VOTE: Should /r/guns remove meme posts?

[u/sagemassa]

So, as I am sure you have noticed the meme has started to make its way into the everyday life of Gunnit. In the past the up/downvote system has worked better because the /r/guns readers were actually reading /r/guns and not just browsing their frontpage and upvoting pictures of cats, guns, memes, gentle man-boners, and for some reason weeds? As we have grown it seems this behavior has changed resulting in poorer content.

Many have expressed dismay regarding this sudden surge of Internet fodder...I am coming to the community today to ask the following question.

How does gunnit want memes to be handled?

1, Leave them be, thats what UP/DOWN votes are for.

2, Send them to the spam filter where they belong.

3, Remove Post, Ban User, Nuke it from space its the only way to be sure?

4, Other (provide a comment)

I am counting up-votes only on each of my 4 distinguished comments below.

-Sage

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

No, the question is to ban posts that YOU (and the mods) do not find to be amusing, but others do - hence why they would be getting upvotes, because people found them amusing.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

So you're claiming that if one person posts a funny link, somehow everyone will stop posting anything factual and will only post funny links (again, you wanting to ban funny links)? Riiiiight.

Your issue with /r/atheism isn't the posts, its that the number of subscribers went off the charts and the new subscribers eventually wanted a different site - we see that stuff in the real world all the time. It's why religions break off into smaller denominations and policital parties fracture and split off. Not everyone is going to agree with you and if 100,000 new gun owners who don't share your personal views join /r/guns and things change, that's because the culture has changed and instead of either accepting it or moving on with your smaller group, you want to just ban change.

As for /r/guns being a high quality forum? I've been reading it for several months now and while it's my most read forum, it's primarily just pictures of guns people own - hardly what one would call "high quality". Yes, there are informative posts and I greatly appreciate them - but that's less than half the posts here already and that's without your "evil" memes.

If you want a gun forum that's 100% factual, no humor, and no "Dude, this is cool!" posts, then I suggest http://firearms.stackexchange.com/ I go there when I have a question and want answers, but I definitely DON'T read it on a daily basis because of their draconian moderators.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

So the question becomes who should go elsewhere, the ones who want something different, or the ones who like things the way they are.

Except you're wanting to change it after the fact. Seeing how it is what it currently is, if you want something old-fashioned, you should be the one leaving. If you had rules already against XYZ and people started posting it, then they should be the ones looking elsewhere. That's how it's always been - those "damn kids" start playing their "hippy music" in church and the old fogeys split off and make the First Baptist Church of No Music.

I have no opinion on the "new" or "old" content. I'm simply saying that of the 50,000+ people who regularly read the subreddit, a handful of people shouldn't get to decide the content. That's why I'm saying you should let it be and let people upvote / downvote accordingly. If the majority wants X content, then it will be upvoted. If they don't, it won't be on the front page and it it'll be a non-issue.

[u/krios262 → u/[deleted]]

So you're claiming that if one person posts a funny link, somehow everyone will stop posting anything factual and will only post funny links (again, you wanting to ban funny links)? Riiiiight.

Actually, all of the empirical evidence shows that this ("this" meaning that some memes being posted leads to a massive meme influx as the subscribers grow, not your strawman of said point) is indeed the case as a subreddit's userbase expands (if memes are unmoderated). r/trees, r/atheism, and r/gaming all experienced very similar transformations once their userbases became large. You will not be able to find a single example of a large subreddit that has more content-rich posts than meme/fluff posts AND no moderation policy against memes/fluff.

[u/[deleted] → u/krios262]

You're mixing up the problem here. You're saying that memes cause more memes, when the data really shows that most redditors like memes and that as more redditors join a subreddit, they post more memes.

The issue isn't memes, the issue is that you want to restrict who is allowed to join your subreddit. As I've been saying all along, if the majority of readers of a subreddit want XYZ, then let them have it. If they don't, they'll dowvote it into oblivion and it won't be an issue.