getting the mod tools we need from the admins is like pulling teeth. I doubt it will ever happen so we work with what we have. The SFWPorn Network is a nice little package, all wrapped up in a bow, designed to be mostly bot-moderated, with human mods simply 'moving' submissions that they feel are categorized incorrectly. We aren't catering to the submitters here, we're catering to the consumers. You see, I know how I could make The SFWPorn Network become THE imaging community on the internet. Remove all the rules about categories, and as long as it's serious photography (aka no memes/image macros), and vaguely related to the subject at all, it would be allowed. We wouldn't bother requiring the resolution in the title or any of the other weird rules. It would be /r/pics split into subcategories. In fact... wasn't that your suggestion in the first place?
Nope. My suggestion was to come up with rules that people could follow without playing "mother may I" because your dick gets hard telling people what to do. And we've probably spent ten thousand words on this and you still steadfastly refuse to see the fact that insisting people abide by your god-given right to be an arbitrary dick is what makes people hate moderators.
We have rules in the sidebar, we enforce those rules, and we're perfectly polite about it. If you disagree with those rules, that's fine, you can go start your own landscape photography subreddit and see how that does for ya. The fact that we've spent 10,000 words discussing this is proof that I was willing to listen to what you had to say about it. You didn't really suggest any solutions to any problems, you just bitched about the ones we had come up with. I really don't know where you want this discussion to go. One minute we were talking about power users and the next minute you were ranting about the SFWPorn Network.
The two are inextricably tied. I ask for "give me rules I can follow" and I get "I am Zeus and if I want you to have to interact personally with a moderator every time you want to post, you'll bloody well do it because moderators have absolute power." If you don't see a link - and if you don't see that every bit of enmity you've ever engendered has been wholly due to your attitude - you are beyond help.