Really? I believe the opposite is true. I think reddit needs more moderation. I wish mods wouldn't be as afraid to lay down the ban-hammer. I think the mods of /r/News were justified in their approach, and that these censorship stories coming out about reddit are due to an ignorance of how reddit works.
The mods are fighting a battle against the lowest common denominator and losing. The beauty of reddit is that anyone can create their own subreddit and mod it however they see fit. If you want an easy going subreddit with mods that are hands-off, you're free to create one or subscribe to one. If a mod wants to rule their domain with an iron fist, their free to do that too.
More importantly, the users are free to subscribe to any subreddit they wish. Users can literally vote with their feet and have done so on more than one occasion. Your proposed overhaul would change that dynamic. It's a dynamic which has helped reddit get to the level it's at now. People like to believe the collapse of digg contributed to reddit's success, but the fact is, (according to google trends), reddit had already surpassed Digg long before the big collapse.
I agree with you. I think the most useful subreddits by far are heavily moderated subreddits like /r/AskHistorians or /r/Standup.
I think the subreddit idea is brilliant. If reddit is going to survive, it will need to increase transparency for mods, and decrease the emphasis on the default subreddits. The problem is not that there's too much moderation, the problem is that the default subreddits have such a wide audience because so many users never bother to subscribe to anything else. If a reddit competitor offered the democracy of subreddits without the gatekeepers of the default subreddits I would switch in a second.
If my memory serves, there were quite a few controversies that led to a bunch of people coming to reddit from Digg. There were quite a few influxes of Digg refugees. redditors complained about quality drops every time. This is before subreddits, of course.
The challenge, I think, is combining democracy with with some kind of editorial function. I think what it comes down to is what happens when you click the comments button.
Really? I believe the opposite is true. I think reddit needs more moderation. I wish mods wouldn't be as afraid to lay down the ban-hammer. I think the mods of /r/News were justified in their approach, and that these censorship stories coming out about reddit are due to an ignorance of how reddit works.
The mods are fighting a battle against the lowest common denominator and losing. The beauty of reddit is that anyone can create their own subreddit and mod it however they see fit. If you want an easy going subreddit with mods that are hands-off, you're free to create one or subscribe to one. If a mod wants to rule their domain with an iron fist, their free to do that too.
More importantly, the users are free to subscribe to any subreddit they wish. Users can literally vote with their feet and have done so on more than one occasion. Your proposed overhaul would change that dynamic. It's a dynamic which has helped reddit get to the level it's at now. People like to believe the collapse of digg contributed to reddit's success, but the fact is, (according to google trends), reddit had already surpassed Digg long before the big collapse.