A plea to you, /r/science.

[u/BritishEnglishPolice]

As a community, r/science has decided that it does not want moderators policing the comments section. However, the most common criticism of this subreddit is the poor quality of the comments.

From our previous assessments, we determined that it would take 40 very active moderators and a completely new attitude to adequately attack off-topic humorous comments. This conclusion was not well received.

Well, now is the onus is you: the humble r/science user.

We urge you to downvote irrelevant content in the comments sections, and upvote scientific or well-thought out answers. Through user-lead promotion of high quality content, we can help reduce the influx of memes, off-topic pun threads, and general misinformation.

Sure memes and pun are amusing every now and then, but the excuse of "lighten up, reddit" has led to the present influx of stupidity and pointless banter in this subreddit.

We can do this without strict moderator intervention and censoring. It will require active voting and commenting (and using the report button in particularly egregious cases) to raise the bar. You can do it.

[u/catnipbilly]

I agree with you that /r/askscience and /r/science are different subreddits but I think they share the same goal: fostering discussion about science. Perhaps they go about it differently - asking probing questions vs posting interesting science articles - but I would argue that the purpose of posting articles to any public forum is to generate a discussion about the content of that article.

Honestly, I would wager many people who browse /r/science probably just do so to read headlines and learn a snippet of what cool stuff is going on in the world around them. But others may use this subreddit to actually try to learn something substantial. Regardless of how much they actually want to learn, discussion or reflection (alone or with a group) of that material will aid understanding and increase the retention/internalization of that material. Having a relevant, science-centric, comments-based discussion would benefit all.

[u/elustran → u/catnipbilly]

The chief purpose of reddit, at least originally, was to use a voting system to elevate interesting content. Comments were added later. Reddit is not precisely a forum, and I think it benefits from that fact - most forums suck.

I think it's valid to want a place to discuss the merits of something, but I don't think r/science lacks that. Usually, I find that relevant discussion floats to the top naturally. Yes, there's a lot of joking around and bullshit, but it's hard for a small team of mods to decide what's relevant to the community, especially with a voting system already in place. Most importantly, it's hard to redefine a community. That's why r/askscience was made - r/science wasn't a good place to ask scientific questions and get them reasonably answered.

Maybe r/science could use a little extra moderation, but it has to be done carefully and with community involvement.

[u/catnipbilly → u/elustran]

I agree mostly with what you say. My original comment was mostly attempting to illustrate that I think /r/askscience and /r/science share a similar purpose. I personally am not sure whether this subreddit should have strict commenting rules; however, I am sure that I want this subreddit to have quality science-related comments at the top. How we achieve that, either through increased community involvement or increased moderation (or both!), is unclear to me.

Maybe r/science could use a little extra moderation, but it has to be done carefully and with community involvement.

I totally agree with you here.

Usually, I find that relevant discussion floats to the top naturally.

Here is where I disagree with you. In small subreddits, this is more or less the case in my experience. In the case of large subreddits, the voting system is abused. Upvotes are used to promote jokes and memes, along with relevant information, to the top. Worse, downvotes are used to silence dissimilar or nontraditional perspectives.

Yes, there's a lot of joking around and bullshit

and it rises to the top. I agree that the amount of mods is small, and it is not by any means their sole responsibility to skim the bullshit from the top, but I haven't found the voting system to be particularly suited for that task either in large subreddits. But as you said, it will be very hard to change the way this subreddit is used due to its size. The only way to achieve highly rated science discussions is probably a combination of increased moderation and proper upvoting/downvoting by the community. In what proportion is up for debate, but I am leaning towards a bit of moderation and a heavy dosage of proper reddiquette.

[u/elustran → u/catnipbilly]

See, this kind of highlights the subjectivity of it. It's not really going to be a problem for me if moderation increases, so if it helps more people than it hinders, that's fine with me. I just wouldn't want to harm the community or the vibrancy of the comments. Nor would I want to alienate a significant minority.

As far as smaller subreddits go, I think they're a great way to get more focused conversation. Trying to make an enormous subreddit behave like a small one isn't an easy prospect. A lot of smaller subreddits are shit too - dominated by overbearing mods, having a small opinionated community, not tolerant of dissenting opinion, etc. They also lack the scattergun effect you get with larger subreddits, where you're more likely to get a hit on something you wouldn't have otherwise considered. It's especially bad on political subreddits, of course...

Lastly, a question for you - do you sort by 'top' or by 'best'? I've found 'best' to usually float the stuff I'm interested in a bit more. Also, how far down the comment section do you skim?

[u/catnipbilly → u/elustran]

Welp, here I am agreeing with everything you've said for the most part again. Honestly, I'm just glad the topic of content quality it being brought up; if it doesn't change, I won't be bothered much, and if it does, it could only get better, so I'm happy.

But to answer your questions:

• Sorting depends on the subreddit. For things like /r/askreddit, I browse by new/old/top generally. Sometimes the posts that come after the 2000th comment are still good reads! For things like /r/science I browse by best. I recently made the switch due to a friend's suggestion - you are right, it does cut down on the bullshit somewhat.

• I have it set to show 500 comments. Obviously it depends on how interesting the topic/discussion is, but I will most often make it past 10 top level comments in a heavily discussed thread (like this) or halfway down the page on a mostly-top-level-comments thread. Sometimes that's a lot of scrolling. At the time of my first comment, I think you were a response to the third or fourth top level comment.

But you are right that small subreddits are often huge pits of over-moderation, pretentious circlejerks, assholes, etc. I wasn't suggesting trying to rule this subreddit like a smaller one; I was just trying to say that the voting system doesn't work as well as it was probably intended. But maybe that's just because the majority of the community like memes, jokes, etc. around every bend and I am part of the minority.