| > almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button They forgot this within a few weeks of seeing rule breaking behavior. I recently went through some old logs and discussions from 7/8 years ago. People actually talked about how important it was to upvote content and follow rediquette. That discussion died because you have to enforce rediquette and the "honor code" fails when people see that abusing the code goes unpunished. This means that upvote downvote become like/dislike. This logically implies that if you want to make upvotes work, then you need to really prune your community for rule compliance. My favored example of this is badecon. ------------------------ The other issue really fascinating issue is how automation results in better filter bubbles. Before automod, people couldn't ban alt accounts fast enough. Ban bigot_1, and 10 minutes later you would have bigot_2. Until automation, banning was a fools errand. Later, bots could target words, so now your regexes would stop variations of N*er and other coded hate speech - which also meant that you could stop users from using the names of alternate subs. Now this may be a great thing. You ban bigot_2 and he can't speak anymore so he goes to create his own sub, where they say they will be a free speech zone (and vehemently downvote opposing ideas). Of course, these bastions also use the same tools, and they maintain their ideological purity. Leading to the final conclusion - that moderation is innately a question of morals and ethical leadership. Not of technological design. |