2015.06.23 Morning Coffee: Community Values, Book Voting, and Your Snapzu Pitch
Morning Coffee is a user-created discussion series where Snapzu members can check in with each other in a relaxed environment.
We are experimenting with different formats and ideas, so feedback is very welcome!
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening!
It's truly an exciting time to be a Snapzite. The front page is consistently bustling with activity, more and more of our favorite topics are getting their own tribes, and new users continue to trickle in every day. Despite being several years old, we're a young community, and the growth we're currently experiencing will shape our very future. It's been slow and steady so far, and that seems to be ideal — new users are forced to acclimate to our culture, which we can maintain in the relative calm. What constitutes our culture is determined by us users, which leads me to the first question: what are the community values you want to uphold? For instance, we're all oh-so-nice to each other, almost without exception. Is this civility important enough to defend as the site expands, or should anything go as long as no rules are broken?
The Book Club over at /t/books is now accepting votes for July's nonfiction and fiction selections. Voting will be open through the last day of this month, so go pick the book you'd most like to read/discuss.
Finally, with the influx of users arriving from reddit, there have been a lot of comparisons made between our communities. Some wonder what Snapzu can do for them that reddit or other alternatives can't. Truth be told, we're only in need of users that want to be here. Still, how would you pitch Snapzu to potential incomers, or even those not looking to move?
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As the community grows, things will change (without intervention from the admins.) At this point the community is really delicate. All it would take it 20-30 people to make /t/dankmemes and fill the front page up with their own content. Hopefully we have a relatively slow growth that lets new users get accustomed to current etiquette and standards rather than encouraging shitposting and spamming memes.
+1 regarding our delicacy. I think even just a few very active users can totally change the vibe in here. To our credit, a few reddit defectors did try to bring some trash over but it wasn't well received and they seemed to have left.
I always fear when a website gets flooded. It changes the entire culture.
Cultures live and die on the internet as they do in real life.
Exactly. One day, Snapzu will die as well. Let's enjoy it while we can. Of course, that's not to say we shouldn't attempt to lengthen our golden age, but we must acknowledge that no good community will last forever.
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Boooooo-urns!
Actually, not so much. Snapzu has a built-in content control algorithms that check how much content and votes are incoming from every single tribe and applies an average based threshold to the vote score (a number based on a dozen different variables) used in sorting content on the front page. This allows us to keep the content on the front page from being over run by any single tribe or group of users, the system gets even more interesting with topic based vote weight assignment and dynamic source based voting weights. All in all, we carefully looked at all the general problems an older platform such as reddit has and did what we can to proactively create a system that helped us resolve them. Also, not to mention, our community wouldn't put up with such shit :)
I'm curious as to how that works, because looking at the front page right now, the votes that come from "Local Feed" and "Front Page" seem to be the biggest chunks on most of the posts there, especially the really popular ones (I'm looking in the "Magazine" view.)
Regardless, its obvious that the intervention I was talking about is taking place so my point was moot.
You're right, currently most of the votes do come from Local Feed and the Front Page, so the problem you mentioned about a single tribe sprouting up and dominating the front page with dank memes is non-existent. However, if such a situation was to arise, you wouldn't see more than 10% of the front page filled with such content and that is just the hard limit, because based on dynamically changing variables and the amount of other communities competing for the front page, it would become ever much harder for large over-powering communities to keep making the front page. Ultimately, the great thing about this concept is that all the BIG communities will still make the front page based on the users upvoting content within them, but with our approach we make sure the front page isn't over run by a single powerful tribe(s) giving smaller tribes a chance to also be a part of the main stream of content.
Hmm... are there any safeguards for similar takeover of the front page from Local Feed votes and Front Page votes? Because the same could be done trivially using those two: post your dank meme in /t/dankmemes, have your "tribe mates" go to your local feed and vote it onto the front page, and keep voting on it on the front page.
Yep of course there are! We have front page vote weights assigned to each vote coming from a follower. The more followers an account has, the less those "feed" votes are worth when it comes to the FPS (Front Page Score), the front page votes are also calculated in the same fashion but in order to remain true to the sources where votes come from we show them in much the same way.
Btw, none of this functionality effects the way tribes tally votes and display content within.
We should probably delete all these posts, we've spilled all the secrets!!
There is a lot more to these than meets the eye :) I think we are safe!
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by nice. Do you mean no confrontation or debate at all? I have seen some of that and it's perfectly fine. It's natural to do. The only value I want to keep is the quality content. Like there isn't loads of content but the majority of it is quality articles and they lead to quality discussions.
I would pitch it as a young website with a small but well run community. The layout is different enough from Reddit for a new feel with some new features thrown on top.
Personally as far as reddit alternatives go I feel that if you want to have a political debate and not worry about if mods will find your opinion harassing, getting you automod censored, then Snapzu is the place for you. If you want to post pictures of fat people and make fun of them behind their back, then Voat is more your style.
Over the past year I've thought a lot about the sharing of personal information. I was a big fan of opScientology which was the first big organized effort to post people's personal information to get them held accountable. Now however I feel posting home addresses and other personal information really has no place in civil discourse. Before the Internet, a television station would never post this information, You'd never find this information posted on a physical bulletin board around town. It's shady witch hunting nonsense.
Unlike some politicians who think everything anybody posts online should be identifiable, I believe that people should have a reasonable expectation of anonymity. I actually wouldn't be opposed to laws saying that websites are required to remove personal identifying information on request and even a law saying posting such information without the consent of the individual is a crime. Yeah, it won't stop people from doing it, and it's rather unenforceable, but it makes a statement saying that we respect and value people making anonymous statements without fear of repercussions.
I'm of the first generation that grew up on the Internet. I've come to value the anonymous sharing of information, and that all knowledge belongs to humanity. Attacks on people identities and posting addresses where their families sleep jeopardize the posting of more valuable information.
/rant
I'm with you on this. Privacy should be held in the highest regard, I can't believe there are so many people that don't understand this simple concept.
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Of course not! That would be stupid, not nice. I mean that we're able to disagree without being assholes :)
I figured but many view nice as completely docile. Had to ask
I took it as disagreeing with people without calling them poopyheads just because you can't get them to concede you're right. ;)
Speaking of conceding I don't think I've ever seen a person concede in a debate once in my life. Why I never bother even debating at all. So those sides of Reddit and other places never bother me. Cause I'm never there
I've been a member of a forum that had a problem with flooding. New users were limited users. As they became more active, restrictions were lifted. I feel like this site, using either the XP system or the Reputation score could easily do that.
< 60 Rep = 1 snap, 5 comments, 10 votes allowed per day or 24 hour period
< 70 Rep = 3 snaps, 15 comments, 30 votes allowed per day or 24 hour period
< 75 Rep = 5 snaps, 25 comments, 50 votes allowed per day or 24 hour period
< 80 Rep = ...and so on...
I just pulled those numbers out of nothing, but it's an idea that I think would be easily implemented while still allowing for growth in waves.
Right now, reputation is similar to karma on reddit. It doesn't actually get you anything by design. but what if it did?
While I do believe in limiting the downvotes of new users and using their level to unlock more as they progress, should we really be thinking about limiting the amount of posts someone can make? I think the forum you mentioned has a completely different setup, here you can just block the person posting too much and done.
I guess it depends on the purpose of leveling. Currently, leveling alters the amount of users and tribes you can follow. I don't know the intended purpose of this, but my interpretation is that those limits are there to ease you into the snapzu community. Wouldn't limiting posts/comments/votes accomplish the same thing? Or would that accomplish the opposite and ease the community into the user?
I'm not necessarily saying this should be done, I'm just using the Morning Coffee thread to think out loud.
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No idea is a bad idea, I'm glad you mentioned it because we get to discuss it.
I dunno, some things are bad ideas.
Those are awesome! :D
What are those? umbrellas for ants???
No, they are for shoes.
Or possibly a part of the shoe.
I have always found forums that limit posting incredibly annoying. Beyond normal spam filters, there is no need to stifle content. The only justified posting limit is on prose and poetry websites where new members must first prove themselves in a new member board before submitting their works all over the site.
the forum I'm referring to was a college sports forum that would frequently have new users show up in droves the week of a football game and fill the forum with spam and harassment. I think it was necessary in that case.
Maybe they should have improved their moderation team instead of making a worse posting experience for innocent members.
fair enough. I wouldn't feel hindered, but I guess I should not project my thoughts onto the masses... especially since I'm the weird one!
I feel like any comparison between Reddit and Snapzu will be mostly cosmetic. The two atmospheres are totally different!
One thing Reddit has, and that has kept me coming back to it (and will still continue to due so) is the sheer amount of variety. It's amazing and makes me happy to see, but that variety comes from having, literally, hundreds of millions of users and that brings negative side effects. Reddit will become an echo chamber of the same opinions and differing opinions will be driven off by rude behavior and down voting. With such large numbers, they don't need variety. And that might be their downfall in the long run, but for now it just attracts a certain type of person/mood overall and it just kills causal overall discussion in larger posts.
Sometimes a smaller audience is just what you need.
I agree. I feel comfortable posting here for I don't feel I'll be shredded to bits for having a non hive mind opinion. I'm not even seeing a hive mind here,which is a good thing.
Quite not literally "hundreds of millions". It's only "tens of millions"
http://www.spyfu.com/overview/domain?query=reddit.com
Could you point out where it shows a number of returning visits or something? Because all I'm getting is that Reddit gets a lot of traffic but not how that correlates to number of users.
As of now I think the best thing about Snapzu is certainly the community's self-control and maturity, in all the discussions I've seen here there might people who have a different point of view than me, but I'll still upvote them for having strong arguments (and I think a lot of people do this because if it's two people discussing both people will usually have the same amount of upvotes in each of their comments), and this is because the community values smart discussion more than reassurement, unlike reddit, where you will be downvoted straight to hell (and sometimes will even be harrassed) just because they don't agree with you. In general the subject matter of most snaps and the overall mood of the community encourages maturity over childishness, which is great.
Of course this could change if a massive influx of reddit users came and took over the etiquette we have now, which is more or less what happened with Voat. Thankfully the invite system keeps us safe from mayhem.
From what I've seen, the community tends to regulate itself. People may come and change the feel for awhile, but they'll quickly learn this isn't the place for them. I'm not sure that micromanaging posts will lead to the best outcomes, although you may have the support of the community on this. I think that either way, this community will continue down the same path it's on now. As far as how I would pitch this site, it's full of nice, healthy discussion. I've disagreed with several people, especially those damn commies over in /t/economics, but I've enjoyed every bit of it. No one looks for the easy way out, and I haven't seen any personal attacks. I like it here..
I agree. I have yet to see a truly vitriolic argument like you see all of the time over on reddit. And I think that is in part due to the fact that almost every active member on here really actually cares about the site. Nobody wants to spoil the great atmosphere. Everybody knows that reddit is already past the point of no returns when it comes to vitriolic and hateful content, so nobody really cares to try to stop it. And I'm not talking about people turning them into spectacles (e.g. /r/subredditdrama, /r/shitredditsays) but the community making any attempt to regulate themselves.