[buckler]

Do you feel the moderation over there is enough though, even on the "nicely moderated places" that you mention?

Compared to other communities where admins/mods delete users' comments to a much higher frequency relative to Reddit and freely edit or move unfitting submissions & comments, I've always felt the lack of moderation on Reddit for the most part has been the reason for attracting trolls and users making hateful comments.

And the thing is, Reddit looks to be a very hard place to moderate as large number of Redditors seem to become very mad when heavy moderation happens (seeing from the large # of "I thought this site was all about freedom of speech"-type comments when r/jailbait got banned few months back).

When the lack of moderation attracts all those characters who post "shit", filtering via voting just becomes useless as you mention in your other comment.

[zacharycohn]

It's all about establishing ground rules. /r/askscience is the posterchild of this - they have 250k+ subscribers, and the discussion is still interesting, thought provoking, and on topic. Other subreddits, like /r/gaming, have devolved into nothing more than image macros and meme posts. The difference is 100% the ground rules that are set, and then the moderators sticking to those ground rules.

If I were in control of Reddit for a day, I'd create a "How to Build Community" packet for to give to new moderators. Often they're just promoted for being good members of the community - but that doesn't mean they know how to run or grow a good one.

[flomo]

The whole 'free speech/minimal moderation/no-censorship' is one of the core reason Reddit 'scales'. Unlike most sites, there's no sign out front saying you can't post there. No matter how terrible you are, someone will agree with you, and if you find the right sub-sub-sub-reddit, everyone will agree with you.

The other aspect is that voting systems are groupthink systems. Once the userbase gets large enough, the moderation system does not function in a way that encourages debate or questions common assumptions. It seems to be a terminal problem, which nobody knows how to fix except to escape to smaller fora.

[chimeracoder]

> Do you feel the moderation over there is enough though, even on the "nicely moderated places" that you mention?

There's a huge range in how hands-on moderators are, and it varies dramatically by subreddit. Some subreddits are notoriously draconian; others permit pretty much anything. I don't think it's possible to make a statement about moderation on reddit overall, across subreddits.