Sound like neat ideas! I agree that some sort of group activity would be excellent. Games are a great idea too, something i hadn't thought of. People like games, so it'd be great to combine active participation and some healthy fun and high spirits! :D

edit: I also think the video thing and the prediction game are cool ideas. I'd be interested in seeing what people think about those, and how they might be fleshed out some more. : ]

(Warning: long rambling ahead)

That would be pretty useful. On reddit some of the larger subreddits have a rule about not permitting multiple posts relating to the same topic, to try to consolidate the discussion to one location - and that rule gets a fair amount of complaints against it as a tool of abuse or censorship to legitimize removing highly upvoted posts in favor of less successful ones. But the idea of being able to combine them would be really handy - not just for our subverse but for others as well.

I guess the question would be, how are two posts chosen to be associated? If they're on the same topic, but the links don't share the same URL it would almost have to be something done by either moderators or by the users. The traditional solution to this issue is that users are vigilant and post links to older discussions in the comments... but that's not always ideal, and that alone won't bring those old comments into the current discussion.

Here's kind of what i'm picturing... each subverse can have the option of having this on by default or off by default. When you view a post that has been associated with another post, if this function is enabled, you'll see comments from both posts but they will be marked somehow as to which post they originated in. Links to both posts will be available at the top, though the link for the specific post you clicked on to open the discussion page will be prominent, with a slightly larger font maybe.

Comment ordering might be separated by the post the topics belong to, so the comments for the main post you clicked the link for are all at the top, then there is a horizontal rule, the headline for the next associated post and its comments below it, another rule and associated post, etc. Or all of the comments are ordered by whatever comment sorting option you've selected (top/new) and each comment is tagged somehow with which post it was originally made in response to. Alternatively top-level comments are weighted by their age and scores, sort of like the "hot" feature for sorting posts perhaps?

When you share a comment, you could opt to make it to that post (default function) or opt to make it to one of the associated posts.

You'd have the option to filter out older discussions if you wanted to, and of course the option to toggle off(/on) discussions from associated posts as well.

So i think that that could provide a fair interface. Probably not ideal, but certainly interesting and worth giving a try.

There is a discussion on this post which sort of aims to address the same issue, but more in terms of cross-subverse postings: https://voat.co/v/ideasforvoat/comments/73495

As for how posts would be associated... i suppose they could be chosen by the users? Anyone could link posts together maybe, and people could vote on how related/relevant they are?

Maybe instead of this being built-in to each post it's a separate thing. Like, a super-discussion post could be created...

users can mix and merge any posts they deem relative to one another, votes on those determine the strength or community confidence in that relationship. Based on that, you could have collections of user-generated multi-post-discussions. These could be accessible in a top section of the post's individual discussion pages, maybe a list of them or a "related" tab that shows a list of them...

I think there would need to be a motivating factor for people to vote on how related posts are to one another or to their super-post discussions. I suppose people could subscribe to larger super-discussions like they might subscribe to a subverse? hmm that might be going too complicated.

Of course this still doesn't solve the issue of redundancy in the comments, or the fact that there are sometimes an abundance of comments that flood out the more interesting ones despite the ability to sort by voting. But it would bring together related discussions - so long as the people who seek out such related posts and discussions are rewarded in some way for finding them and suggesting them...

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Sorry for the long rambling wall of text. Most of that is something that would need to be coded up and done by the site admin(s). As users and mods, we could possibly create some sort of incentive system to encourage people to post links to related discussions in the comments, and encourage people to visit them and try to bring the older comments into the current discussion. Maybe a reward system for finding really pertinent old comments/discussions.

Sorry my other comment was a bit of a wall of text, and i didn't even address your last question.

It's a good question to ask. What could we do to keep bigoted posts and comments out? Well for one thing we have a rule against "overt attacks on people's race, religion, ethnicity, nationaliry, or creed", moderators have the ability to remove comments and posts, and users have the ability (if they've got enough CCP) to downvote. If mods and users are vigilant, then that is one strategy.

Do you have any particular suggestions for how it can be approached? Ideas or thoughts?

I personally find bigotry abhorrent, however it manifests. I believe that there is no good reason to mock a person for their skin color or sexuality or nationality or age or religion. Stereotypes can be incredibly harmful. I'm thankful that this subverse hasn't grown so large as to attract the attention of bigoted commenters, and that @fenixrisin established early on the rule against bigotry in the sidebar. Though I haven't seen much actual active moderation for those things (due to a lack of need), i think having it there does help to express what sort of community is desired here.

I believe that /r/conspiratard promotes bigotry. I believe that a good deal of the posters there see anyone interested in conspiracies as part of a group that deserves to be ridiculed, attacked, maligned. Perhaps it is in good fun, but even racist jokes can seem to be purely in good fun to some people.

From what I understand, /r/topmindsofreddit is an offshoot of the community of /r/conspiratard when the mods there established a rule about linking to /r/conspiracy , ostensibly to deter brigading. I know brigading and linking to other places on reddit from within reddit is a gray area, so i won't make any judgments there, but there is a connection between a culture that i perceive as toxic and the culture of the people who migrated to that subreddit - and by extension that same culture is likely connected to your subverse.

So it bothers me.

When you and I talked before, you shared with me a different perspective on the thing. You said it's good to laugh at the silly people who take things to extremes. You seemed to suggest that you think some conspiracy theories are legitimately worth looking into, but the real nutty ones can be entertaining. You said that if you can't laugh at yourself, that that is dangerous. I'm paraphrasing, and possibly remembering incorrectly, but that's the impression i got from our talk about how you feel about /r/topmindsofreddit and /v/topmindsofvoat . I think there is truth to it. I think if it can be balanced, then it can even be beneficial to regulars here.

Words are one thing and actions are another. Your subverse, /v/isvconspiracyracist states in the title "yes, yes it is", and one of your posts expresses a desire for more racists to come here as there isn't enough racism to post about. Why? If you sincerely do not believe in bigotry or the value in racism, then why wish for it, and why try to portray our subverse as something shameful when it isn't? If your intentions are as pure as you present them, then why do they conflict with your apparent actions?

The content on /v/topmindsofvoat is mostly benign so far, and still the tone of the whole thing is grating. Instead of calling conspiracy theorists common pejoratives like "twoofer" or "tinfoil hat loonies", now we are "top minds" all of us for the comments some random person on reddit made. It's just another pejorative. It's like when my grandpa says that not all black people are niggers ("not all conspiracy theorists are top minds"), but then goes ahead and refers to most black people he saw as niggers anyway. My grandpa wasn't a bad guy on the whole, but he was bigoted in many ways. I don't think you're a bad guy either, but I do think there is a fair bit of bigotry intertwined with the communities you are a part of.

Anyway, long story short, your subverses make me uneasy and while they don't seem to have much activity currently I am not confident that they will not degenerate whenever a random person or two decides to say something dumb on this subverse. As a commenter you seem respectful and appear to offer no reason to treat you without courtesy in my opinion. I hope that you will try to make it clear in your involvement with /v/topmindsofvoat what you've expressed to me, that not all of /v/conspiracy and not all of the people who post and comment here with an interest or even belief in various conspiracy theories are foolish or deserving of ridicule. Similarly with your involvement in /v/isvconspiracyracist , i hope that you choose to try to answer the topical question honestly and objectively.

Night mode now works on /v/conspiracy ! https://voat.co/v/ConspiracyMeta/comments/176959

I've been looking through the backlog of meta-discussions recently and have seen a couple of other people mention this as well. I'll look into it. From what I understand, the CSS on this sub is one created on /v/typogra . Perhaps whoever created it has come up with an updated version. If not, maybe I can finally dip my toe in CSS and try to figure it out.

I love this idea as well! I've only just started this tumble down the rabbit hole and I have to confess that the amount of info and disinfo is quite overwhelming.

I think that could be an interesting project, to delve through old discussions and posts finding the good ones and keeping track of them in one spot. Great idea!

I like this idea, but I think it might make for fewer contributions as people won't be bothered to reply.

I've definitely seen that a few times on /r/conspiracy . I hate to try to tell people they can't respond in a particular way, creating arcane social conduct rules, but at the same time I recognize that it's stuff like that which harms productive dialogue and hampers the "quest for truth" as it were. I think something like that could be a fair strategy to try to improve the quality of discourse here compared to other places, at least experimentally.

Yes. I am so tired of "go watch this" with no description included. 50% of the time its somebody talking about reading an article, the other 40% its something I didn't want youtube to put in my viewing history...

Requiring a description of the video content with any youtube or video submission would be great.

I agree that fluff and, I suppose spam, can really lower the value of someplace like this. I know it has for me on /r/conspiracy . Not sure that it's strictly youtube videos, but just an overabundance of topics - particularly those with inflammatory headlines and such - drowns out more interesting discussions. I guess though that brings up the question of the purpose of a sub like this. Is it a news aggregator, pulling together any and all content related to conspiracies, or is it a discussion forum, or is it a hub for a community to collectively help each other understand conspiracies, or some combination of those, or something else? I guess if it's purely a news aggregator with a commenting feature, then it makes sense to not limit anything from being posted - flood it with every alternative media article and video there is, and let the votes organize it. But I don't know. Something about that is not appealing to me. Perhaps there is a moderate way to balance all of that.

I like the idea of encouraging people to write a brief description of a video. Not sure about requiring it across the board. Definitely an interesting and neat idea though.

This is a horrible idea, forcing any particular kind of content source is a horrible idea! This is backwards, not forwards, forcing people to participate by not being able to share certain things won't make them participate it will just make them go somewhere else.

I really like the idea of only allowing self posts. If you've got a video or an article to share post a link in the body and say something about it. It certainly does more to spur conversation as well.

I approve. Reminds me of why I like rationalwiki so much. That even why I might disagree with their consensus view sometimes, they do a very good justice to alternative views with comprehensive references and attention to detail.

Edit: I'm less swayed by the ranking scale though. Never did like ranking things. I find comparing them more than sufficient for my purposes. I find ranking systems invite bullying. My 2¢.

Sounds amazing. It'd be like a peer review process, I'd love to be a part of it

Seriously, by all means everybody, step it up! It gets tiring that those statistics about group participation in social networking sites is consistently proven true; that about 1% start discussions 5% participate in discussions and the rest just lurk or in the case of sites like reddit and voat, voat.

It's not that hard to muck rake, just trawl your facebook news feeds, follow interesting pages, check the new tab on /r/conspiracy , check ALL the alt media sites, etc etc and then just share share share!

If we could just take that 5% and make them into 1% types, it's game over.

The nice thing about voat is that it's still in development, so any issues with the site itself we as users still have the potential to remedy through suggestions on /v/ideasforvoat (or if we know c# we can submit changes directly through pull requests on github). As for moderation, well atko mentioned about a week ago that the current owner of the subverse is inactive, and that technically the sub is eligible for requests for ownership transfer. Having seen that comment sitting there for three hours or so, I went ahead and requested ownership on /v/subverserequest . I can't guarantee i'll be a good moderator, but if it goes though I'll do what I can to try and prevent some of the kinds of problems that the mods on /r/conspiracy may have been involved in. That's part of the reason i made this post, so I can get some ideas of what might be appropriate to do as a mod.

I agree that it's a lot less active than it could be. I think there's value in that too, because it means it's easier to set a tone that can persist into the future as the community grows. Perhaps we can come up with ideas to encourage the shy people to participate. From what I've seen, we haven't yet had huge problems with trolling and flaming in the comments, but I can imagine folks accustomed to that being hesitant to share their thoughts on discussion pages.

And also, maybe if we do come up with some gimmick or quirk or value that sets us apart, makes us stand out, that in itself will encourage others to join. I personally think one of the best things we could do is to have a civil, thoughtful, and friendly community culture - even better if our users are skilled at handling trolls and inflammatory things. But that's not something you can really dictate from a top-down level, it's something that has to grow organically i guess. I think voat's got a lot of potential there right now though.

Mods can alleviate part of the problem by showcasing certain discussions for a period of time (with a temporary sticky), creating recurring threads like 'This week in wonderland' or 'best discussion of this month', encouraging reviews of books or other resources and starting AMA's with experts etc. Or open source investigations like on the corbett report.