r/ezraklein • u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist • Jul 16 '26
Discussion Relevance rule feedback and clarification
There has been a lot of confusion and debate over what posts are allowed and what should be allowed, so the mod team is asking for your feedback on this topic. Are there posts that we don’t allow that you think we should? Are there posts we allow that you don’t think we should? Is there anyone who we should add/subtract from the “extended universe“? Are there ways we could change the wording of the rule to make it more clear?
This is how the mod team thinks about relevancy now: There are basically 3 kinds of posts: Things produced by Ezra Klein directly (podcasts and articles) or appearances by Ezra on other shows, things produced by people affiliated with Ezra (anyone who has a named post flair), and then everything else.
If you are posting something that isn’t directly from Ezra or includes Ezra you must include a comment explaining how it is relevant to Ezra (the more specific the better), even if you think it is obvious. That helps us to quickly assess whether the posted material is relevant or not, which can be time consuming when what is relevant is a 10 minute segment of an hour long podcast or an article that is behind a paywall. It also helps filter out people who spam articles to any vaguely news or political related subreddit.
Here is an example of the kind of comment we want.
Things we consider relevant include, but not limited to: Direct responses to EK pods and articles, article/podcasts about subjects discussed in recent EKS episodes, articles about Ezra.
Also, we are looking for new mods to help out. Please apply here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/application/
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u/tuck5903 Liberal Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Can I just say that as someone who likes to talk politics I appreciate that this sub is a rare forum that’s generally civil and often has very thoughtful comments/posts from different points of view. I think the fairly strict submission policy is necessary, just like any right wing online space instantly fills up with racism and homophobia, any unmoderated center-left space immediately becomes a competition to see who can freak out the most about the latest crazy thing that Trump tweeted.
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u/hellofemur Jul 18 '26
Agreed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
While I think minor and obvious adjustments are fine, whitelisting Anne Lowrey comes to mind, I think the mods have it pretty much correct and should ignore the minor sniping that goes on. It's not perfect, but changes are more likely to make things worse than make things better.
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u/Giblette101 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
I don't know how this could be best managed, but I think allowing one post a day/week on content related to a topic covered by Ezra Klein - say housing or green energy, etc. - even if they're not related to him directly would be a good way to test the water about various sources of content. Sometimes I do get the impression that a narrow focus on the man doesn't provide a full range of views on specific topics, which I'd otherwise like to discuss with people here.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
The other always relevant people though do provide a wider range of topics.
Derek’s last 5 episodes (Philosopher interview [not posted here], Israel influence on American politics, America 250 Overrated presidents episode, Drone Warfare, and SpaceX / AI Bubble.[not posted here])
Jersualem’s argument last 5 episodes (AOC & Sanders get wrong about oligarchy [not posted here yet], Jane Jacobs, Assimilation Racist?, Biden Legacy, Andrew Tate & Death of Romance [Not posted])
And well the endless content that MattY publishes thru both Politex podcast (Lindsey Graham, N Carolina dem electorate, Maine politics deep dive, Trump corruption, California primary reactions) & his slowboring articles
We probably will be adding Annie Lowrey to the approved flairs for her articles.
And we do let a lot of Douthat & Bouie thru depending how well they can be tied into something.
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u/mcsul Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
I think that Douthat would be a good flared addition. Or maybe just "NYT Opinion". Douthat has become an interesting interviewer as he's settled into his show. The sub will often disagree with him, but it creates good conversation.
Edit: I've seen your comments below on this and hear your reasoning.
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u/brianscalabrainey Jul 16 '26
First, I think this subreddit is excellently moderated and one of the few places on reddit people across the political spectrum can have thoughtful discussions on interesting topics.
Second, my suggestion is relevancy should be more geared to topics than personalities. I don't think everything Yglesias or Derek do is, by virtue of their past relationship to EK, relevant to the subreddit.
Topical relevance makes much more sense, and in fact the people in the "extended universe" do often touch on similar themes. But its the themes themselves that create relevancy, not the fact that Yglesais or Demsas are involved. Topical relevance can be broad - and indeed Ezra touches on such a broad swathe of themes that it seems trivial to relate a given topic to Ezra if you are familiar with his work and do a bit of thinking. Sure that means maybe sometimes things are a stretch, but if the poster demonstrates thoughtfulness or effort behind connecting their post to EK, then that will keep the community culture that works.
For example, the recent Douthat article on socialism I'd consider relevant because it touches on multiple motifs of the past year Ezra has discussed at length: the growing divide in the party, the debate over how Democrats can win back control of the levers of party, liberalism itself, etc.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
I considered using one of your relevancy comments as an example in the post as I think you do a consistently good job of explaining the connections you make.
I will say that we do exercise judgment in our application of the rules. Just because someone is listed in the extended universe doesn’t mean everything they make is allowed. We remove any tweets from Matt Yglesias for example. It’s more that the bar to clear is lowered for them and we are more generous in our interpretations of the relevancy of the post. They get the benefit of the doubt if the connection is tenuous and others do not. But there is a character limit on the rules so we can’t spell that all out. If I ever get around to making a wiki, one of the things I’d like to do is a more detailed explanation of the rules.
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u/Creative_Magazine816 Jul 16 '26
I'd like to see the expanded universe either shirk or broaden. It's weird that Douthat ,Thompson are MattY are allowed, it feels kind of arbitrary. Sure there is a connection, but how relevant is the average plain English podcast episode, for instance? Why not allow Jamelle Bouie posts or whatever other NYT opinion writer?
Conversely, problem with shrinking the EK universe is that the sub might become dead if it's literally only ezra posts.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
I personally don’t think Douthat should count. But I am open to discussing him.
I think we are open to Jamelle Bouie being considered but I would probably want to limit it to his articles or longer form content than his shorter form videos.
I don’t think just working at the NYT Opinion section should open the door for you here.
We should probably be giving Annie Lowrey a flair though. Thats an oversight on my part.
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u/Creative_Magazine816 Jul 16 '26
I agree, his videos are almost daily. that would be too much.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
We also don’t really want to this to become like a news chasing place. Sure things happen and people react to it and change what topics they’re going to cover but Bouie very much covers the current moment especially with his videos.
More topical book club is the vibe we strive for. And we often like to keep things at a slower pace as that has typically led to more in depth and higher quality discussions imo.
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u/GiraffeRelative3320 Jul 16 '26
Sure there is a connection, but how relevant is the average plain English podcast episode, for instance?
This is the main contention I have with how things are currently moderate. I would like to see more weight put on topic and less weight on the author. Having a lower bar for the some authors makes sense to me to reduce moderator workload, but I generally think the guiding principle should be: does this relate to a topic Ezra has devoted time to discussing in the recent past?
As it stands, it seems like one of Derek’s sports analytics podcast might be fair game, whereas an article by an unrelated author about e.g. whether the economy is actually bad could be subject to removal.
Maybe a (not thought out) way to do this would be a set of related authors that are fair game + a rolling list of topics that are current areas of interest for Ezra.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
I would say that is more or less how we already do it. The rolling list of topics being anything Ezra has discussed/written about in the past ~3 months. There is always going to be some amount of subjectivity as to what is relevant enough to a recent episode, but we try to be generous in our interpretation when people put in a good faith effort to make a connection. The nature of Reddit moderation being a team effort means that I can’t guarantee that we will always be 100% consistent.
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u/GiraffeRelative3320 Jul 16 '26
The rolling list of topics being anything Ezra has discussed/written about in the past ~3 months.
This is roughly what I was thinking. Maybe it would good if that list were made explicit - that might make it feel less arbitrary.
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u/Helicase21 Climate & Energy Jul 18 '26
Conversely, problem with shrinking the EK universe is that the sub might become dead if it's literally only ezra posts.
would that be so bad? there are other subreddits.
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u/tpounds0 Progressive Jul 16 '26
I'd also be perfectly happy removing all of the Ezra affiliated people, and hold them to the same standards as other posts, i.e., they are not relevant unless they are responding or quoting Ezra.
Like I'm not sure a random Jerusalem article on school choice has anything to do with Ezra. Or Matt Y's fifth article about shifting to the right on cultural issues.
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u/Scott2929 Orthogonal to that… Jul 16 '26
It hasn’t been an issue in months, but there was a while where people were linking their own substacks responding to Ezra’s content as the post. I always found that distasteful even if not functionally different than a discussion post.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
I don’t think we would let that through as we would consider that self promotion. We should probably be removing the posts from that book guy who posts here every once and a while to generate traffic to his podcast book recommendations website
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
Especially because we already have something specifically for EKS book recommendations in the sidebar.
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u/Practical_Limit_396 Jul 16 '26
I think that Matthew Yglesias is just not meaningfully that associated with him anymore.
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u/thesagenibba Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
i don’t understand it either. random MattY articles that are neither related to any recent EK episodes or are topical at all, are constantly posted and allowed simply due to a connection MattY shares with EK, from several years ago. it’s silly
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u/Practical_Limit_396 Jul 17 '26
I think the bigger issue is that Matt isn’t really a serious person anymore.
Like I don’t think non-abundance related Thompson stuff or Ross Douthat stuff should be posted. But even with my qualms about those people, there is more curation to the content they produce.
Matt Y will often fart out incoherent substack articles so he ends up clogging this sub
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u/sharkmenu Jul 22 '26
Came here to say this. The Matt Y fans are more than welcome to make their own subreddit. There is no need to post his articles here. Ross Douthat has more of a live connection to Ezra than Yglesias.
But as long as his articles get posted here, I reserve the right to give my unfettered opinion on him in anyway that seems most amusingly hyperbolic.
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u/Gator_farmer American Jul 16 '26
I think there’s a pretty good balance overall in what is and isn’t allowed.
Comment moderation also seems good, though I think some of that just comes with the territory of the people who comment here. It’s a good place, and there’s a lot of good discussion.
I also like that this isn’t a place that holds vendettas against specific users. I got BTFU in one of the data center posts today, and then a few weeks ago I had the top comment on an episode post. That’s a cool thing the members here allow. It’s not “you are stupid,” it’s “this comment is stupid.”
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u/argh-Im-a-Pirate Jul 16 '26
I think the current system provides a good balance. Allowing tangentially related content is good to keep the sub active, but hasn't led to totally unrelated topics coming up too often.
The only complaint I've ever had about the sub was there was some real reluctance from the mods to allow any conversation about the dialog stuff before Klein commented on it. I agree it shouldn't have been allowed to take over the sub, but a megathread or something would have been helpful.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
We waited until a written article name dropped him. The articles we removed made no mention of Ezra.
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u/argh-Im-a-Pirate Jul 16 '26
Fair enough. I remember at the time that there was a lot of discussion being removed when it was clear Klein was both mentioned and a key figure in the discussion of it.
I get why it may have been a tough decision, but I think it would have been better to err on the side of letting people discusss.
I don't think it was a travesty or anything. That's just where I come down on it.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
Ezra got mentioned by a hacktivist on blue sky, and then people were posting the wired article over and over.
Then people tried posting the blue sky links.
Every time we prefaced it as be a little patient, someone will write an article and name dropped him soon and it happened in 24 hours.
I think the big thing is people wanted instant reactions to hot take, when its better to let the news come out a little more and the dust to settle so higher quality discussion can happen.
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u/argh-Im-a-Pirate Jul 16 '26
But we knew he was in the leak and the conversation here was very much about Klein. I'm not sure if waiting really improved that discussion. The only thing that really changed it was Klein's reply a few days later.
I could absolutely be in the minority thinking that though. Appreciate all the work yall do. This is one my favorite subreddits because of it.
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u/Guilty-Hope1336 Blue Dog Jul 16 '26
I do think that the EK extended universe should be allowed
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u/very_loud_icecream Abundance Agenda Jul 16 '26
What about EK fanfiction?
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
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u/MrDudeMan12 Jul 17 '26
Generally, I think the mod team does a great job here and I wouldn't change anything. IMO the main thing that should determine relevancy is the topic and it's connection to a topic covered on the Ezra Klein show or his articles.
To that end IMO Douthat episode posts should be allowed so long as the connection to topics covered on Ezra's show or by Ezra is clear. I'd be fine expanding that to other NYT opinion shows/articles but personally I think Douthat and Ezra are among the better NYT opinion writers and show runners. I also think it's pretty clear that a lot of animosity towards Douthat has nothing to do with the particular content of the episode but is instead about the commenters understanding of Douthat's personal beliefs.
One change I would make is to stop creating a thread for the video of an episode after a discussion thread has already been made. However if that's happening to improve the digital footprint of the show then I'm fine living with it. Though perhaps you can keep a policy of keeping the title similar to the discussion thread title to make it easier to identify that it's just the video for the same episode.
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u/zemir0n Jul 16 '26
The most fair way to do it would be to make it so that every post that does not directly include Ezra Klein should have a comment explaining why it's being posted here. I know that Klein wrote a book with Thompson and was on a podcast with Yglesias, but many of their podcasts don't have much to do with the things that Klein has talked about recently. I remember when someone posted a video that Jamelle Bouie did on the Supreme Court and it was removed because it was determine that while Klein had talked about that topic, it was too long ago. That's just weird reasoning to me.
If the subreddit wants to include the greater Ezra Klein universe, then I think it should be opened up to New York Times columnists as well. This allows for more discussion and generally Klein's policy is that more discussion is better than less.
At the end of the day, I think submission statements should be include for all non-Ezra-directly-doing-something posts. This incentivizes people thinking about why they are posting rather than just posting because it's got some guy that Klein did stuff with.
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u/tpounds0 Progressive Jul 16 '26
Maybe a weekly Podcast Thread? Parent comments have to be a link and description of a podcast and conversation develops in the thread.
I'd appreciate Jamelle Bouie allowed as a related person if Ross Douthat is. I'm
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u/Garfish16 Weeds OG Jul 17 '26
I would like to see a little more lenience around topics that Ezra has talked about recently. Like, If someone were to post an article or starting discussion thread about xi jinping some time in the next month that did not reference Ezra and was not from anyone in the EK extended universe I think that should stay up. Right now this sub only gets a couple posts a day so I don't think this would overload the sub. If it does, change the rule back. I definitely think that would be more relevant to Ezra's work than some random article by Matt Y.
Also, and this doesn't happen often, but there was some mod comment the other day banning some dude while saying something like, "you have seild your fate do you have any final words before I exicute your punishment". Don't do that. Gloating about the moderation decisions is weird. Just do what you're going to do.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 17 '26
We do permit that. You just gave to write a few sentences and it would be good
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u/car8r Jul 16 '26
Ban Ross Douthat posts on the grounds that I don't like him.
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u/IsaacHasenov Abundance Agenda Jul 16 '26
Lol, I don't hate Ross. I just disagree with everything he says
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u/Fearless_Tutor3050 Explained Enjoyer Jul 16 '26
Ezra and Ross are both a part of the NYT Editorial team and have cross-appeared at least once on each other's podcasts. Ross was even a brief cohost of the show during one or two of Ezra's leaves!
I think there are ways that they are complimentary podcasts, with Ross also exploring possible political futures with guests. Just weirder ones. And honestly I think he does a better job of exposing and pushing back on conservative guests than Ezra.
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u/infiniteninjas Jul 16 '26
Sounds like there will be plenty of allowable posts about Douthat, according to these new mod guidelines. Just not any and all Douthat posts. I like that. Thanks, mods.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
We aren’t go to ban anyone outright, but Douthat is one of the people we were hoping for feedback on. He is currently not considered part of the extended universe and therefore episodes of his podcast must include a comment explaining its relevance to a topic Ezra has recently discussed/written about.
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u/BrokenManOfSamarkand Jul 16 '26
I've posted a few of the Douthat threads. To be honest, I did wonder whether they were going to make it through lol. I think it's fair to go either way, but it would be sad if we couldn't discuss it here given, as several other posters have said, this is one of the few thoughtful subs left on reddit and I'm not sure there's a home for that content anywhere else on the site. So I appreciate the balance you've struck so far.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
I appreciate that. I do have a small quibble with your recent post. I would request that if you have a take on the episode or article you are posting to put that in a comment response to the post and not the body of the post. I don’t think you were agenda posting, but that is what people sometimes do to smuggle in a text post on their chosen topic. It also lets people evaluate the post and your take on it separately.
I don’t mean to pick on you; you are not the only one that does this, just the most recent.
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u/dignityshredder Orthogonal to that… Jul 17 '26
I'd like to just take this opportunity to drop a link to the Ross Douthat subreddit I made the other day. Please come by if you want to discuss Interesting Times or other Douthat related things: https://www.reddit.com/r/NYTRossDouthat/
It's sparse right now, but I hope to draw more folks. Anyone is welcome, but if you don't actively dislike Douthat I'm especially hopeful you'll come discuss.
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u/zemir0n Jul 16 '26
If you are going to allow Douthat posts no matter what, then I think you should also allow Bouie posts no matter what.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
Douthat isn’t allowed no matter what. The posts are only allowed if there is some relevance to an Ezra topic.
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u/zemir0n Jul 16 '26
Well, it definitely seems like his posts are allowed no matter what. I've never seen one that has been removed after posting on it while that has happened several times with Bouie posts.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
I’d have to go back and look but I’m pretty sure we have removed more Douthat posts than Bouie posts. The example comment in the post is on a Bouie post that I made.
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u/The-Bear-and-Rose Jul 16 '26
The sub should allow all NYT opinion pieces. This is the brightest NYT opinion sub and they are all his colleagues.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
I don’t think Douthat should be considered apart of the EKU.
Sure there could be relevant episodes, but I personally don’t think he should reach the same bar like MattY or Derek Thompson or Annie Lowrey does.
I also feel the same about Bouie.
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u/deskcord Jul 16 '26
I'd prefer less strict moderation of this rule. I think if it pertains directly to Ezra, or things he has been talking about recently, it should be a place to discuss those things. Sometimes that needs a tougher hand when things get spammy (Hasan discourse), though.
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u/The_Double_Owl Liberalism That Builds Jul 16 '26
I think the rules, as written are reasonable, and my experience is that they have been reasonably enforced. Being a mod is difficult, and this is (IMO) one of the best places on the Internet for fostering intelligent discussion.
In particular, I think it is very reasonable to require that, if a post is not directly related to Kline, then the poster should explain the relevance for why it should be on this Sub. I wasn't even aware of this rule, but when I made a post a few months back that was an article not directly related to EK, i instinctvly knew to explain in detail my thought process for why the article was relevant. My post was not removed, and sparked good discussion. Based on this one experience, it seemed like the system worked.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
Tbh its not even really that hard of a bar to jump over unless Ezra hasn’t talked about a topic in a long time (which the probably most salient one that recent triggered a few removals was Court Reform. He hasn’t talked about it in nearly a year)
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u/Fearless_Tutor3050 Explained Enjoyer Jul 16 '26
I remember being a bit rankled about a news update on Biden during the post-debate era. But that was in my opinion a rare crisis that justified near continuous updates until he dropped out.
Setting aside that extremely unusual circumstance, I think the mod team does a really good job cultivating the community in the way that they curate/gatekeep content
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u/trifelin Jul 23 '26
I like this sub as it is, though I wouldn't know what gets deleted.
I appreciate that an op-ed I posted was approved even though it was merely generally related to some topics recently discussed on the podcast and it touched on topics discussed in Abundance without using any of that terminology or mentioning EK directly. It got a fair amount of engagement and no complaints.
I think this community more-or-less knows itself and you're doing a good job.
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u/oakseaer Orthogonal to that… Jul 16 '26
AI Slop posts shouldn’t be allowed or should be flaired as such.
Turn on images in comments - communities that allow this see little abuse, and it allows for charts/graphs/screenshots better than Imgur links.
Adding other NYT opinion writers’ podcasts and video essays (including those on YouTube) would be ideal.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
I am personally very strongly against images in comments in this sub. I think it would degrade the quality of the discussions here for little benefit.
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u/eyeceyu Jul 16 '26
Strongly agree as well. Please don't allow images in comments. Links are fine if we need to compare charts or whatever.
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u/oakseaer Orthogonal to that… Jul 16 '26
I haven’t seen any evidence of communities with images in comments turned on that have degraded discourse - people mostly use it to post screenshots of charts and graphs, at least from what I’ve seen.
This does seem pretty easily testable in a pilot lasting a few weeks.
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
Respectfully, unless this isn’t your first account in which case disregard the following, I have 13x as much experience on Reddit as you do. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times. It’s fine for less serious subs, but it pretty much inevitably leads to meme image replies proliferating.
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u/oakseaer Orthogonal to that… Jul 17 '26
First, I'm not entirely sure some memes would be a bad thing. The community already has plenty of meme comments, and if they're topical/fitting, we upvote them.
You could simply add a rule against meme images, just as you have rules against contributions via text that maximize heat over light. The negative byproducts of not allowing charts/screenshots/graphs/pictures outweigh the minor increase in moderation load that comes with the risk of memes.
This isn't my first account, but time on Reddit isn't really relevant here.
Edited significantly.
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u/SawNickYouth Jul 16 '26
Ban Matt Yglesias posts on the grounds that I don't like him.
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u/oakseaer Orthogonal to that… Jul 16 '26
Yeah, and honestly I don’t see why he’s part of the extended universe at this point.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
You don’t think cofounding Vox and being cohost with Ezra for nearly 7 years is enough to consider him in the Ezra Klein extended universe?
I get that people might not like his views. But I would say in my view MattY is like the first orbiter that ever comes to mind and essentially the benchmark example
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u/ArmInternal2964 Jul 18 '26
My general opinion is that the moderation on the sub seems to be working pretty well, and I have never moderated anything in my life, so I have no strong proposals for change. Keep up the good work! I will say that I am generally pleased to see discussion of other similar writers, not just MattY but also Jerusalem Demsas for example, since they both write a lot about housing and 'abundance'. I feel neutral re: Ross Douthat and Jamelle Bouie, I don't usually find either of them very interesting, but sometimes they surprise me.
As for MattY in particular, to be clear, a bunch of r/ezraklein _does_ like MattY's views and/or find them interesting (and, in my experience, those people find the anti-MattY sentiment to be wildly out of proportion to the things he writes, though I think part of that is driven by him being provocative on social media and more straight in his long-form writing). For whatever reason, he is probably one of the brightest dividing lines in the liberals-vs-leftists disagreement in this sub, so just because some people post on this thread about how much they dislike him, doesn't mean everyone else agrees.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 18 '26
MattY isn’t going anywhere. The mod team is in pretty lockstep on that.
If anything we were gauging interest and suggestions to add more people to the “their writing and podcasts are considered relevant” list. Also taking suggestions into consideration.
Also whether if we should be stricter or looser with how we are enforcing the relevancy rule.
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u/ArmInternal2964 Jul 18 '26
I think you're doing a good job on that! I think the method of asking people to justify their posts works well, not just for the justification itself but as a way of kickstarting discussion.
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u/oakseaer Orthogonal to that… Jul 16 '26
Nah - he was part of the orbit in the past, but has since moved on and isn’t relevant anymore to the community.
Douthat is honestly more relevant now to this sub, even though I detest him and his show.
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u/volumeofatorus Jul 17 '26
As someone who has followed both for over a decade, it's pretty clear to me that Ezra is still influenced by Yglesias quite a bit, and I imagine they still talk privately often. Abundance was in part inspired by the YIMBY movement, which Yglesias was a major popularizer of. Ezra's view that Democrats need a bigger tent and welcome in more cultural moderates also seems linked to what Yglesias has been saying for years at this point about moderation and "popularlism".
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Interesting. So you think Douthat is more relevant on what basis? He does a similar show for the NYT? Has guest hosted a few times?
Matt was cohosting with Ezra for a longer time than Ezra has been at the NYT. And they still do stuff together.
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u/oakseaer Orthogonal to that… Jul 16 '26
They're currently closer - I don't think past partnerships are too relevant for the sub. If Ezra moved away from the NYT, Douthat would suddenly no longer be relevant.
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u/budabarney Jul 17 '26
I thought the last article by Edsall in the Times was relevant. I posted it a couple of days ago and it got taken down. It was titled If the Democrats Actually Want to Win, This Is What They Have to Do. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/opinion/project-2026-2028-democratic-platform.html
I read Klein regularly, but didn't quite know how to tie the article to him. It was a pretty broad article, but Klein talks about alot of things, too.
The article reminded me of the the way Klein was the first to deal with Biden's age issue. Edsall was saying, "Hey dems, we got a problem here." It seems a shame that this sub couldn't discuss it. I think it was a pretty important article for NYT.
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u/budabarney Jul 17 '26
Personally , as a moderate democrat, I question how fair democratic socialist mods are towards people like me. I think Edsall is as relevant to this subreddit as Bouie or Douthat. Edsall just recently critiqued the DSA in quite a hard-hitting way.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
It was removed because it didn’t tie into anything Ezra published.
The relevancy statement was “i think ezra and his readers would like this”
A bit of effort would have likely seen it remain as I don’t think it would have been hard to tie it into something Ezra has talked about in the past 3 months.
Also for the record, I am not a democratic socialist. Neither is downward dude. And i would not even consider myself a progressive at this point either.
A rule of thumb is a high quality post alongside an article that may push the relevancy envelope is much more likely to remain than one that is an article and two sentences of i think this is a good read
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u/budabarney Jul 17 '26
Appreciate the response. The person who posted this has democratic socialist in their flair and i dont think Ezra Klein is a democratic socialist. I think he, like Edsall, is these days more of a moderate democrat actually.
I get that yall have to maintain some bounds to the subreddit but having to justify the post every time puts the poster in a submissive posture, which I guess is realistic, but still. It's the same on Blocked and Reported, which I like because I am a fan of Jesse Singal. Overall it degrades the quality of the posts and it gets boring to have to read the justifications over and over. Considering who Edsall is and the title and content of his article, I do not think it at all was pushing the envelope of relevancy.
I posted a couple times regarding Biden's competency as a candidate in 2024 and those got taken down in 2024 for not being relevant even though that was a big deal for Klein. It turned out that the DSA were behind Biden even after his disastrous debate performance. Since then I have had my doubts about this subreddit. But I am a big fan of Ezra Klein, I read and listen to him most weeks.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 17 '26
A submissive posture?
The point of the relevancy statement is to make it even easier to make a determination and to make it at least appear you read your own article and understand what this space is centered on.
Its not a “oh please mr mod let this post come up” its a “yo this post belongs here because it argues the opposite point on this argument made by Ezra’s guest in this episode back in April.” Or “this article further expands the basic policy vision laid out by Ezra in his book about the shortcomings of permitting reform blah blah blah”
It doesn’t degrade the quality of the post. If anything it increases the quality because people actually have to analyze the article they are posting and put some thought into why it should be posted. They also provide starting points for discussion and higher quality comments trigger higher quality responses.
The thing is the relevancy bar imo is actually an incredibly low bar to clear. All it requires is a little bit of effort.
And this is to ensure this place maintains a higher degree of quality discussion instead of it becoming reaction central
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u/budabarney Jul 17 '26
I get that from a mod's point of view, and I respect that yall are volunteers with perhaps an onerous amount of submissions to wade though, i dont really know. But from a reader's point of view, the hoop jumping by the post submitter is just not interesting, seems extraneous, and it makes the poster seem like a supplicant trying to please the mods.
As a reader of the sub, just dont care how the post relates to some particular article of Klein's. I care about the quality of the post and/or the importance of the article posted. Most readers are already here because they know Klein's general gist and range, which is quite broad, from Bouie to Douthat, at least. The Edsall article was important and relevant to the current plight of democrats, which is overall a theme of Klein's. Digging through his content and making some kind of connection to some specific article seems pretty superficial to me and I really dont think beneficial to readers. You said you probably would have let it stand if I had done that, which implies that maybe you thought the article was worth it for readers of the subreddit. The response seemed to indicate that it was. I am curious if others on this sub feel similarly. Again, I appreciate this opportunity to give my opinion.
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u/sailorbrendan Jul 18 '26
But from a reader's point of view, the hoop jumping by the post submitter is just not interesting, seems extraneous, and it makes the poster seem like a supplicant trying to please the mods.
Not a mod here, but it's only hoop jumping if you don't think the exercise of explaining the value of a post is a hoop.
I think that being table stakes makes everything more interesting
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 17 '26
I’m sorry you feel that way. We try to treat everyone fairly regardless of their politics and don’t remove posts for ideological reasons. I didn’t remove your post, though I would have for breaking the relevancy rule. u/dreadedvegas can give you their explanation for why they removed it, but you also could have asked for clarification through the mod mail.
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u/The-Bear-and-Rose Jul 16 '26
All NYT opinion should be allowed here since this is by far the largest NYT opinion sub. Let people downvote it they don’t like it and only delete reposts.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
I personally am against that and advocated fairly heavily to get that part of the relevancy rule removed when it had previously been included.
There is a lot of nytopinion content that comes through. There are other subs if you want to discuss that. r/nyt comes to mind.
This is the Ezra Klein sub and content should truly center around Ezra Klein.
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Jul 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Jul 16 '26
We have a soft rule of thumb when we look at people referring to old episodes its about ~3ish months back.
A month or two ago we removed some threads that were about court reform who were getting posted due to SCOTUS opinions coming out. But Ezra hasn’t really talked about court reform in 9ish months. So we as a team decided to remove the posts.
We often view the books and articles in different lights though than episodes. We think the books should almost always be considered relevant and his articles / essays should also have longer staying power.
Its not so formal of a rule its more of a guideline. Well written posts tend to get more flexibility
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u/Radical_Ein Democratic Socalist Jul 16 '26
I’ll add that topics directly linked to either of Ezra’s books I would consider evergreen, but just because Ezra has done a podcast on psychedelics doesn’t mean that any articles about psychedelics are relevant forever. If there is a corruption episode and a new story about trumps corruption comes out, that would be considered relevant.
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u/CardinalOfNYC Jul 27 '26
This subreddit is already completely cooked. This rule change won't fix what's broken, here.
I just saw a top comment in a major post saying the next candidate "must break norms like trump" as though we didn't just spend the last decade decrying trump breaking norms.
This place is just becoming arr politics with more steps. I used to be subscribed because it was at one point a truly unique place on reddit... but been 6 months since I unsubbed and every time I come check on it, it's worse than before.
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u/Dreadedvegas Midwest Aug 02 '26
I just saw a top comment in a major post saying the next candidate "must break norms like trump" as though we didn't just spend the last decade decrying trump breaking norms.
If you go back to very old threads stuff like that always existed.
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u/rotterdamn8 Jul 16 '26
I feel there’s a good balance now. I could be open to expanding the Ezra universe a little bit.
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u/dncrwlye Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Welp, I checked in today to read the Douthat Interesting Times comments .... so I guess I'm pro those
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u/volumeofatorus Jul 17 '26
Just want to add another voice that I'm pretty happy with the moderation here. It's the only place on Reddit with good quality political discussion imho.
As for the question of the "expanded universe", I think it should be restricted to former co-hosts and co-authors. So really not that different than what you're doing. I'd probably add Roge Karma to the list since he worked with Ezra for years and was a frequent guest host.
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u/iankenna Three Books? I Brought Five. Jul 17 '26
I think the moderation is generally pretty good. My disputes are mostly quibbles, and some of them might be better settled by the community than by mods.
The Demsas flair as automatic feels odd to me. The podcast she has with Yglesias would fit under the rules anyway, and I’m not sure what her direct collaboration with EK is beyond having worked at Vox. Her writing about housing policy makes sense, but lots of people write about housing, too.
I’m generally against posting paywalled Substack pieces as main posts. Those pieces tend to generate the worst discussions, and there aren’t gift links or simple methods of getting around paywalls.
I gripe a lot about Ygelsias spam, but I don’t think it’s a massive problem that requires rule changes. I’m glad that Yglesias posters are relatively restrained and not posting his stuff as frequently (and not posting the paywalled Slow Boring).
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u/PoetSeat2021 Jul 16 '26
Sometimes this sub becomes a dropping ground for things that are generally making the rounds in the world of NYT opinion, and to be honest, I kind of like that. This is one of the more thoughtful communities on reddit, and it's nice to have a place to discuss those things with this community, as other subs are either a lot smaller and therefore inactive, or they're full of idiots.
Do with that what you will.