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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: /r/politics just banned dozens of news domains, please don't censor here hubski admins!

This isn't remotely relevant to hubski, but I'll play along. Did you look at the list of banned domains? No one with any sense reads r/politics to begin with, but losing those domains (with maybe one or two exceptions) can only make the subreddit better.





thenewgreen  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Motherjones? Also, they banned entire blogging platforms. The problem with all of this is that you inevitably throw out the baby with the bathwater. I find it fascinating that people have no problem with someone dictating what they should or should not be exposed to. Really, I think it's fascinating. I'm not a redditor, though I respect the platform, so I have no skin in the game but it's sincerely interesting to me.

insomniasexx  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Also, they banned entire blogging platforms.

Here's a great comment from years ago that is a lovely definition of "blogspam": http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/cb5qg/a_personal_lette...

    Blogspam is linking to a re-post or copy-pasta of the original content on some secondary site that adds little or nothing to the interesting content.
(from above link)

For example, my little blog could take an announcement from Google, copy the text of the announcement, add "That is cool!" and then link back to it at the end and post it on reddit or hubski or digg or whereever. This would be blogspam because I'm not adding anything of value and riding the wave of a big news story for my own personal benefit. Now if I analyzed the motivations of said hypothetical Google announcement, gave related facts or compared it to past announcements, that wouldn't be blogspam because it is adding an entire new level of value to the announcement.

Even 3+ years ago people were struggling to understand what sites should be linked to, etc. It's a pity that the above definition never stuck. It's an even greater pity that the mods of /r/politics have taken it into their own hands to decide what sites are reputable. This goes against the core of what reddit (used to?) be all about. It was a democracy where users voted on the best content. Now it's a patriarchy where mods decide what should be seen or not seen. Users are less and less powerful each day.

    The BEST internet is one where every single blog, website, forum, image gallery, e-commerce site, news aggregator, etc is trying to post dense, high-quality, original content. The WORST internet is one where every site is instead trying to hijack page views by re-posting content that is already available elsewhere. The PURPOSE of sites like reddit is to drill down to the interesting, original, dense content. The HOPE is that this kind of approach will spur more and better content creation and a less-cluttered internet.

Nailed it.

user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    It's an even greater pity that the mods of /r/politics have taken it into their own hands to decide what sites are reputable.
Afraid I have to completely disagree here. They've done a great job choosing, they seem to've flaired certain well-respected sites, and they apparently asked for feedback on all this stuff. I'm not too up on it because I mostly use reddit for sports and music, but even I know that "relying on upvotes for the best content to rise to the top" never, ever works.
user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The banned like every conservative blog site out there. This basically turns the already liberal circle jerk called /r/politics into an echo chamber where no dissenting views are allowed. At least before you could get some discussion before all the left wing downvotes drowned any post critical of the administration.

user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I can't speak for that because I don't read political blogs and thus don't know their various biases, but I can say that motherjones is one of the most liberal websites on the internet. See also salon. Both are banned. I'll repeat what I said below:

    /r/Politics is a subreddit for current U.S. political news and information only.

Blogs, left or right, don't fit into this. A quick scan of their allowed domains shows that they're mostly newspaper websites, which will potentially have their own biases, but are at least sources of news. It's a news subreddit now.

This discussion continues to be unilaterally irrelevant to hubski.

user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There is already a sub called /r/news. Politics are pretty much defined as opinion, so blocking differing viewpoints seems extremely biased.

user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It was in reaction to the joke that r/politics had become, from what I can tell.

user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

motherjones has a known bias. It's interesting sometimes, but for opinion pieces.

    /r/Politics is a subreddit for current U.S. political news and information only.

So bloggers are also almost by definition out. I'm not saying it's the best way to run a subreddit, but it's definitely not the worst way, and definitely an improvement from the previous rules. Also, they asked for community involvement in these rule changes as far as I know. So.

And it still isn't remotely relevant to hubski. Anyone who's spent more than six days here knows that administrator censorship is basically impossible* under the current system.

*although you really should have some sort of page explaining your zero-tolerance policy for porn etc. someplace just so that that's even more crystal clear. Maybe you already do. I don't know.

thenewgreen  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    *although you really should have some sort of page explaining your zero-tolerance policy for porn etc. someplace just so that that's even more crystal clear. Maybe you already do. I don't know.
Such things were discussed tonight. There will be more transparency in to such things to come.
cgod  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Is there a zero tolerance policy against porn? I had no idea. Glad I don't see it but never heard that there was such a policy.

user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

thenewgreen  ·  4042 days ago  ·  link  ·  

We are working on getting something out that is more concrete but the general rule of thumb is that we aren't interested in hosting pornography. What is pornography? As Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart famously said, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.."

Other than that, people generally have the ability to post what they want. If someone doesn't like it, they can ignore and or mute them.

user-inactivated  ·  4042 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So that's an invitation to send you a bunch of "is this porn?" PMs, right?

thenewgreen  ·  4042 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Let's let the "tests" occur naturally, please :)

user-inactivated  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I mean, since your policy is clearly already the correct one, I'd just say an ultra-simple rules page would suffice, right?

insomniasexx  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I agree. I think it is important to have such policies in place and stick to them. It's best if the policies are in place before they become an issue or else you get into all sorts of typical internet drama.