Need feedback for reddit alternative.
Posted by DudeApric@reddit | RedditAlternatives | View on Reddit | 23 comments
Yes, we are in the process of making reddit alternative, we want your suggestion and input in selecting our path, we will be introducing bunch of new features for the user to keep the platform engaging but we need to make sure that the platform has certain features needs some suggestion from reddit users.
1) should we keep the moderating community global? like once a user is assigned moderator tag it can contribute moderating to any community. This user can "ban for posting" or delete post or comment or should we keep the moderating per community based moderating only moderating a community.
2) user is allowed to post on any community basis of not karma but days like 5 day old account,etc.
3) it will have reputation system instead of karma you can earn by contributing and getting upvotes.
4) what will be engaging feature you wish to have on reddit we might built something similar to that feature
Thank you for reading this post till the last question. We appreciate your comments and feedback. We will be releasing the app within this month. So stay tuned!
couragetospeak@reddit
I resent being cross platform shaddowbanned without explaination. But Reddit is American owned, so no surprise there.
MereRedditUser@reddit
A reputation system like Stack Exchange is better than the karma system, but even better would be to have separate reputation scores per subreddit. Currently, you may say something that is legitimate in terms of community merit, but not in the commercial interest of the specific subreddit where you posted, which racks up negative karma, but that will follow you everywhere to all subreddits and prevents participation. It's a weaponization of points, even if your comments are completely professional and don't violate any rules.
If we maintain points that are local to each subreddit, then at least you can only be barred from the subreddit where it is unpopular. The echo chamber effect will be restricted to that subreddit. One can argue that it creates a very insular subreddit, but it's better than effectively censoring users across all of reddit for the disapproval of a small special interest group.
Currently, the point system can be gamed by deliberately posting calculated superficial but agreeable comments in pop subreddits with high volume. That should not be the criterion for being able to express one's thoughts. Perhaps one way to level the playing field is to scale the upvotes in a subreddit by dividing by the traffic volume of the subreddit. This way, the impact of the points is relative to the size of the subreddit. I mean, if 25% of the users in a subreddit like your stuff, it shouldn't matter whether it's a small or large subreddit.
Additionally, the reason for distinguishing between posting karma and comment karma has never been made clear. It seems like just another way to prevent participation. It's easier to miss on one of the two criteria, but really, if you're going to post uncitizenly content, you can do it equally well as an original post and a comment.
As for moderation, we really need accountable behaviour. Stack Exchange does this by offloading moderation to votes. The requirement for moderator attention is reduced. You may disagree with some of the outcomes, but it seems less arbitrary than most of the moderation I've seen on Reddit. Maybe an improvement on the votes scheme may be the *ratio* of upvotes to downvotes. I mean, it's easier to get 3 downvotes in a high volume forum, which doesn't make sense. Hence, it seems like an obvious improvement to use ratios. It's so obvious that I wonder whether I'm overlooking a drawback.
Moderator conduct seems to be further improved by electing moderators. In Stack Exchange, this may make more sense because each Stack Exchange is very high volume. I don't know how well it would work for the smaller volumes of many subreddits. But I wonder if it can be any worse than the arbitrary manner in which moderators are chosen now.
Extending any one moderator's power across all subreddits may be a bad idea because it's not reasonable to expect people to be familiar with the nuances of the different groups.
Being able to post *should* be controlled somehow to prevent trolling (just think of the Usenet of the 90's), but the policies currently used in Reddit simply create a old boy's echo chamber. A better scheme may be to prevent posting for a time period if a user racks up enough rule violations -- *not* because of unpopular views. No societal advancement has ever come about by following the prevailing social views. As I said, allowing participation based on popularity only creates a mob mentality.
To prevent abuse of the violation reporting mechanism, however, there should ideally be an 2nd level review by another impartial moderator, and the process needs to be transparent. Stack Exchange sort of achieves this effect by allowing edits to closed posting, which are still visible, and by allowing comments. However, they may have recently disabled that feature, and that bodes poorly for transparent due process.
MereRedditUser@reddit
Subleties of using ratio of upvotes to downvotes
Using the ratio of upvotes to downvotes for karma solves the above problem. Some may rightfully point out some aspects of this scheme which is not ideal (though not as bad as simply counting raw votes). For a 1st example, as new users come into a group, the sentiments change with time, so we can't assume that the larger audience has the same sentiments as the smaller audience. For a 2nd example, for larger groups, people who read and vote on your post are less likely to be the entire audience because people only have so much time to spend on reddit, so any individual will read a smaller portion of the posts on a larger group.
The 2nd example isn't really a big deal because if users read an average of only (say) 30% of the posts in the larger group, that likely affects both upvotes and downvotes (on average), so taking the ratio of the two still makes sense.
The 1st example can be easily redressed through many different ways. For example, any particular vote can be scaled by the subreddit's traffic volume in the past week (or month), as of the time that the vote is made. The traffic volume can be measured in various ways, e.g., the number of visits to the subreddit, the number of posts and/or comments, etc. Alternatively, any one vote can be scaled according to the visits to the thread (at the time of the vote) or to the number comments made on the thread, optionally weighted by the votes on the comments and/or the original post.
These are all tiny details that can be tried with time, to the extent that we want to spend the time. One thing is for sure: No matter how simplistic the scheme chosen, it can be no coarser and less meaningfully informative than the current gross count of posting and comment karma as separate counts.
faustianredditor@reddit
I'm actually not nearly as much of a doomer about (1) as the others here. I could see a trust system (kinda like reputation, but you'd need to be more fine grained about it. Upvotes aren't enough, gotta make sure your "trust" score reflects the overall community's trust in a user) where everyone gets assigned a score, could be different across different communities, probably best if it counts for partial credit across community borders.
Perhaps something like
And yes, this is absolutely vulnerable to a "dictatorship of the masses" or a not-so-benevolent trust anchor dictator. (i.e. if you set yourself as the most trusted person and everyone can only earn trust by groveling at your feet)
The trust algorithm here would definitely need tweaking and finding the right "source" of trust, but it's a concept I've found to be way underexplored.
busymom0@reddit
Doesn't this kind of sound like how Stack Overflow moderation works?
DudeApric@reddit (OP)
We will be including a report function when around certain number of users have reported something it will be sent in moderator notification to review comment he will delet ethe post or comment and dismiss it and that's how the moderation will get help from user itself. That's why we are planning for global moderation then sub based will be much more secured and no monopoly as we keep track of moderator actions as they be keep in check.
NuderWorldOrder@reddit
Based on my experience as a SaidIt user, the one type of global moderator you might consider is some kind of "spam cop" role. That could be very useful (assuming your platform gets to the point where spam is a problem), so thinking about it early might be smart. But it's also a lot of power, so you might also want to think about some kind of accountability system.
DudeApric@reddit (OP)
We will be keeping track of moderator activities. Yes, all of there actions will be recorded in database and can access what they deleted and check if they are deleting useful post.
cerevant@reddit
Is it another closed system monolithic website? Then it is doomed to enshitification. The business model of "free until we can figure it out" is not sustainable. It has killed every Reddit predecessor, and is in the process of killing Reddit.
DudeApric@reddit (OP)
We offer more better and less costly system. Yes, we will have very less data required database in our system and less requirement for processing and storing data hence, we can run very few dollars so no need of much cost.
UnflinchingSugartits@reddit
Don't listen to the negative feedback. Just make your alternative and go from there. We all want different things here you can't please everyone
virtueavatar@reddit
How do you learn anything if you don't take negative feedback into account?
You can't solve any problems if everyone tells you all your ideas are good ideas even if they are not because you don't want to hear the negatives.
Delicious_Ease2595@reddit
Focus on why Reddit and Digg sucked
cerevant@reddit
So you are good as long as you aren't popular. Got it.
DudeApric@reddit (OP)
Not exactly quite the opposite. Even if the user grows exponentially it will still work flawlessly considering that we had design our platform and database considering the huge amount of input
cerevant@reddit
Still haven't said how you are going to pay for it.
faustianredditor@reddit
If reddit wasn't greedy it could easily have been funded by old-school reddit gold. You'd need a few decent programmers and not too much infrastructure and you can serve millions. Screw serving videos, that's too costly. Link to youtube like a normal person. Hosting costs? Fuck all on a big ship. That seems like a little bit of donations can easily lift that. Bigger projects have gotten away with purely voluntary payment.
DudeApric@reddit (OP)
You sums up what we could have said.
BlazeAlt@reddit
Any plan to be compatible with ActivityPub?
TheOneYouWillLike@reddit
A quick question, will it be Open Source?
TheOneYouWillLike@reddit
You need a Wikipedia like moderation system to make this work.
barrygateaux@reddit
1) really bad idea. anyone with a mod tag could do whatever the fuck they wanted all over the site. it will get abused.
2) people have been using social media for years already. if i have to wait a pointless arbitrary time before posting and commenting i'm instantly leaving and not coming back.
3) they both sound the same thing except for different names.
4) how will you deal with bots?
DudeApric@reddit (OP)
1) we really thought about it but using mods for the whole website seems to be the path that is different but also ofcourse our website keeps track record of all the moderator work, we can easily check the record of mods if they are abusing there rights easily like if someone has deleting post frequently will get checked and ensure the deleted post is spammy post. Keep global mod seems more secure to not monopolise a high ranking sub reddit in my opinion as mods will be checked easier if they are from global mods. Hence more secure and more correctly moderated which will the main use case of global mods.
2) we will give creator of the community to set the rule if they want to welcome anyone quickly or let them wait for few days after creating the account, again it is not user days when he joins community but instead it is the account age itself.
3) No we can do it much better your rep can also allow for a post to get featured in recommended post which will have higher chances of making it into the feed of the user but again it will be manually approved so no spam or low quality post... We want it to be engaging so upvotes recieved means karma will be present but in different form. We will gift the rep for tasks like daily reading 5 posts and upvote or getting upvotes just so we can have more engaging community.
4) human moderator yes we will need more human mods to counter it so banning them from posting while also keeping check on accounts manually in the future. For handling bots from post we have to rely on human moderators.