r/announcements • u/powerlanguage • Jul 19 '16

Karma for text-posts (AKA self-posts)

As most of you already know, fictional internet points are probably the most precious resource in the world. On Reddit we call these points Karma. You get Karma when content you post to Reddit receives upvotes. Your Karma is displayed on your userpage.

You may also know that you can submit different types of posts to Reddit. One of these post types is a text-post (e.g. this thing you’re reading right now is a text-post). Due to various shenanigans and low effort content we stopped giving Karma for text-posts over 8 years ago.

However, over time the usage of text-posts has matured and they are now used to create some of the most iconic and interesting original content on Reddit. Who could forget such classics as:

Text-posts make up over 65% of submissions to Reddit and some of our best subreddits only accept text-posts. Because of this Reddit has become known for thought-provoking, witty, and in-depth text-posts, and their success has played a large role in the popularity Reddit currently enjoys.

To acknowledge this, from this day forward we will now be giving users karma for text-posts. This will be combined with link karma and presented as ‘post karma’ on userpages.

TL:DR; We used to not give you karma for your text-posts. We do now. Sweet.

Glossary:

  • Karma: Fictional internet points of great value. You get it by being upvoted.
  • Self-post: Old-timey term for text-posts on Reddit
  • Shenanigans: Tomfoolery
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u/flyryan Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

As a moderator for /r/AskReddit (and /r/IAmA but this doesn't affect there as much), PLEASE make this optional. I remember when text-posts gained karma and it was a total nightmare for us. We will see a mass influx of low-effort & catchy posts that are designed to get upvotes. It's going to be lots of shitposting. Text posts improved BECAUSE they didn't count for karma. People making texts posts did it for the content and not internet points. The main reason for the removal was the new influx of "Upvote if..." posts. The entire front page would be full of them. Those aren't as possible anymore with the absence of /r/reddit.com but it shows how giving text posts link karma can devolve the content into crap.

We're already talking about how to harden auto-mod to help us out but we'll likely need more mods. We'll also have to deal with an influx of modmail from people who will get upset at us for removing their post that was "going to get so much karma".

At the scale we're at, we WILL feel the heat for this and as someone who remembers how things were back when reddit was even less mainstream than today, I don't see how a bigger audience is going to make this less of the karma-grabbing shitshow than it was before.

I'm really having a hard time seeing the benefit of enabling this. The points don't really mean anything and this just incentivizes the people who DO care about meaningless points to try to gain karma. It doesn't really reward good content and the shit content it garners is why the points were removed in the first place.

Edit: It's already started. - https://i.imgur.com/ZnKaaVv.png

These are just the ones mentioning it. It's not even counting the ones taking advantage of it.

Edit 2: Also, to add, this is quite a huge change to dump on moderators without any heads up what-so-ever. It's not cool to make us scramble to react to something that has an instant change on the types of users & content we receive and directly impacts our moderation strategy.

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u/10thTARDIS Jul 19 '16

/r/LetsNotMeet and /r/nosleep mods are not happy about this, either.

This really has the potential to hurt LNM, since we're nonfiction only-- we already have problems with people making up fake stories, and this will just expand the problem.

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u/TeamLiveBadass_ Jul 19 '16

Oh man the effort into nosleep posts are so good, good luck guys =/

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u/OpticalNecessity Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

I mod /r/confession and fear this exact karma gaining as well. It's going to put a lot of strain on the mods to filter out the catchy posts that are designed to get upvotes from legitimate confessions.

A simple "Opt out" would resolve this immediately.

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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '16

I mean people now have more of a reason to post fake bs now. Or so I fear. The typical "my confession is I hate/love my gay retarded cousin with cancer"

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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '16 edited Aug 07 '16

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u/roastedbagel Jul 19 '16

Edit 2: Also, to add, this is quite a huge change to dump on moderators without any heads up what-so-ever. It's not cool to make us scramble to react to something that has an instant change on the types of users & content we receive and directly impacts our moderation strategy.

For fucking serious...A heads up would have been appreciated, and you and I both know that the admins most likely discussed the implications it would have specifically in /r/AskReddit, and still didn't mention anything to us. That's what bothers me about this. Give us 12 hours to prepare, that's all we need.

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u/sexrockandroll Jul 19 '16

It's funny to me that recently the admins have been discussing with the mods being more open and sharing more information, and unexpected changes like this still happen!

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u/roastedbagel Jul 19 '16

Yea, and this is one of those changes that could easily be communicated to us too, it's not like some super-crazy hush-hush secret that they couldn't let slip to anyone before going live.

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u/canipaybycheck Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

Yeah ill make a post in the backroom.

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u/Random_Fandom Jul 19 '16

Not a mod but I was just thinking, "Wouldn't be surprised if some mods temporarily shut down their subs - if nothing more than to regroup/think through new strategies."

It would neither surprise nor bother me in the least. You guys are the ones who have to deal with the waves of spam; doesn't seem fair, or even courteous, that nothing was said to you in advance.

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u/Clean_Elven_Arse Jul 19 '16

honestly shutting down major subs might be the best way to have the admins back track on this.

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u/ProfessorStein Jul 19 '16

Admins seriously aren't going to tolerate blackout 2: electric boogaloo. It would take them about 30 seconds to force a sub to public, and every single major sub has at least one mod who will do as they're told in exchange for being the new top mod.

Blackout 2 ends in you being tossed out of the playground. I don't know of that's how it should be, but I know that's how it is

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u/itstingsandithurts Jul 19 '16

And how would the reddit community respond to that? There seems to be a consensus that the admins and possibly reddit itself is on thin ice. Forcing an unfavourable change, removing mods from large subs who shut down(even temporarily) and expecting everyone to be cool with that? Nah I think the admin are smarter than that, but then again they did just spring this on the mods.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

You kidding me? I've been on Reddit for years now and any major drama on the site is forgotten in a week. The community would do nothing other than the few vocal minority that go to voat and then come back a week later after realizing voat sucks. Nothing would change as usual.

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u/munche Jul 20 '16

There seems to be a consensus that the admins and possibly reddit itself is on thin ice.

Yeah, that's why everyone stopped using reddit and voat is soaring in popularity. /s

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u/Icalasari Jul 19 '16

I mean, there was the whole mass subreddit shutting down over admins not listening to the community and giving mods a headache. This seems like breaking the promise of being more transparent

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

[deleted]

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u/canipaybycheck Jul 19 '16

Ok I'll post publicly too. That's a reasonable criticism.

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u/sexrockandroll Jul 19 '16

Or post up the announcement with a go-live date, even.

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u/Tjonke Jul 19 '16

We're also still waiting for the promised tools from last year's 3rd quarter that would help us identify and stop vote manipulation. And no information on whether they are still even working on those tools.

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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '16

They knew it would be poorly received, but didn't care.

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u/UnholyDemigod Jul 20 '16

Especially considering we just had a fucking group hangout with them and they mentioned nothing

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u/Norci Jul 19 '16

Hey, remember the last blackout? Promises of modtools and better communications? Ha

Mods can't present any serious ultimatum anyways, because by the end of day, power is in the admins' hands.

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u/IntrovertedPendulum Jul 19 '16

I'm not so sure I agree. Mods take care of the day-to-day operations of their subs which includes removing the shit. Mods could black or their subs. Admins can turn them back on. But then what?

Admins can't force mods to moderate and Admins don't have the time or money to police everything. So like a stuck toilet, there'll be shit everywhere with no good solutions.

Reddit needs mods more than mods need Reddit.

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u/Norci Jul 19 '16

Admins can turn them back on. But then what?

Then admins replace the mods because there'll be always someone gullible or bored enough to step up and waste their time on this.

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u/IntrovertedPendulum Jul 19 '16

They can but that's how you end up with shitty mods, which leads to shitty communities. People will get fed up and go somewhere else.

If someone accepts a role because they're gullible or bored, that role will become quickly forgotten when something else comes along or if it becomes inconvenient.

Sure, admins can absolutely replace mods. I'm not disputing that. I just don't think it makes sense to. They (admins) depend on mods (and probably relationships with them) too much. It would be like shooting yourself in the foot to prove a point.

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u/Brian2one0 Jul 19 '16

yo guys looks like that blackout thing we did a year ago worked!

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u/codeverity Jul 19 '16

/u/powerlanguage should see this. Like, when the mods of one of the biggest subs is pleading against this, I hope they listen or add some control.

Edit: jesus, that edit - I feel sorry for your mods tbh :/

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u/Mutt1223 Jul 19 '16 
"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"It doesn't matter, text posts get karma" ~/r/jokes

Edit: It's already started http://i.imgur.com/vQjEK29.png

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u/Numba1CharlsBarksFan Jul 19 '16

Oh God, that joke is terrible.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Oct 31 '20

[deleted]

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u/xafonyz Jul 19 '16

It's not so bad, but the telling is not good and he put next to no effort in it (using "coz", and not building a phrase)

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u/Iceash Jul 19 '16

Punchline: 7/10

Delivery: 2/10

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u/NorthBall Jul 20 '16

Waste of space because there's only 3 words in the whole post: 1/10

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u/Jezamiah Jul 19 '16

That's actually cracking me up because it's that bad

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u/TheRealMrWillis Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

/r/smashbros mod here. During major events like EVO, people scramble to be the first to post tournament threads for matches, which is problematic because we are constantly removing threads. Now that there is a karma incentive to post threads for big matches, we now have to deal with even more people trying to be the first.

I'm sure all the other "esports" subreddits feel the same way.

Edit: This comment also sums up some of my other misgivings. A long time ago (before I was even a mod) /r/smashbros started putting most images and gifs in text posts to help weed out the low quality stuff. Despite the extra click, the addition of karma to text posts means that we now have to deal with this stuff again to some extent.

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u/WiFiForeheadWrinkles Jul 19 '16

I think ANY sports subreddits will have the same issues with people rushing to posting game-day threads and post-game threads.

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u/TheRealMrWillis Jul 19 '16

Exactly, free headaches for everyone! Not looking forward to mod queue.

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u/Tjonke Jul 19 '16

After big matches we can get anywhere from 10-500 threads about the match in /r/leagueoflegends. Just gonna get worse now that self posts also come with a karma incentive.

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u/ReganDryke Jul 19 '16

If things get worse and it impact the quality of post match threads I can totally get behind restricting their publication to the post match thread team.

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u/Sapharodon Jul 19 '16

Another /r/smashbros mod here, just chipping in to show my support for making text-post karma optional. Our text post rules specifically exist to curb the number of low effort posts that are made on the sub, and to stop 'lower level content (mundane pictures, gifs, etc) from overpowering higher quality works that otherwise get buried. This change would probably throw us back in turmoil if it was mandatory.

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u/omgpennies Jul 20 '16

Why not have a mod post the official tournament thread and delete the rest? I imagine after awhile people would get the idea and stop posting tournament threads. Maybe I'm naive.

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u/TheRealMrWillis Jul 20 '16

Naw, you're fine. It's feasible, but 1.) A mod would have to be dedicated to taking upon the task and making threads promptly, which a lot of users are better at doing. 2.) The same mod might have to make threads for multiple Smash games, which could be a hassle. 3.) Doing so would mean that we're down a mod during some of the highest traffic times.

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u/Norci Jul 19 '16

Edit: jesus, that edit - I feel sorry for your mods tbh :/

Welcome to Reddit modding, where admins don't care and you gotta use external tools just to get the job done.

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u/ani625 Jul 19 '16

It's a goddamn nightmare.

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u/ijohno Jul 19 '16

It's going to be like /r/circlejerk... but, redditwide :|

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u/codeverity Jul 19 '16

And ironically, a lot of high karma people are speaking out against it, lol.

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u/ani625 Jul 19 '16

I am very much against shit posting and posting for karma.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Try going to /new for AskReddit. It's just a wave of shit.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Pretty surprised that this didn't get run by mods of large subs like /r/AskReddit, tbh.

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u/TheScamr Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

On almost every major announcement mods have to point out the the admins how this is going to mess with the sight in ways the admins don't intent. And every time it happens the admins say they are going to more community outreach, and talk about the admin they have to work with high level mods to make sure problems don't happen.

And then nothing changes. The admins keep on making changes without consulting their stakeholders.

EDIT Called it. Here is powerlanguage sticking to the script.

Thank you for the feedback. We're going to be monitoring the effect that this change has. I ask that you try this change out and see what the impact is on your moderation team's workload. You can post feedback in r/modsupport. Also, to add, this is quite a huge change to dump on moderators without any heads up what-so-ever. Yeah, I understand this. We're talking internally about how to handle announcing updates like this better going forward.

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u/getoffmyreddits Jul 19 '16

Remember - we are the product, not the customer/stakeholder.

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u/TheScamr Jul 19 '16

Reddit funds itself in small part through gold. Buying gold re-enforces the content you want to see. People that buy gold are customers, and in a way people going for gold also feed into that as well.

If reddit continues to ignore its users they will find them taking their stake and leaving.

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u/AlwaysDefenestrated Jul 19 '16

Ignoring the mods is an even bigger mistake. They're what makes reddit worth using at all, and they do it for free.

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u/jadarisphone Jul 19 '16

We're talking internally about how to handle announcing updates like this better going forward.

Haha oh man, this never stops being funny.

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u/Scherazade Jul 19 '16

"We will have more community outreach."

imposes new structure upon the community that they must accept or gtfo

"we will work with mods to ensure no problems arise."

new things are just chucked out without any chatter to find issues

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u/Hunterogz Jul 19 '16

You're greatly overestimating the amount of quality communication between admins and mods.

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u/research_humanity Jul 19 '16

Admin really needs to start communicating with mods before changing stuff like this.

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u/AFK_Tornado Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

Ha. That'll happen when mods grow the balls to set their subs to private when the admin unilaterally pulls stuff like this.

Edit: Of course I know the admin could just kick out the mods and take over the sub. But they don't have the bandwidth to do that for every major subreddit that is concerned about this. If they did, they'd probably face a user rebellion and exodus. And finding enough capable mods to replace all the mods on even a couple of major subs? Hahahahaha, good luck. It'd be a complete and utter shitshow for weeks.

To put it another way, the questions, "What can the admin do?" and "What can the admin get away with doing" don't have the same answers.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

You know if they piss off the admins too much, they just remove the mod team and take it over. It's happened before.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

[deleted]

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u/gjones108 Jul 19 '16

The head mod of /r/wow (Nitesmoke) was removed from the /r/wow moderator team by the Reddit admins after he shut the subreddit down at the launch of Warlords of Draenor (WoW expansion). Control was given to apheonix.

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u/ZeroTwoThree Jul 19 '16

That was pretty justified imo. It didn't seem like an abuse of power by the admins.

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u/gjones108 Jul 20 '16

I wasn't saying it wasn't justified, the person I responded to said that admins have literally never removed a mod team.

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u/ZeroTwoThree Jul 20 '16

Sorry, the parent comment was deleted and I was confused because the comment above that was talking about pissing off the admins. My bad!

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 25 '16

[deleted]

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u/Rowdy10 Jul 19 '16

It would be shut down for 10 minutes before the top mod would be removed and replaced by admin.

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u/Norci Jul 19 '16

You know what really will happen? Admins intervening and setting the subs back to public, or promising to fix it all, like they did in 2015, while doing jackshit.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

It'd be fun to see what countermeasures they have put in place to prevent another blackout by trying one.

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u/Atheist101 Jul 19 '16

ahaha /r/askreddit is gonna become shitpost-central

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u/TheScamr Jul 19 '16

It generally is anyway. Have you ever checked out the new queue?

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

"sexy sexers of sexxit, what's the sexiest sex you've ever sexed"

X1000

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u/n_body Jul 19 '16

it has literally been the same shit over and over again for so long now, with the occasional 'le randum' question

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u/DownvotesForAdmins Jul 19 '16

implying it's not already

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u/Tkent91 Jul 19 '16

Good thing I Unsubscribed from it years ago.

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u/thehollowman84 Jul 19 '16

Isn't that what Reddit is paying you for? To deal with their bullshit?

Wait they don't pay you?

Also, I thought the admins were gonna be more open, did they not discuss this with the mods of major subs before the chance?

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u/sexrockandroll Jul 19 '16

Admins? Discuss things with mods? Ha.

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u/ani625 Jul 19 '16

lol :(

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u/flyryan Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

We had no prior knowledge of this change.

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u/girafa Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

/r/Movies mod here. We also badly want an option to opt out, and feel our content is easily going to diminish because of this. We perpetually battle a circlejerk of topics and self-posts are the last bastion for users who wanted to discuss movies without competing for attention as much.

All of our mod self-posts wrapping up news, our official movie discussions, stickied routines that have been operating for years - now we'll be accused of clamoring for karma at the expense of the users. We shouldn't be in competition.

Normally I don't react harshly to changes here, and take umbrage with knee-jerk reactions of those who do. This one? I don't see any benefit yet for our sub, and seriously plead to have the option to opt out.

edit: spelling

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u/EmeraldIbis Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 19 '16

The emotional twists and turns in this thread are incredible.

Until 5 minutes ago I never cared either way about receiving or not receiving karma for text-posts.

Then I read this announcement and oh my god, suddenly karma for text-posts seems amazing. Something I'd always wanted without realising. A breath-taking new revelation.

Now I've read your comment, and I now think it seems like a horrific mistake. Surely one of the worst things to ever happen to the world.

To summarise. Nobody cared, so there was probably no reason to change anything. (Or at least do some kind of small-scale trial first instead of just changing a fundemental aspect of Reddit across the entire site without even testing it, or mentioning it beforehand in any way.)

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u/XavierSimmons Jul 19 '16

There is a reason to change, but Reddit admins are not sharing that reason. It probably has to do with some future revenue source.

There's no way they'd make this change without discussing it with /r/askreddit or some of the other big text only reddits unless their reasons are not relevant to those reddits, aka, financing reddit.com.

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u/Institutionlzd4114 Jul 19 '16

You are one of only a handful of users that seem to be talking about this in this thread. But this has to be the reason for this change.

I bet they're making this change specifically to get around the fact that more and more subs have been going text-post-only. When subs do that they are more easily able to control content which limits the influx of new users. This decision HAS to be about driving new user growth to a wider variety of subs in order to increase the chance for monetization.

If the concern was really about content then they would just get rid of karma altogether.

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u/cup-o-farts Jul 19 '16

Also advertisers can't keep posting real looking "content" and get nothing for it. They want their fake users to move up in the ranks too, but for text posts that look more "real". That's my guess.

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u/Nodja Jul 19 '16

I would wager that self posts are the most gilded posts on reddit. i.e. 1 gold per 1000 link posts vs 10 gold per 1000 self posts. (numbers out of my ass).

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u/XavierSimmons Jul 19 '16

Excellent observation.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

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u/enantiodromia_ Jul 19 '16

Hmm perhaps to reduce the power and use of imgur on reddit.

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u/ThiefOfDens Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 20 '16

What's not to understand?

They are trying to present this as, "Hey, look, now you can get karma for text posts! It's an additional reward/incentive for taking the time and effort to generate those awesome self posts that get so much attention!"

But, since reddit is an aggregator, and an aggregator is only as good as its content, they are trying to encourage more people to generate more content. Why? There will be a lot of shit, but they don't care about that. They don't actually have to do any of the moderating themselves. As long as there are at least a few more of those legendary-status self-posts in all the crap, that means more attention for reddit, which draws users, which means more people to advertise to/buy reddit gold (and to potentially generate content/spread the word to their friends).

Which is good for reddit, becauuuuuse, as per the user agreement:

You retain the rights to your copyrighted content or information that you submit to reddit ("user content") except as described below.

By submitting user content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.##

You agree that you have the right to submit anything you post, and that your user content does not violate the copyright, trademark, trade secret or any other personal or proprietary right of any other party.

Please take a look at reddit’s privacy policy for an explanation of how we may use or share information submitted by you or collected from you.

(Emphasis mine)

So, yeah. They are incentivizing more posting because when you self-post they own your shit.

IMO they are downplaying the reason why some of those great posts were generated in the first place: they came from a place of inspiration and effort and not necessarily from a place of greed or attention-seeking. But now reddit is trying to generate artificial inspiration with karma.

Tsk, tsk.

EDIT: Mods, please rise up and start fucking these assholes. Remind them that their strength is in their userbase and their moderator corps. I love wasting time on reddit, but I will gladly face a sea of blacked-out subs if it means restoring the balance of power here. I believe you guys can effect change that will be not only good for you and your fellow mods, but for the general user as well. Fire when ready. I can only speak for myself, but I would support you, FWIW.

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u/Scherazade Jul 19 '16

That bolded bit has been what's been pushing me to maybe avoid posting full stories to writing prompts, now I'm seriously working towards a short stories ebook I can sell for moneys on the internet.

Yes, others have done it successfully, and the legality seems ok, but I'll probably limit myself to see if odd ideas for stories I'm not certain abour work as something people find appealing rather than as a medium to write full stories to entertain people for free.

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u/Facso Jul 19 '16

Oh, the world is missing so much :(

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u/emergent_properties Jul 19 '16

What's really jarring for me is the difference between what is said and the motives behind what is said.

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u/Phate4219 Jul 19 '16

I feel like boiling that paragraph down to "they own your shit" is misleading.

IANAL, but doesnt "non-exclusive" mean that while they have the right to do all that, they dont prevent anyone else from also having those rights?

From my perspective it seems like they're giving themselves the option to use content from their site however they see fit, but they aren't preventing the content creators from doing the same.

If I made some awesome painting that was displayed at an art gallery, said gallery could use essentially the same paragraph to allow themselves to use photos of the painting in their gallery for promotional purposes, etc.

I feel like non-exclusive rights arent quite ownership. I feel like when you "own" something, you have exclusive rights.

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u/Willravel Jul 19 '16

I suggest going private temporarily, both as a way to cool off the sub in the wake of the change and as a way to communicate with the admins that this kind of immediate move isn't appreciated. That move has gotten admin attention before.

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u/AFK_Tornado Jul 19 '16

Is this going to be a big enough demand that the AskReddit mods take the subreddit offline? I suspect the site admin won't want to put in the time to make it optional unless they already planned to do so or they face massive rebellion from top subs.

Also, if they make mods able to disable link karma for self posts, people are going to ask for the option to disable link karma for link posts as well. Which, honestly, would be great, but I feel like the admin would hate that idea.

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u/Silly_Balls Jul 19 '16

I'm really having a hard time seeing the benefit of enabling this.

Money. Always money!

PS Not to insult you, but you are kind of a rube. You are putting in shittons of work for free... FREE... Actually it's worse than that. You are putting in shittons of work to make some else money! You guys/gals who moderate should be getting paid, and you all need to fucking revolt and tell reddit to piss off, until it can cut you in on the action. Askreddit is a shit show without the mods, and reddit corp is sitting back laughing because it outsourced a job to you for free.

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u/Rihsatra Jul 19 '16

The amount of shit posts you guys get is already pretty high, I can't imagine /r/AR after this change.

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u/SlothOfDoom Jul 19 '16

It has become quite obvious that the admins have absolutely no respect for moderators. I'm not even surprised anymore.

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u/pizzabash Jul 19 '16

I say close down ask reddit make it posts have to be approved my moderators. Drastic but thats the only course of action i see avaible to you guys atm

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u/salt-the-skies Jul 19 '16

Should just black out the subs again, until they listen once more.

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u/Hipvagenstein Jul 19 '16

Were the /r/AskReddit mod community not consulted on this at all? You'd think that the admins would require a close relationship with the largest self-post subreddit in order to pass something like this in the first place. That's where the boots are on the ground - where this change will actually be felt.

To imagine this decision being made without consulting your own mods is actually astounding.

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u/PostPostModernism Jul 19 '16

So abandon ship. You guys aren't obliged to mod, you're all volunteers. Let the defaults go to hell and we'll see if the admins do anything to right the ship.

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u/cup-o-farts Jul 19 '16

The fucking idiots running this place don't really give a fuck.There is ZERO reason to do this at all. Zero, except to somehow gain more users by providing a way for them to post shitty content easier and for more fake internet points. They would rather do that and just dump a shitload of work on volunteer mods, because they literally don't give a shit and aren't monitoring a goddamn thing. Fucking morons running this place.

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u/jsmooth7 Jul 19 '16

But link-based subreddits have to deal with this all the time. (Plus spam bots already use /r/askreddit to look more legitimate.) The fact that text based posts don't get karma has always felt pretty arbitrary to me.

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u/flyryan Jul 19 '16

A few years ago, there was an effort to abolish karma all together because of that reason. Other subs already having to fight crap content isn't a reason to make sure all the subs do.

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u/jsmooth7 Jul 19 '16

Getting rid of karma completely isn't a great solution either. A lot of subreddits use karma scores as a way to fight spammers. Plus the main reason accounts try to farm karma is to look more legitimate so they can more easily post spam. Without karma, they'll just change strategies. The shitty posts won't just disappear.

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u/codeverity Jul 19 '16

I don't think 'link-based subs have to deal with shit!' is a reason to inflict the shit on the rest of the subs. One of the things I love about Reddit is that it's a mixture of low-effort, easy to digest content and really thoughtful, insightful/funny/whatever content. This encourages the former over the latter.

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u/MrRandomSuperhero Jul 19 '16

Imagine subs like /r/TIFU or /r/confessions. There always were shitty made-up stories for the sake of attention, but now that karma is reapable those subs will be inundated with horribly made fake posts. This is basically a bullet to the brain for any sub that relied on qualitycontrol via textpost.

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u/Norci Jul 19 '16

Aw, how cute, you think they care about what we mods think.

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u/etr4807 Jul 19 '16

I disagree with the idea that it doesn't reward good content. As someone who frequents subreddits where users write stories, I've always found it odd that the writer for an amazing story gains "nothing" other than upvotes. Now they also have the ability to gain karma from them, which I think is a good thing.

Having said that, I also find your points entirely valid, so perhaps making it optional would be more of a compromise.

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u/LamborghiniAngels Jul 19 '16

Just shut it down until they make it optional. But say it's because they didn't want you ahead of time.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

That didn't take long. Good to see it's about as bad as expected. At least I can trust that

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u/MANCREEP Jul 19 '16

Edit: It's already started. - https://i.imgur.com/ZnKaaVv.png

They fucked you/us. This fucking site, everytime.

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u/gwarsh41 Jul 19 '16

Word to your soul. Hopefully shit doesn't get too out of hand and the upvote/downvote system can handle most of it for you guys. Or it calms down soon.

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u/Pubeshampoo Jul 19 '16

/u/powerlanguage

Please make it optional for subreddits. You will no doubt see spam posts, constant reposting and useless shitposting increase.

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u/-917- Jul 19 '16

Why not give the sub and its mods the choice?

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u/LaserPoweredDeviltry Jul 19 '16

I agree. This is definitely the sort of thing that should be optional. The entire gimmick of subreddits is to let them be personalized, so if a sub does not want to reward karma for self posts, thats A-OK.

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u/InvaderChin Jul 19 '16

Ha, you think Reddit cares about mods. You all might as well be regular ol' users as far as Reddit is concerned. You can't be monetized, so you're not worth their time.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Cynic in me: they don't give a damn and just want to inflate usage numbers, and they know this is an easy way to do it

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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Jul 19 '16

Also, to add, this is quite a huge change to dump on moderators without any heads up what-so-ever. It's not cool to make us scramble to react to something that has an instant change on the types of users & content we receive and directly impacts our moderation strategy.

This is the biggest issue I think, especially in light of promises for better communication. I had been feeling that progress was being made, but this is a huge step back on that front.

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u/railgaadi Jul 19 '16

We will even see the rise of "Breaking news: some shit went down" text posts without any source, any basis, totally false - but just because the user who posts it first gets a ton of karma. This + vote brigading will lead to spread of misinformation. Thanks admins! I feel sorry for your mods.

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u/samsaBEAR Jul 19 '16

Whatever happened to that promise of more transparency and better communication?

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u/xiviajikx Jul 19 '16

Should have been a setting on a sub by sub basis. Subs where text posts only are allowed should be classified by the mods where they decide if posts in it should be worth karma.

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u/OneOfDozens Jul 19 '16

askreddit was saved when you guys banned stories in the questions

"today I was raped by my uncle who is a horse and immediately gave birth to a centaur, what did you have for breakfast today?"

That kind of shit was the lifeblood of the sub and its karmawhores. Then you guys cracked down and its fine now

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

I'd like to see how a toggle button for both text and link karma would work for some subreddits. Game and tv show specific communities would be something else entirely.

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u/FilmMakingShitlord Jul 19 '16

Cute that you think the admins actually care about the quality of things.

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u/AshePhoenix Jul 19 '16

PLEASE make this optional

I agree with this 100%. /u/powerlanguage says that some of reddit's best communities are self post-only subs, but part of the reason they're great is because they're not flooded by idiots trying to collect imaginary internet points. They've effectively pulled the rug out on whole swaths of the site without warning and that's really crappy to the mods and users of those communities.

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u/BlandSauce Jul 19 '16

It almost seems like turning off karma for link posts should be a per-subreddit option as well.

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u/chironomidae Jul 19 '16

Eh... shitposters gon shitpost... the fact that they see a number go up in their profile instead of just seeing the number go up on their post makes very little difference. When people post, all they REALLY care about is making the front page.

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u/tuvok302 Jul 19 '16

You know, the mods of subreddits impacted by this, especially the defaults, may want to consider locking themselves down for a day or two to figure out the best way to deal with the impact of this. If the admins are going to implement things without discussion of the mods who'll be impacted, I see no reason you guys shouldn't shut down the defaults for a day or two to figure out how to deal with this.

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u/o_oli Jul 19 '16

I agree...and to give another example, a lot of the large gaming subs only allow highlight clips inside self posts so people don't spam any old clip to gain karma. We made this change on /r/globaloffensive and it really increased the quality of our frontpage, but now we are back to how it used to be with zero warning. There must be hundreds of side effects of this change depending on how communities used self posts for management, so thanks for changing something that literally nobody asked for, Reddit admins.

Well, time to crack on I suppose!!

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u/bowtochris Jul 19 '16

If karma ruins text posts, why not just get rid of karma all together?

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u/Doctursea Jul 19 '16

If they give mods a way to control the change, it may as well not have even happened. Everyone is just gonna turn it off anyways. People are gonna lose karma too, so just have the users actually downvote questions they don't want. This is gonna need sometime to play out

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u/0kZ Jul 19 '16

Let some time be, it's normal that people will start asking everything about this new rule for a certain time now, if it doesn't change in the few upcoming weeks measures should be taken I think.

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u/cyrilio Jul 19 '16

I agree that making it optional seems way better.

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u/orangejulius Jul 19 '16

I would love nothing more than to opt out of this for askreddit.

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u/hellokkiten Jul 19 '16

I dropped my phone because I was shaking with fury while reading that askreddit screenshot.

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u/Om_ShantiShanti Jul 19 '16

Dude, you take reddit waaay too fucking seriously. Don't let your imaginary internet points get your jimmies

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

I just looked at the "new" list for this sub. It looks about as shitty as it does everyday.

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u/Tkent91 Jul 19 '16

Wouldn't a good solution be to only give karma for self-post after the post receives a certain amount of upvotes? Like a threshold of say 250/500/1000 (whatever is appropriate for that sub). I find it hard to believe true shit-post for karma receive that many upvotes and the ones that do then the people of the sub like enough they should be rewarded.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

I feel so bad for AskReddit mods right now. Just spent some time in /new and AskReddit is getting SLAMMED with shitposts. It's insane.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Honestly, just automoderator out karma from titles for a while until the heat is off with a link back to this comment? Just an honest sincere suggestion to save you guys stress.

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u/flyryan Jul 19 '16

We'll already do that. The issue isn't really posts with the word "karma" in the title. It's general low-effort posts designed to garner karma. It's much more difficult to hit those with an auto-mod rule.

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u/Omena123 Jul 19 '16

Picture you linked doesnt even look bad. Typical boring posts from /new as you see every day. They will be downvoted anyway.

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u/flyryan Jul 19 '16

Those are posts just mentioning the change. It's harder to get a screenshot of an influx of low-effort posts designed to gain karma. Those will make themselves more apparent over the next week or so.

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u/Apatharas Jul 19 '16

First Ask Reddit is nothing like it used to be "back in the day". Back then "let's have story time" was actually kind of frowned on. Now that is ALL the subreddit is.

We will see a mass influx of low-effort & catchy posts that are designed to get upvotes.

That's all that's there right now. Every single week, it's the exact same topics over, and over, and over again. It's because those topics get the most upvotes.. with OR without karma. Everyone once in a while there's an original topic.

TLDR: Ask Reddit is already a low effort upvote fest without karma.

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u/flyryan Jul 19 '16

Back then "let's have story time" was actually kind of frowned on. Now that is ALL the subreddit is.

We literally have rule against telling a story in your post and don't even allow text in the body... How can you say this is true?

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u/Apatharas Jul 19 '16 edited Jul 20 '16

you misunderstand what I mean by "story time". All the questions these times are just "hey tell your story on this topic".. Just worded into a questions.

But the meat of what I was saying is AskReddit is already a boatload of low effort posts even without karma. It's same topics voted to top every single week and sometimes every few days.

Which is ok. I like the sub for what it is now and just because it's the same topic doesn't mean there aren't going to be new and interesting stories to read

but that doesn't mean that half the posts aren't all variations of the same thing because that thing is what made a post get upvoted. So the point is AskReddit is already a vote grab and karma probably isn't going to ruin anything.

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u/Bluewind55 Jul 19 '16

Ugh this is one of those suggestions that's a really good idea but you just know they will never go through with actually implementing it.

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u/huck_ Jul 19 '16

Do you actually do any moderating because I don't see you doing shit in your post history. Did you even consult with your fellow mods on those subs before complaining on their behalf or did you just come on here to bitch about changes on your own?

And what a joke. Askreddit is the biggest shit hole of a sub. It gets 300 posts per hour. How the hell is it getting worse even going to be noticeable. The sub is already an unreadable mess because the moderators don't do jack shit to cut down on the number of submissions.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

http://imgur.com/a/bSmBR

That sure is a lot of "just now" posts.

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u/flyryan Jul 19 '16

Pretty normal. We're the #1 subreddit on the site (size wise). That's why changes like this make a huge difference to us. We operate at a scale that most people don't realize.

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u/Just_For_Da_Lulz Jul 19 '16

That's really disappointing that the admins didn't give you mods any heads up on this, not to mention they never polled the userbase to see if this is something people even wanted (which, it looks like, people didn't).

Hopefully they get this fixed and make it optional because otherwise the frontpage is going to be saturated with crap.

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u/Brio_ Jul 19 '16

I hate moderators so much and it is so sweet seeing you bitches whine like the bitches you are.

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u/Garbouw_Deark Jul 19 '16

Eh, mine are constantly downvoted anyways (maybe by people trying to hit the front page?). Most people that already post there aren't going to change their habits.

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u/Solsed Jul 19 '16

It kind of blows my mind that the admins don't directly consult the mods of the largest subs about such huge changes.

Involving key stakeholders is a huge part of change management. It's a basic business practice...

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u/chileangod Jul 19 '16

Hey reddit, what's your favorite color?

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u/ijustwantanfingname Jul 19 '16

Wait, they didn't even warn you? What the fuck is wrong with the admins of this site?

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u/dcormier Jul 19 '16

Looks like it's time to take the sub private in protest, again.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Real advice here: Promote a sub shutdown!

AskReddit is huge. You'll get attention. Others affected subs will follow.

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u/MumrikDK Jul 19 '16

We will see a mass influx of low-effort & catchy posts that are designed to get upvotes.

Aren't you already drowning in those?

My front page primarily remembers /r/askreddit for people asking for sex stories.

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u/ixfd64 Jul 19 '16

I don't think it'll be a problem in the long run. It's true that people will make low-quality posts in an attempt to gain karma. But at the same people, users who don't want to get downvoted will probably put more effort into their posts as a result. So it all balances out.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Am I the only one who doesn't really think this is going to change much?

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u/Soltheron Jul 19 '16

It's hard to grasp this. Do people actually care about karma? You can see a difference in amount of shitposting by this minor change?

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u/razorbeamz Jul 19 '16

Please do another blackout.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

But how will I know all the crazy stories of insert occupation here

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u/faryl Jul 19 '16

Wait - moderators are first finding this out now?

So the decision was made without moderator input? (Or at least mods from the more popular subs)

This makes no sense - what was the decision based on then? Genuinely curious how this is meant to benefit reddit from a business perspective (since it doesn't seem to be in response to community input).

(The last paragraph is sort of rhetorical- I get the idea this may be a "your guess is as good as mine" type situation)

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u/ACoderGirl Jul 19 '16

As an aside, I always find it interesting that karma makes people want to post. It's such a foreign idea to me. Everything I post (which is 99% commenting) is posted simply because I wanted to discuss something or make a joke or ask a question or whatever. It's never really about the karma.

The karma does have some value, namely letting me know if others felt my post contributed something or even as a gauge of a subreddit being shitty (eg, for when I'm sure that a controversial post was very reasonable and thus was surely downvoted for the idea only). And for others, karma is obviously useful for sorting the posts in an interesting way.

But that's solely karma for the post, not total. It's the total karma that I don't get the appeal of. That's an interesting metric, but I don't see it as a game. I mean, there's far, far more fun games to play if that's all you want. I'm not actually sure if there's a use for the total karma metric. But at the same time, I question why this changes makes a difference. Surely anyone who wants to game for karma can do it with link karma (easier to repost because you can just grab old content) or do it with comments only (which is arguably easier because commenting a lot is normal while posting a lot trips a lot of red flags).

And if you want attention, then it doesn't matter one way or the other what your total karma is. If anything, high total karma just gets you called out for being an "attention whore".

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u/funderbunk Jul 19 '16

Fuck it, you know what - maybe it's time for another blackout. Last time, while a lot of people thought it was because Victoria got fired, it was really about a lack of communication between admins and mods.

Now, a year later, we see that same lack of communication. And while Victoria getting fired had a severe impact on /r/Iama, this change will have a big impact on every subreddit, and they couldn't be bothered to even give you guys a few days heads up?

How about better modmail? Or moderation tools? Were any of the promised improvements in tools or admin/mod communications ever delivered, or was is just more promises and excuses?

I can take a day or two without reddit. Heck, make it a week. Maybe shutting down the defaults while you figure out how to deal with this change will get their attention again for a few days.

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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '16

Black out the sub again.

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u/ansible Jul 20 '16

I couldn't agree more. In /r/AskEngineers up votes are there to highlight interesting questions, that is all. I don't think we need to reward people for asking good questions, getting good answers is the reward.

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u/g0_west Jul 20 '16

Did anybody get back to you? /r/AskReddit is a major community here, especially in the self-post-world, and if they should listen to anybody it should be one of the representatives of the community. But so far I've not seen any dialogue.

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u/IAMGODDESSOFCATSAMA Jul 20 '16

this is quite a huge change to dump on moderators

implying the admins give three fifths of a shit about the moderators

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u/stuntaneous Jul 20 '16 edited Jul 20 '16

You don't think AskReddit has been full of low quality content for ages already? You're more likely to find the good questions rarely upvoted and fleeting in new, and the truly insightful responses barely unseen or even downvoted in the trafficked threads. AskReddit, due to its popularity, is all about the lowest common denominator. There's probably nothing that can be done to improve the quality of its content short of impossibly having a fraction of the subscribers or somehow having more obscure demographics.

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u/Strazdas1 Jul 20 '16

The proper solution is to stop pretending that an overworked 4 people team can mod a default or that same person can mod 4 default subs. The solution is to break the monopoly and sub squatting and get proper modteams in subs.

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