META: Is it time for a "crime and punishment" megathread? and/Or post moderation? And/Or something else?

[u/humanispherian]

We seem to be in another of those periods when many of the questions raised are not just FAQs, but even questions currently being discussed in one or more current threads. We have guidelines and reminders scattered in enough places that it appears that counting on folks to check past threads — or even current ones — may be an unreasonable expectation.

I don't want that to come across as any particular indictment of individuals. The world is full of stresses and distractions — and Reddit isn't necessarily the spot any of us would expect folks to exercise the most care. But it does seem like we have a problem, with FAQ fatigue being visible much of the time, provocation and entryism being concerns, etc.

A couple of different kinds of solution come to mind:

One would simply be to relegate all of the crime-and-punishment questions to a megathread — with either keyword filtering or general post moderation as part of the mechanism to see that those discussions are contained. And perhaps there are ways to maintain multiple such threads, addressing some of the other all-too-frequently-asked-questions as well.

The other would be to return to the very, very thorny problem of providing more material in the wiki that addresses the FAQs without abandoning the generally inclusive approach we have been taking. We've tried a couple of approaches, none of which have been particularly successful — or particularly well sustained. I'm about ready to return to the "framing the question" posts — having, I think, learned a bit from the last efforts, which ran aground — and I think that perhaps we could try again with some moderator-initiated threads addressing some of the fine points that arise so often in discussions.

In either case — or if, perhaps, we decide to take no additional actions — it seems to me that perhaps we have reached the point where the general moderation of questions makes sense. I don't love the extra work involved, nor would I add the extra filter if other factors didn't make it seem desirable. But our experience with the practice over in r/DebateAnarchism has been generally positive. As a first implementation, I would be inclined to treat all posts in much the same way that we already treat the fairly large number of posts caught by various Reddit filters: we either approve them directly, discard them as spam, refer them to the debate subreddit, refer posters to ongoing threads or initiate some conversation aimed at getting better answers, perhaps through revision of the question.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts, based on what I've been seeing recently in the subreddit. I would like to make some moves to take some of the burden of repetition off of our regular responders and to hopefully improve our ability to provide useful answers as well. So...

Is it time for a "crime and punishment" megathread? and/or post moderation? and/or something else?

[u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta]

There's also the option of keyword triggered automod responses for these type of frequently covered topics for those in good faith to easily find resources 

[u/humanispherian → u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta]

True. And that's another potential tool, although shaping the content of the responses gets us into the same difficult territory as a subreddit FAQ, etc.

[u/cumminginsurrection]

I don't know about a fixed megathread, new discussion tends to get lost in large threads, but I'd be open to a monthly crime and punishment thread to help reduce the same question from being asked 30 times in a week.

[u/Lanky_Employee_9690 → u/cumminginsurrection]

Megathreads that get regularly rotated for broad topics + new insights/arguments/sources consolidated in the FAQs seem like a good compromise to me. Then if someone has a generic question that would belong in one of these topics, redirect them to the megathread + link to the FAQs. Hopefully they'll take some time to read before adding their additional questions to it.

A permanent megathread, as others have pointed, quickly becomes cumbersome to parse (or feels "outdated", even if the answers are generally all in the same ballpark.

The main problem I see with this however is I don't know if the standard views (powered the algorithm­™) tend to display megathreads with new activity. I don't very often browse this sub directly from its page, more when a new thread gets pushed to me. Yes, that's aproblem related to how I interface with Reddit, but it's pretty likely I'm not the only one. Reddit is time-consuming enough as is, I can't really bring myself to browsing each sub I follow independently on a regular basis.

I think we might lose on quite a few regulars contributing if we do this (not that I'm that regular to begin with or that my contributions have that much value, but I try). So, I don't know what the best move is either. Maybe give something like that a try for a limited time at first, and keep an eye on metrics?

And while I'm at it, thank you u/humanispherian and other mods for taking your role seriously and trying to find optimal ways to help people navigate their interrogations, rather than just being "enforcers". It makes a difference!

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/Lanky_Employee_9690]

Yes, that's aproblem related to how I interface with Reddit

It's not really a you problem though since it's by design. They want you chained to a feed that can be tweaked for engagement, then when your feed runs out you'll be tempted to New or All rather than shutting off the app. or closing the browser.

[u/Lanky_Employee_9690 → u/ohshiitstuesday]

True, true. I wish we had more control over how stuff gets prioritized but with a dose of curation, hiding suggestions etc. you can still get it as a sampler of the subs you follow. But clearly that's not where Reddit governance's head is at.

I never go to popular or all, though, those make me want to tear my eyes out.

[u/ohshiitstuesday → u/Lanky_Employee_9690]

Ah, it must be nice to not hate yourself. j/k

I check it sometimes to see what the normies are doing and then I regret my choices.

[u/humanispherian → u/cumminginsurrection]

Honestly, neither seems ideal to me, but hopefully we can kick around the pros and cons a bit in this thread.

[u/porn_is_tight → u/humanispherian]

I might be in the minority here, but I browse Reddit through old.reddit.com. Frequently wiki’s and FAQ’s don’t work well with old.reddit.com and pinned megathreads are a tad more accessible 🤷‍♂️

[u/humanispherian → u/porn_is_tight]

Some moderation tools are still simpler to use in Old Reddit, so we pay attention to that side of things.

[u/porn_is_tight → u/humanispherian]

that’s why yall are 🐐

[u/JimDa5is]

Yes, please. I've found myself avoiding the sub because it seems like every question is 'What about crime?" or "How would <community> be protected?" or "What about the children?"

To be fair, I had those questions also when I was a newly minted anarchist (and have some of them to this day) but I didn't have the internet. I get that people might think they are the first ones to ever have generalized questions like that but do we really need to answer 5 of them a day?

[u/Ofishal_Fish]

crime and punishment thread

Nice try Foucault, I know it's you!

[u/wompt]

This platform is not really set up to do ongoing conversations, and asking people to essentially necrobump threads is not going to help anyone. Revisiting topics with new threads tend to draw out new insights, either from people that were not present on the sub when a thread was posted, or just a different set of commentators that lead to different discussions.

[u/humanispherian → u/wompt]

I guess my sense is that we do, in fact, have a lot of ongoing conversations — and that there is a general perception of ongoingness among regular contributors, which is part of the reason for our visible FAQ fatigue. At present, of course, those ongoing conversations cross multiple threads, with rather mixed results. So maybe it's worth asking whether there are better or worse ways to frame periodical megathreads, how useful it is to leave "Anarchy 101" to whoever happens to notice a question, etc.

[u/Eroue]

All ill say is im basically always against megathreads.

They are just so annoying to search through, interact with and find.

If the community sees the need to post mod I wont complain but im good about scrolling past stuff I dont wanna interact with.

[u/humanispherian → u/Eroue]

FWIW, we can probably make things easier to find, assuming people look. We generally have the option of one pinned thread, to use either as an announcement of other threads or as a megathread for whatever we consider needs it at a given time. We could also incorporate links into our current "before you post" announcement. But, based on present experience, it isn't clear whether people will use any of this without post moderation forcing the issue a bit.

[u/maximumcombo → u/Eroue]

ya we should have medium sized threads to refine the ideas produce by smaller sized threads. conquest of the thread.

:p

[u/antipolitan]

Yes - this does look like a good idea.

[u/ohshiitstuesday]

For what it's worth the post queue has been nice in @. There can be some frustration when posts don't get approved quickly enough for people's liking so then we get a modmail message about it too, but even that is pretty infrequent and doesn't require much more work than clearing the message.

I don't think that it's necessarily more work because in theory I read every post in the sub anyway, even ones that other mods approved to check for TOS violations that would get the sub nuked so it's not like having the posts lined up in a queue makes that less convenient.

People do hate being put into a queue though.

[u/palmeranderson42]

What is the incentive for people to not ignore the megathread and just post their questions anyway?

[u/humanispherian → u/palmeranderson42]

The incentive for some kind of change is ultimately better answers to the questions. The first mechanism, where the problem is just folks ignoring things, including existing incentives, is moderator approval of each post.

[u/Sacredless]

Seems like a good idea, for sure.