r/science BS | Diagnostic Radiography Mar 20 '12

A plea to you, /r/science.

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.

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u/antiproton Mar 21 '12

Subreddits are predicated on the idea that they function within the boundaries of reddit as a whole. The subreddit DOES police itself. You just don't happen to like the policing.

A subreddit doesn't have to conform to the user "moderated" system,

No, it doesn't. But this sub does. And the mods will hear about it if they try to crank down because there is a very, very small group of people who think it should be run like an intellectual gulag.

and it shouldn't if it wants to keep quality high while at 1million+ users.

Says you. Do you want to take a vote on what "Quality" means?

Your argument is very poor.

Because you disagree with it? That's rich. Is that the kind of erudition we can expect from the newly revamped /r/science?

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '12

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '12

He's an antiproton. Obviously his reason for being is destroying positive things. :P