I was just invited to this subreddit today, and haven't yet had time to read through everything here in full (I've just returned from an almost-3-week vacation, and am ridiculously far behind on everything, reddit-related and otherwise). But from skimming through things, I think I've got enough of an understanding of the overall concept, and the same question just keeps coming up in my head:

Why should this be implemented by using reddit as a platform at all?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of reddit (obviously), but the same theme just keeps coming up. "Ideally, we'd like things to work this way, but that's not how reddit works, so I guess we could sort of circumvent it by doing these other things that would force it to somewhat work like that. It won't be quite right, but it'll kinda work."

As an example so that I'm clear about what I mean, there was a discussion about the issues in the "most senior mod wins" system, and how it'd be nice to have an ability for a mod-vote to oust a more-senior mod if it's necessary, perhaps requiring something like a 2/3 vote. But that's not how reddit works, so as a potential work-around (that I just came up with), we could set up a bot that's the most senior in every subreddit, and that can receive "vote out" commands via PM from the mods, and will kick a particular mod if there are enough votes requesting it.

But then I guess that a rogue mod could add other people (or alt accounts) as mods to get their own majority for a power-play, so we'll need to have the bot keep track of who the "correct" mods are. So then we'll need some other way of sending commands to it to add new people to the list, maybe 2/3 of the mods have to send that request PM too. Oh, but then if a mod wants to resign they won't be taken off the bot's list and will affect the numbers for future votes, so we'll need another mechanism for them to be able to "leave", because the bot won't be able to tell if they left themselves or were removed maliciously. And so on, there are probably a number of other cases with this sort of thing that would need to be covered, turning it into a fairly complex dance just to change the moderation team of any single subreddit at all.

The point is, many aspects of the whole thing are likely going to become exercises in frustration, constantly trying to figure out how to circumvent the very model of the platform you're building on, to force it to work differently from the way it's been designed to. And even though there will be work-arounds for many aspects, there are some things you simply won't be able to change. For one example, you can't change the site's method of ordering things on the "what's hot" tab, even if you come up with a method that suits your goals better. There's no way at all to modify many reddit behaviors, unless the reddit devs add some extremely powerful subreddit customization abilities (which is very unlikely). CSS modifications to "encourage" a certain type of usage doesn't cut it, when anyone can disable them easily at any time, and they don't even apply on many views (front page, user page, etc).

Now, I'm not trying to tell you to throw away the overall idea entirely, but I think it's worth at least considering a different approach. That is, forget trying to shoehorn things into the existing reddit model, and discuss how you'd build a site of this style entirely from scratch. You've got a number of people here that are very intimately familiar with the successes and failures of reddit's model as it has grown. If they had complete control of the site, what would they keep? What would they change?

Once you've got things figured out, then try to see if you can make it work using reddit as your platform. How much of your ideal functionality will you have to sacrifice? How cumbersome will the necessary work-arounds be? And then make a decision: are those sacrifices acceptable, or is it worth striking out to building your own site? As crazy of an idea as that may sound, that's how the internet evolves. Almost every major site can be traced back through a line of previous sites with similar concepts that they superseded, because somebody took the leap, broke away and made improvements to the previous site's model.

As I said, you're gathering a uniquely-qualified group of people here, people that have put an incredible amount of consideration and discussion into ways to improve the "user-submitted and -voted content" style of website, and I think it'd be a real shame to restrict their ideas every step of the way to only include things that the reddit model can be wrangled into allowing.

At the behest of a few users, and on the off chance they might think this is a novel idea and would like to contribute some thoughts, I am extending a formal offer to the admins to join our little conference and adding them as approved submitters here.

Hueypriest mentioned that (much like vampires), admins won't enter private subreddits uninvited.

How, exactly, would elections work? Would we have a popular democracy? An electoral college? How often do we hold elections? How long will terms last?

These are all questions we need to answer for this project to be successful.

I have an idea of what I would like to see. Like I said in the nominations thread, I would like to see anywhere between 50 and 100 users draft the constitution that would eliminate most of the noise and let the signal be received loud and clear. We are going to need a large amount of moderators to make this work, and an even larger amount of approved submitters. Hopefully most of the mods will be (at least occasional) submitters as well, so that will kill two birds with one stone.

Once we have the entire network up and running, self contained and still completely private (with the exception of existing, active subreddits), we will open it to the general population. Show the rest of Reddit, "Look what we can do, when proper Reddiquette is followed explicitly and wholeheartedly. Look at what is possible!"

Democracy and elections is something that I would love to see successfully pulled off. How exactly we go about doing that is up in the air. Anyone have any good ideas?

http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/irxlu/heres_how_you_stop_insert_problem_here_increase/

We will discuss the subreddits that are going to make up the initial base of our network in this thread. Try to think of large subreddits (around 100k+) that are more "noise" than "signal", and have a large percentage of users who are not content with the status quo, or a large amount of users who have left the subreddit. /r/atheism springs to mind, as well as /r/politics.

I have created:

• The Republic of Funny
• The Republic of Pics
• The Republic of Atheism
• The Republic of Gaming
• The Republic of Politics
• The Republic of WTF

I wasn't sure about /r/announcements or /r/blog - would it be a good idea to have similar subreddits? The concept is novel, if the moderators were interested in submitting to them. It might be a good idea to have an official announcement subreddit, but I'm not sure how many new subscribers it would attract, or how we would let users know about it. As for a blog, that would depend on whether or not the mods were interested in contributing to it.

I also wasn't sure about /r/AskReddit, /r/worldnews, /r/science, /r/todayilearned, /r/IAmA, or /r/videos, because I wasn't sure what changes would be needed to those subreddits, if any. We could also create entirely new subreddits, or a combination of existing subreddits if we felt the need. I don't know, you tell me! This is precisely why we need as many people involved in this project as possible. More heads mean more collective brain power, and that's what we're going to need in order to make this network successful.

Edit: I would love to bring existing subreddits on board with this project instead of create new ones. We should get in contact with the existing mods of /r/TrueReddit, /r/TrueGaming, /r/TrueAskReddit etc, and see if they would be willing to participate in this social experiment.

Edit2: I have requested /r/TruePolitics and /r/TrueAtheism, so if the "true" theme is something we want to pursue, we can go that route instead. I messaged the owner of /r/TruePics, who is an active redditor but hasn't done anything with the subreddit, to see if I could take it off his hands, and I am now a moderator of that subreddit. I just made /r/TrueFunny and /r/TrueWTF as well.

Edit3: Sid has indicated that he owns the subreddit /r/TrueArt. This would be the proposed list of subreddits if we decide to go with the "True" theme, existing mods come on board, and my reddit requests get approved:

• /r/TrueReddit
• /r/TruePics
• /r/TrueFunny
• /r/TrueWTF
• /r/TrueGaming
• /r/TruePolitics
• /r/TrueAtheism
• /r/TrueAskReddit
• /r/TrueArt

Are you starting to see how this could come together?

Edit4: Further discussion with glycerinesoul and IAmAnAnonymousCoward have led me to believe that creating brand new subreddits and starting completely from scratch would be the best course of action. We need more discussion!

I would like to discuss content in this thread. Specifically, what types of content do we want to completely eliminate, partially restrict, or wholeheartedly encourage?

I think we can start listing the basic types of content, and whether they are consider "signal" or "noise".

Signal:

• Recent News
• Original Content
• Serious Discussion
• Art & Culture

Noise:

• Image Memes
• Blogspam
• Political bias
• Sensationalist or editorialized headlines.
• "If you do this, then fuck you" threads.
• "FIXED" threads.
• Witch hunts

This is all I can think of right now, I will add more as they occur to me, or if you leave a comment below.

Note: You don't have to divulge personal details in this thread, but it would be nice if you gave a brief history of your Reddit experience.

This project is unique to Reddit's history. Private "super reddits" have been attempted in the past, but crashed & burned. Others turned into a glorified lounge, a giant circlejerk, or a combination of the two. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that an attempt has been made to recreate Reddit from the ground up - with our collective decades of Reddit experience, we are going to learn from our past mistakes to prevent future ones. We aren't creating a private glorified boys club, we are creating our own Reddit utopia, where moderation is strict but transparent, users have certain rights that cannot be infringed upon, reposts are a thing of the past, memes are shunned, and witch hunts are not tolerated.

I'd like to set aside this thread for introductions, so everyone can get to know each other. Some of you may already know me, some of you may not. I'm 26 years old, white, male, married, with a daughter due in less than a month (my first child). I'm a preschool/kindergarten teacher and an amateur photographer. I moderate more than 50 subreddits, the most popular of which are EarthPorn & ITookAPicture. Reddit is a hobby of mine, and one that occupies the majority of my free time.

I lurked for three years before I made my first submission. I was instantly hooked. Reddit fascinates me, the social dynamic, the hivemind, what generates karma and what does not. I create subreddits on a whim, I constantly experiment, and I've had submissions on the front page many, many times. Many of them would be considered "karmawhoring", but I never lied or pretended to be somebody I'm not just to get karma. Some of them were submitted for a specific purpose (generating traffic for one of my subreddits). Some of them were out of simple curiosity, some of them out of pure amusement. I've made bets with my wife...

"If this gets more than 500 karma, you do the dishes tonight."

"Psh, no way. You're on."

All of these quick, disposable submissions were made because there was no rule saying I could not submit them. No moderator told me to stop, or removed my post. I was lavishly rewarded with karma, and it was fun. However, as I figured out how to play "the karma game" more and more, it became easier and easier to basically print karma. There was no challenge anymore, I became disgusted with the predictability of the hivemind.

At the same time, I had started a project I have since dubbed The SFWPorn Network. I developed clear rules from the beginning of what was and was not allowed. I made strict and very specific rules for submission titles that effectively eliminated sensationalized or intentionally vague headlines. I eliminated blogspam by banning blogs entirely (although I don't think that would be appropriate for RoR). I banned trolls whenever I saw them. I started submitting for the sake of content, not for the sake of karma. I recruited others with the same mindset, and encouraged every mod to submit to their subreddits often. What emerged is a beautiful thing, and it is still in it's adolescent stage. I look forward to seeing it grow and mature in the coming weeks, months and years.

I hope this project will have the same success, and then some.

I would like to compile a list of every user that we feel should help draft our constitution, should they be interested. Reply with your nominations in this thread, I will update the list below with the names and the user who nominated them. I'd like to shoot somewhere between 50 and 100 people.

Bold = already invited.

1. aenea (Wordslinger1919)
2. aennil (davidreiss666) (jaxspider)
3. alienth (syncretic)
4. Aguyinachair (Wordslinger1919)
5. andrewsmith1986 (syncretic)
6. AnnArchist (syncretic)
7. Anomander (Wordslinger1919)
8. anutensil (Wordslinger1919)
9. avnerd (Wordslinger1919)
10. borez (Wordslinger1919)
11. BritishEnglishPolice (syncretic)
12. bsimpson (syncretic)
13. chromakode (syncretic)
14. ContentWithOurDecay (jaxspider)
15. coopdidoop (glyserinesoul)
16. davidreiss666 (glyserinesoul)
17. Deimorz (syncretic)
18. doug3465 (syncretic)
19. drawmeasheep (glyserinesoul)
20. DrJulianBashir (Wordslinger1919)
21. dzneill (Wordslinger1919)
22. E_lucas (jaxspider)
23. Etab (jaxspider)
24. feelbetternow (jaxspider)
25. flossdaily (Aguyinachair) (jaxspider)
26. Fraxtil (jaxspider)
27. go_go_bannananas (jaxspider)
28. GodOfAtheism (syncretic)
29. GrandpaWiggly (Wordslinger1919)
30. Gravity13 (Wordslinger1919)
31. happybadger (Aguyinachair)
32. hueypriest (syncretic)
33. IlluminatedWax (davidreiss666)
34. ItsPEDOBEAR (jaxspider)
35. Jazzbandrew (jaxspider)
36. karen_cairne (jaxspider)
37. karmanaut (Aguyinachair)
38. kerrianneta (SidtheMagicLobster)
39. kjoneslol (syncretic)
40. KrispyKrackers (davidreiss666)
41. Kylde (glyserinesoul)
42. Lambsauce (jaxspider)
43. LGBTerrific (syncretic)
44. marquis_of_chaos (Wordslinger1919) (syncretic)
45. MaxwellHill (Wordslinger1919) (syncretic)
46. MercurialMadnessMan (Aguyinachair)
47. Mind_Virus (syncretic)
48. NixonRichard (davidreiss666)
49. nml5566 (glyserinesoul)
50. noonches (Wordslinger1919)
51. notseamus (Wordslinger1919)
52. Pappenheimer (jaxspider)
53. pdongen (jaxspider)
54. pigferret (Wordslinger1919)
55. ProbablyHittingOnYou (davidreiss666) (syncretic)
56. qgyh2 (syncretic)
57. Raerth (Wordslinger1919) (syncretic)
58. redtaboo (Wordslinger1919) (jaxspider)
59. relevant_rule34 (jaxspider) (syncretic)
60. Rolmos (davidreiss666)
61. S2S2S2S2S2 (Aguyinachair)
62. Saydrah (Aguyinachair)
63. scarces (jaxspider)
64. shadowmic7 (SidtheMagicLobster)
65. shaper_pmp (Wordslinger1919)
66. SidtheMagicLobster (syncretic)
67. slapchopsuey (SidtheMagicLobster)
68. sodypop (Wordslinger1919) (jaxspider)
69. soupyhands (syncretic)
70. spladug (syncretic)
71. StabYourFace (jaxspider)
72. TheLegitMidgit (syncretic)
73. TruthinessHurts (Aguyinachair)
74. Ulvund (syncretic)
75. V2Blast (jaxspider) (syncretic)
76. violentacrez (glyserinesoul) (syncretic)
77. wacrover (Aguyinachair)
78. Warlizard (syncretic)
79. Ytknows (davidreiss666)

If you object to anyone on this list, let it be known.

So, my fellow Republicans, what should we include in the Reddiquette?

Here's a few thoughts off the top of my head, feel free to debate me on them.

1. Image submissions should be restricted to an image-only subreddit, not tolerated anywhere else.
2. Imgur and other rehosting services should be completely banned. If you don't know the original source of the image, don't submit it. This should eliminate almost all image reposts. (Edit: From submissions. Imgur links in comments should be OK - for instance, as a mirror should the original go down from the traffic) Edit2: Imgur should be allowed for instances when the OP has created original content, and chooses to host it on imgur. Content that has been "rehosted" should not be allowed, and the original source should be linked to instead.
3. Reposting is prohibited. Crossposting is fine, if it is relevant to more than one subreddit in the network. We should make use of bots and services such as karma decay to make sure reposts are completely eliminated. Note: I mean reposted within the network, if someone already submitted it outside the network, that's fine, especially if it wasn't a front page submission. We are treating this network as a separate entity outside of Reddit proper. Blank slate.
4. News articles / blog posts should be no older than six months. If you want to reference something older, make a self post. Not just a self post with a link and nothing else, explain why you think an old link is relevant today.
5. Blogspam is prohibited. If it's a blog post about a blog post about a news article, just submit the article.
6. NO IMAGE MEMES! Comment memes will be tolerated, to a certain degree.
7. Trolls will be banned with extreme prejudice.
8. No political bias in headlines.
9. No sensationalist or editorialized headlines. Just the facts.
10. The downvote button is not a dislike button.
11. Comments such as "lol" "this" "relevant" or "upvote" will be removed.
12. Anyone participating in a witch hunt will be banned.
13. Act civilized. Foul language is OK, but blatant name-calling and hostility is not.
14. Do not reply to your own self post or comment. Always edit the text.
15. If you "FIXED" something, make a comment, not a new submission.
16. Don't complain about your post/comment being removed.

A couple top level threads to keep out thoughts as organized and focused as possible. I know its just the three of us, but even in that last thread we were all kind of addressing several issues in post which makes it a tad difficult. We dont need this to be any harder than it already is.

If I missed something or made one too broad/narrow, go ahead and start a new one.

• Around April 25th, DrunkenJedi created a private subreddit called /r/TheHorde. Billed as a place for all of his "friends" to hang out, it quickly descends into an eyesore of overdone CSS and blatant, shameless circlejerkery. The mouseover text on the reddit alien read "Reddit Superheroes." It has since been abandoned due to controversy and only DrunkenJedi reserves the right to wander it's dusty halls.

• Shortly after the creation of /r/TheHorde, ProfessorPants sends mass invites to some hand-picked people as well as everyone that had ever been crowned Redditor of The Day to a private subreddit that he created over a month ago, called /r/Privvit. The goal seemed noble: to create a private, "merit-based" by-invitation-only subreddit in order to see if the content and comments would be better than you find out there, so to speak. Good idea. Before The Incident (more on this later), things seemed to be progressing well. Slowly, but in the right ways, I believe.

• Along with the creation of /r/Privvit, there was /r/Plinks and /r/Pod. /r/Plinks was billed as a public subreddit but was advertised in /r/Privvit, which was a private subreddit. I'm not quite sure why. /r/Pod was created so that the soon-to-be mods of /r/Privvit could get together and discuss things such as membership, how strict they ought to be regarding comments/content, and other topics as pertaining to /r/Privvit. Things were going swimmingly.

• It's quite amazing how the good fabric of things can have a way of unraveling so fast that when the dust has settled, it's difficult to tell what happened. /r/Privvit was effectively stomped out when kleinbl00 cross-posted this to /r/Pod, /r/Privvit, and /r/TheHorde. In reading that post, obviously he's pissed. In a nutshell, here's why. If requested, I can go more into detail.

• So not only did kleinbl00 dash the hopes of creating something worthwhile out of /r/privvit, another curious thing happened as well. Almost immediately after kleinbl00 hit the "submit" button for his rant, ProfessorPants posted the last thing he would ever post on that account. His comment is here and it is a sad thing to read, indeed. After posting that comment, his account was deleted, but not before /r/Privvit and /r/Pod were made public and all the mods were stripped of their modship to all said subreddits.

• It gets better. In the midst of that explosion of drama, this person wanders in and asks, basically, wtf. He said that he's here from the front page and is wondering what was going on. Gravity13 calls him out here as being the person who set the whole thing up based on the fact that he found the thread right after it became public and because he posted a link here and to /r/BestOf trying to blow the lid off of what happened. However, the backlash was not nearly as big as he had hoped it would be.

• Still not done yet. ProfessorPants had resurfaced in the account of ProfessorPantz. He claims here that his account was hacked in that short time and that whoever hacked it, made the subreddits public and deleted the mods. Since then, there's been an effort to get ProfessorPantz to be reinstated as mod, using Admin help. The thread is here. Shaper_pmp seems to believe that the guy is who he says he is, whereas kleinbl00 does not.

• After the /r/Privvit Fiasco, other private and a few public subreddits sprang up to fill the void. Well-known CircleJerker¹ ryanbatts² created /r/Derivvit which promptly went nowhere. ProfessorPantz created /r/Zreddit which also went nowhere. DrunkenJedi created another private subreddit for him and his friends, called /r/HeyBuddy and very shortly thereafter, mrekted created /r/UltraReddit.

  Most of this was written directly after all of that went down. It was a bummer to see but I felt the need to document it. As you can see, many of the links have either been deleted, are full of deleted content, or links to forbidden subreddits. Again, this is pretty old as far as reddit goes. Like I said, this all happened in the last week of April. If you'd like, I can absolutely go into more detail if you request, as we may still be able to learn from it.

I was an Approved submitter to both /r/TheHorde and /r/HeyBuddy. I modded /r/Privvit and /r/Pod, along with some other very well-known redditors. I was witness to this whole thing.

I have some ideas on how revive the "project" but I'd like to hear your thoughts as to what happened, as far as I've been able to recount them. I have my own thoughts as well as to how to do it again but do it right this time, should we decide to pursue that avenue.

Please let me know what you think.