I'm aware of the origins, but this is a prime example of the CAP theorem for communities:
Pick 2:
- little moderation
- low amount of drama (for lack of a better word)
- high diversity of topics
Reddit wants to be all 3 (just like Twitter), but there are reasons even 4chan has a huge amount of "janitors". It's pretty impossible to not have to deal with crap when you've decided white nationalists need a place to talk, and it should be on your site.
i disagree. reddit is a great balance because they have editorial control of the front page, and then they have all. subs have moderators that can choose varying levels of moderation, sort of a "let the states decide" style compromise. high moderation leads to great subs like /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians. reddit can have both high intersubmoderation and low standardization of what ideas are moderated. you can ban subs that have mods who refuse to enforce site rules. but once you start removing subs because their political beliefs dont match consensus, you get an echo chamber.
reddit should take every opportunity to work on the algorithm and make it so the front pages surfaces the best content possible. they can make sure posts they dont like never reach the front. but once they inject editorial control of all, their ideals are compromised.
the drama is caused by mods who want all the other mods to have the same beliefs, so they dont have as much crap to clean up. if you dont want to be a janitor, dont volunteer. alternatively reddit could pay for janitors? reddit could drastically reduce drama if it had better moderation tools, and better community tools. they could take their metareddits so much further. if you read the chat logs, the default mods dont like other people on 'their' site, who think different, and act differently.
Pick 2:
- little moderation
- low amount of drama (for lack of a better word)
- high diversity of topics
Reddit wants to be all 3 (just like Twitter), but there are reasons even 4chan has a huge amount of "janitors". It's pretty impossible to not have to deal with crap when you've decided white nationalists need a place to talk, and it should be on your site.