[Meta] Brainstorming Thread #2: What could /v/conspiracy do to better itself? Take a look at this summary of ideas from the previous discussion, and share your thoughts! ( conspiracy )

submitted by Mumberthrax

Previous discussion, from 22 days ago (stickied from 2015-5-25 to 2015-5-29): [Meta] What could vconspiracy do to better itself? I'd like to invite anyone with an interest in conspiracies or underreported events to join me in brainstorming ways to make this sub excellent.

Intro

Hello! I'd like to invite you all to join me in a continuation of our community brainstorming discussion on making our subverse and community excellent. If you have an interest in conspiracy theories or underreported events, even if you don't subscribe to this subverse, your thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

What could we do to make /v/Conspiracy a more effective community hub for uncovering, organizing, sharing, and discussing information about conspiracies and secret agreements and all the related things that go into that?

In our last discussion , 21 awesome people participated, sharing their ideas and sentiments. I'm pretty happy about that. Thanks everyone!

I've reviewed that discussion and put together a somewhat organized summary of the suggestions and ideas shared there, as well as one suggestion from /v/conspiracymeta . I'd like to invite you all to review these and share your thoughts and opinions, and any additional ideas or suggestions that you think might benefit the community.

Ideas and Suggestions

In trying to summarize/organize these, I made a mind map: http://a.pomf.se/burzjq.png Everything below this line is basically the same as what is in the map. Edit: imgur mirror, since pomf.se seems to be down as i write this: https://i.imgur.com/VGDuIZm.png

1. Trolls

Summarized contributions from: @implantremoved [ 1 ]; @Mumberthrax [ 1 ]; @throwawaynkc [ 1 ]

A. Don't feed the trolls

  • Don't upvote, don't support, don't respond
  • Try and remain calm and collected. don't let it get the better of you.

B. Encourage development of skills to handle trolling and inflammatory commentary

  • Maybe an informative/instructional link in the sidebar
  • Guideline in the sidebar: encourage users to self-police disruptive comments

2. Racism

Summarized contributions from: @AlmightySonOfBob [ 1 , 2 ]; @alwaysturning [ 1 ]; @implantremoved [ 1 ]; @throwawaynkc [ 1 ]

A. It does not help our community, only harms it

B. Don't allow it or support it

C. Users should call out and report racism

D. Mods: listen when users report racism

3. Culture and Etiquette

Summarized contributions from: @AlmightySonOfBob [ 1 ]; @erietemperance [ 1 ]; @Mumberthrax [ 1 , 2 ]; @partycrasher [ 1 ]

A. Have a civil, thoughtful, and friendly community culture

B. Tolerance of all discussions - if you don't like a particular theory, don't jump in and start calling everyone names and saying how stupid it is. mods should remind users of that.

  • A place where we can discuss conspiracy theories without the fear of getting harassed and bullied for being curious and wanting to explore
  • Community shares common interest and respects each other
  • Debates = good. vitriol/personal-attacks = bad
  • Set the cultural tone early

  • Mods can remind people where they are

    "You are in /v/conspiracy , that means we're going to talk about conspiracies and we take some of it seriously"

C. Promote skepticism of various conspiracy theories as much as for the "official story" - seek evidence and corroboration

D. Allow people who are civil but disagree to participate.

4. Community Growth and Participation

Summarized contributions from: @MagnaFarce [ 1 ]; @Meechum [ 1 ]; @Mumberthrax [ 1 , 2 ]; @OWNtheNWO [ 1 ]; @partycrasher [ 1 ]

A. Acquire more users, and get them to stay.

B. Find ways to encourage existing users to post more content - ideally high quality and original content.

  • Not difficult to find content: facebook, /r/conspiracy /new, alt media sites

C. Encourage more commenting activity moreso than fluff/twaddle posting - quality not quantity.

D. Encourage research and discussion of topics in the comments.

5. Signal-Noise Ratio, discussion fragmentation, organization

Summarized contributions from: @arrggg [ 1 , 2 ]; @BAMFmaster [ 1 ]; @Charlie_Prime [ 1 ]; @Dysnomia [ 1 ]; @Homo_ludens [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]; @jayocjay [ 1 ]; @MagnaFarce [ 1 ]; @me2 [ 1 ]; @Mumberthrax [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]; @OWNtheNWO [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]

A. Use sticky posts to feature discussions on specific topics

  • Ask in a sticky post what topics people want to discuss, sort based on votes
  • Maybe some sort of reward system for people who post high-quality posts so they get to suggest a future topic (like /r/redditdayof )

B. Self-post summaries/reviews on some or all links

  • Encourage people to write a short self-post paragraph about a youtube video and what can be gained from watching it, instead of just a direct link
  • Same as above, but for all links

C. Instead of posting several links on a topic, post new articles and links in the discussion of one post.

D. Combine duplicate posts into a group, reduce fragmented discussions.

  • Maybe a site-wide change on /v/ideasforvoat
  • Maybe just a comment in posts including duplicate or related posts
  • Maybe some sort of incentive system to encourage finding and posting related discussions

E. A tag that can be placed in headlines that lists the number of sources cited

F. Promote critical thinking tools, organizational tools

G. site-wide change: let mods adjust the weight of self-posts vs. links

H. Have popular conspiracies like 9/11 in the sidebar, post links for people to research

6. Community Projects

Summarized contributions from: @conspiratees [ 1 ]; @Dysnomia [ 1 , 2 ]; @Homo_ludens [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]; @imtoophilosophical [ 1 ]; @Mumberthrax [ 1 , 2 ]

A. Glossary of conspiracy theory terms, theories, prominent figures

B. "Open source" investigations/reports

C. Re-post heavily sourced threads from /r/conspiracy . Maybe a megathread of these.

7. Misc.

Summarized contributions from: @arrggg [ 1 ]; @hackisucker [ 1 ]; @me2 [ 1 ]; @Mumberthrax [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]; @BUILDING7 [ 1 ]

A. mods: don't make an "official" product without talking to the community about it first - e.g. podcast.

B. A rule requiring evidence to back up a claim. no "you can google it yourself" or "the burden of proof is on you for questioning my theory"

C. Stickied posts with the latest major "doom warnings"

D. Modify rule 1 to inlcude "no images macros/images with text on them"

E. Make night mode work - current CSS/theme nightmode is broken.

  • Voat has a planned fix for this. alternatives are: no custom style, a dark style

Meta-stuff

If you have suggestions or ideas for how this process of soliciting ideas and feedback can be improved, please share! Either in the comments below, or on /v/ConspiracyMeta .

Edit: 2015/6/9 Unstickying so that a new post may be stickied: [Meta] vConspiracy Community Discussion: Moderation

Mumberthrax

So regarding the suggestions under 5.B, I think I'm going to experiment with this personally when I post things. I've just tried it today with a corbett report podcast . My biggest problem when i write stuff is brevity - I tend to ramble, but maybe with enough practice I can improve on this.

After posting that, I was looking at the links on the subverse and thinking that some of the titles are kind of nondescript, and I realized I kind of wished other people would write a brief synopsis or summary of the thing they're linking - but that's a bit much to expect everyone to do. So I thought maybe I could do it in the comments of posts I find interesting, sort of meeting to an extent the suggestions in 5.C and 5.D. If it were done with a sort of standard, easy-to-use template, then it might be something anyone could do instead of just one person.

rough draft of an outline/template for such comments:

  • title, relevant links and mirrors, video length

  • A small script meta-note about what my comment is all about, maybe a link to a post I made about it

  • a brief 1-2 sentence overview of the media

  • maybe some quick links to the characters involved, the author or host of the media

  • highlights

  • some reference information relevant to the highlights, information people might not know about

  • an end comment that summarizes the points that I find most interesting, and maybe bring up some questions I have about it.

  • possibly links to related posts/discussions, duplicates

This could probably be shortened depending on what sort of content it is. Some elements of the little review/report omitted depending.

Mumberthrax

Regarding the idea under 1.B, encouraging users to self police disruptive behavior through a comment in the sidebar, i was thinking maybe something like this could work:

Just a reminder: you are the stewards of this community just as much as moderators. If you see someone involved in trolling or flaming, consider politely letting them know that that sort of conduct isn't preferred here. If you see someone stepping up to guide others, toss them an upvote if you support it.

Any thoughts or opinions?

Homo_ludens

Put the rule about providing sources in the sidebar, that makes and creates the culture of a subverse by drawing that type of voaters in. Together with mod action and comments from users of this sub we can make this into a subverse for serious discussion.

Mumberthrax

How do you think the rule might ought to be phrased? And under what circumstances should people be expected to cite sources? When should it be permissible to not explicitly cite a source? I'd personally like it if the rule and enforcement were done so as to create a little potential for drama and arguing as possible, and I'm not presently certain what the best form to do that would be.

I'd also think that something like this, perhaps like many of the suggestions, should be done on an experimental basis for a set period of time - after which it would be reviewed for pros and cons. That way we can see in live-testing if it makes things crappy in some unexpected way.

Edit: I also tend to favor strong guidelines with this sort of thing as opposed to unbending rules. But that's my personal preference. May not be what the community prefers.

Homo_ludens

Wow man, you put a lot of work in that. Great job making this overview. Don't have anything to add and anyway it is time to put things in action. Though that'll have to wait 'till the mod discussion probably.

Mumberthrax

Thanks. : ]

Yeah I agree, implementation of a good deal of these will likely have to wait until after the mod discussion - but that's up next on my current plan . I am beginning to realize that I probably should have been working with the existing mods on this stuff, that it does seem like I'm ignoring them. Probably was a mistake - I need to work on my teamwork skills. I'm hopeful that they can forgive me for any perceived slights against them, and we can work together to make some of the suggestions the community supports into a reality.

Sensei

Why are you ignoring what's on the minds of quite a few people: Us wanting to seperate ourselves from the reddit mods (due to very high suspicions) and organizing mods ourselves. Why do you have issues with this?

Mumberthrax

I don't have an issue with that. I don't think I've been ignoring it. I haven't removed anyone yet because I want to be cautious about any large changes like that, because i know how easy it is to be accused of malicious intent. I also want to do what is best for the community, and I want to hear what everyone has to say on it since it is such an important issue.

I'd like to have a discussion about the moderator situation very soon, and in fact that is the next discussion I intend to make a stickied post about after this one, as I mentioned in my introduction post that was stickied until yesterday. I want to have a more or less official discussion to hear what everyone thinks, including whichever mods are active here (which so far seems to be PrivateJoker, axolotl__peyotl, and Peglius).

I'm not sure if you saw it, but PrivateJoker made a comment in that same post suggesting I usurped the position, acted in a shady way, etc. someone else accused me of being a shill, etc. Though I know that I'm not, I recognize that these people are part of the community too and deserve to have their opinions heard, and shouldn't have changes to the mod team forced on them without a proper sit-down on the issue.

So in a few days, after discussion on this post slows down, I'll make a post about moderation of the sub and sticky it. Topics i would like to see discussed are: 1) responsibilities of moderators 2) transparency 3) moderator activity levels 4) how mods are put in place 5) what changes should be made to the mod team right now

Of course anyone is welcome to discuss these things here in this post, or in another post. In fact I'd be happy to see that discussion taking place.

Sensei

Alright, we'll see how it'll go.

Just remember one thing: Look at the moderators as normal users. Their opinion should not be valued more, in fact, it should be valued less , since there's an obvious conflict of interest in retaining their mod positions here.

Mumberthrax

After our talk here I realized that I haven't been doing a good job of keeping the community in the loop with regards to my plans and intentions. I'm sorry for that mistake. In an attempt to remedy that, I've created a post on /v/conspiracymeta offering a rough draft of my current short-term plans as well as some long-term goals. I hope that they are informative - and I hope that any criticism is shared so that I can revise my plans intelligently. 2015-6-3 Rough roadmap of my plans as a moderator on vconspiracy

Mumberthrax

Naturally. I'm glad that you're keeping me on my toes, by the way. It's reassuring. Thank you.

Based on my brief review of some of the ancient meta posts i dug up I got the impression that @fenixrisin was/is a genuinely good guy and wanted to do whatever the community wanted, added people the community suggested. A few of the other mods don't seem to have really engaged the community at all, while a couple of them have been moderately active - at least posting links and occasional comments. So of all of them, I would give perhaps greater credence to fenixrisin's comments moreso than the other mods just because he's shown that he had an interest in doing something, actually edited the sidebar and whatnot, but sadly he seems to be inactive. I don't intend any disrespect toward the other mods in saying this, just a subjective evaluation of leadership involvement.

Mumberthrax

Thank you! As for helping, that should be totally doable. Are there any ways that you see yourself helping? Any things you enjoy doing when it comes to projects like this? If not, that's no big deal. I'll try and make sure to invite assistance in the future when working on stuff like this. : ]

I think my next big project will be working on learning CSS like you suggested in the other thread - at least during the period in which this post is stickied and discussion is ongoing on what the community is interested in. I think there's a lot of benefit in the idea of using stylesheets to make the subverse not only more aesthetically pleasing, but also more functional (for example, the way the top of the page is on /r/GetFairShare is really neat-seeming to me in terms of providing persistent relevant information - though i don't think i care for the pink on grey color :P ). I'm not certain yet how I'll approach this, or what the best way to assist might be for any interested in doing so, but I'll keep you updated if you'd like.

dsunndep

Thanks for writing this up. I think organizing information like this is a good thing and you are clearly talented at it. I hope to see more projects like this in the future and I'd love to help if I can.

Mumberthrax

Your comment is a verbatim copy of @Lysergia 's o_o .

Well in any case, you're welcome, and thank you! I'll do what I can to make sure those interested in helping with stuff are able to in any projects I head up. : )