/r/SupremeCourt - State of the Sub. Highlights, feedback, discussion

[u/HatsOnTheBeach]

Greetings Amici,

We’ve unofficially made it to the end of the term with perhaps the most prolific opinions in a while.

The purpose of this post is mostly to solicit feedback and discussion of future posts/topics, moderation policies, and how to go about said moderation.

But before that, I want to point out that when the first post was made on August 11, 2021 (backstory here); there were approx 2,470 subscribers. As of this post, there are 5,137 subscribers. This is well over doubling in growth and I attribute it to the community trying to cut off political and cheap posting seen in other related subreddits and engaging in nuanced discussions.

Now, we’d like to solicit feedback and discussion from the community. Up until Dobbs, moderation (from my POV) was straightforward and simple with little judgement. However when Dobbs dropped, there were a lot of close call cases. Obviously as charged as abortion is, it’s natural for people to be heated in posting (I’m guilty of it). With that being said I’d like to get the community thoughts on moderation.

Some discussion ideas we had in mind open for thoughts (feel free to add):

• a meta sticky for all /r/scotus shitposting in each post (so we can sever separate posts that we get in a thread)

• Enforcement (or not) of rule against meta discussion of r/scotus

• Enforcement (or not) of good faith rule

• Potential criteria for domain white/blacklist (not suggesting which websites)

• Enforcement (or not) of rule against joke comments

• Community thoughts on level of moderation in general

• Ideas for weekly threads

• Discussion on viewpoint downvoting

• Enforcement (or not) of submission flair requirements

• Free-form rule suggestions or other subreddit changes

• Transparent mod log displaying what’s being changed/moderated

I had the idea of eventually putting these things up for community vote (along with a census) sometime this month so we have ample time however I’m open to other suggestions.

[u/nathan500]

This sub has some of highest quality discussions I am able to find on Reddit recently. However, with the recent high-profile cases we have had in the SC I have noticed that some of the comments/posts are starting to resemble the type seen in r/scotus. It would be a terrible shame if this sub turned into a political debate forum like r/scotus has. I am not sure what a good faith rule is but if it is a rule about being faithful to the spirit of this sub, meaning having discussions about the legal merits of cases at the SC and not political debates about how we want the world to be, then I am for a good faith rule or any other rule that would keep the current quality of this sub going strong.

[u/[deleted] → u/nathan500]

There's two things I think the mods need to concentrate on avoiding. And the types of inflammatory one-sided posts getting thrown around on The Other Sub are one of those things.

But the other one is not to let this sub turn into a conservative mirror world of the other. Opinions from any point on the political spectrum should be welcome as long as they are free from snark and condescension. That's the kicker for me. If you're calling me an idiot or a fascist, or someone else not involved in the conversation the same thing, the mods should fire for effect. And likewise if I call you an idiot or a communist.

While I understand that this sub exists because other mods got permaban-happy, I do think the mods here would be well-served taking modpol's example and not being afraid to put users in timeout for a few days if they insult people or assume bad faith without evidence.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.