[CamelCaseName]

Please let me know if you have any ideas for reversing this.

I help moderate a mid-size subreddit (100,000-500,000 subscribers) and we're completely overrun by low quality content.

We tried adding new rules, silently removing/banning offending users, and making repeat announcements, but it seems like it's too little too late. A rehashed joke post can easily receive 100+ points in an hour while a good post may receive, at most, 20 points in the same time.

[tokyodude]

This is just an idea but ...

Don't make voting visible and don't show people their points. You still need voting so popular topics bubble to the top. You still maybe need user points so users who post bad content get bad scores? (maybe you don't need this).

What you don't need is for any of it to be visible. User's seeing their points go up is a gamification technique that pushes their (and my) button. "Oh! I just got 150pts!" feels so good so I'm compelled to try to get more points.

I notice my point total here on HN. Every time I see it go up I'm conscious of a little pleasure bump I get "oh, some people agreed with me or thought my post was useful!". I've thought about writing a browser extension to hide it from myself. Mostly the only thing I want to know is if I got replies.

[narrator]

The problem with reddit is putting together a deep thoughtful piece is worthless because it will be yesterday's news and confined to obscurity in a matter of hours. This didn't happen on forums where the topic got bumped every time there was a reply.

[puranjay]

I miss old school forums. I've been visiting my old haunts and they're all deserted now. Reddit has eaten them all and the internet has become poorer as a result

[wmeredith]

It’s seems like that issue could be solved by tweaking the ranking algorithm to prefer recent comments/activity.

[laurieg]

On another mid size sub we decided to take a hard line: Text posts only, automod flags on image links, banning people who break the rules.

It changed the sub significantly. Some people liked the more serious tone, some people felt like the fun had been sucked out. At the end of the day, you can't please everyone.

[robinoh]

Let's ask Reddit to allow moderators to manually change the algorithm and apply different rules for jokes/ images/ self. i.e. in order to rank, a joke would need 5x as many up votes than an original content/ discussion/ post.

[sincerely]

Making the barrier to post low-quality content slightly higher will always help. For instance banning direct link posts and only allowing self posts.

[jacquesm]

Limit the number of subscribers to 50K or so. Only let new ones in when old ones churn. Remove the ability to post images.

[toasterlovin]

Don't allow photos or video.

[api]

No photos, no video, no memes.