Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we’d be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    IDK, I started using reddit 15 years ago. Maybe you had to contrast it to what it was back then to see it clearly.

    For instance it was open Source, which they abandoned about 10 years ago.

    Reddiquette was a thing that was actually observed, and you were reminded of if you broke it. Have you even heard of it?

    e/The_Doonald could never have existed if reddiquette had been observed. Pau who worked to prevent such things were fired in 2014.

    The new layout is pandering to bling and short attention span, a repeat of mistakes made by Digg, that hurt more valuable content, and increase the amount of comments that are nothing more than noise without value.

    Cofounder Alexis Ohanian was instrumental in the firing of Victoria, which till this day has no reasonable explanation why she was fired.

    There are few real values left at reddit, but fortunately they exist here. ;)

    • ijeff@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      16-year Reddit account here. There was definitely a different atmosphere in the earlier days. The community aspect felt stronger.

      • Paradox@lemdro.id
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        1 year ago

        They also hired exclusively from the community, and were part of it. All the early admins, myself included, came from reddit. The idea of an admin with a 1 karma account was absurd

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I agree, and the difference is huge. As you say, there was much more community about it. Not because it was smaller IMO, it was plenty big when I started using it. But the users were different, and it wasn’t as toxic as it became later.

        • ijeff@lemdro.id
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          1 year ago

          Definitely. Somewhere along the way, it was also missed that downvotes were intended to be for content that were off-topic or not constructive to the conversation rather than something one merely disagreed with. I’ve found much of my moderating had become about reminding people to keep it civil.

          • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yes absolutely, it’s bad rediquette to downvote just because you disagree, if it contributes to the debate.

            I wonder how many even know that on reddit today? I bet most think they are just “like” buttons.

            • XiELEd@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              As someone who joined Reddit when it became mainstream, I didn’t know that something like “Reddiquette” existed, and that it had changed drastically in its history. I thought it just boiled down to social norms like “NO EMOJIS ALLOWED”, don’t ask obvious questions (which can be subjective), or answer a question that was meant to be rhetorical.

                • XiELEd@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Oh shit, it is. I don’t think I’ve ever read that, and most people probably haven’t too, if I looked at the comment section on any post on r/all I would see the reddiquette broken many times (I am personally guilty with non-transparent editing). Most of the behaviour I found annoying on Reddit were breaking the Reddiquette rules lol.

                  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    It’s probably pretty hard to imagine the actual difference in quality of debate when you haven’t seen it.

                    But I’m guessing it’s easy to imagine that there would be a difference.

        • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          More mainstream appeal and younger users joining doesn’t really help with the quality of the discussion. IIRC when I created an account at reddit in 2011, the active users is still under 50 mils compared to 500 mils. Eternal September is a very real thing.