Many of us hail from /r/conspiracy due to dissatisfaction with some of the things over there, so what problems did/does /r/conspiracy suffer from which /v/conspiracy can learn from and deter?
What could moderators do to make this 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?
What can non-moderators do to achieve the same goals?
Beyond the goals of sharing and discussing conspiracies and conspiracy theories, are there any other things that we would like to see on this subverse?
Are there any other questions we could ask ourselves and seek to answer with the aim of making the subverse and community excellent?
Is this too many questions for one post? :P
Please share your thoughts in the comments - even if you don't subscribe but have ideas or suggestions!
Edit: 14 days later and I'm now a moderator here. I'm stickying this post so anyone who missed it before can participate.
edit2: followup discussion here: [Meta] Brainstorming Thread #2: What could vconspiracy do to better itself? Take a look at this summary of ideas from the previous discussion, and share your thoughts!
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partycrasher ago
Right now, it seems like we just have too few users. How can we get people here and get them to stay? And how can we get existing users to post more content? I think this sub is suffering from a newbie/shyness complex right now (I'm guilty, too). Let's try to get the ball rolling with some great, quality OC. :)
The other problems that r/ had were site and mod related, which isn't anything the average user can control.
Mumberthrax ago
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.
partycrasher ago
I welcome you as my new mod overlord. ;) In all seriousness, I'm glad someone is stepping up to the plate. Has your request been accepted yet?
So far the community seems very civil and maybe we can enforce this with the community. When we see someone getting inflammatory, we the users should comment on it civilly and not wait for a mod to manage crowd control. That's something we could at least encourage in the side-bar. Not just a "report it to the mod" mentality, but attempt to manage it yourself by letting that user know that it's not really socially acceptable to antagonize on this sub, etc. I'm not sure how you'd phrase this on the side-bar, though. Good thing I'm not a mod! ;)
Mumberthrax ago
Haha, no I think that's a great idea. Even if you or I don't have the perfect wording for it, I think it's better than nothing and through soliciting help from more eloquent people we could always improve the phrasing later on. :P
No it hasn't been accepted yet, but none of the others after or a bit before mine have been either, so it's just waiting until atko has some spare time. I'm perfectly fine with that, too. Not really impatient because the positive side of that is that he, someone who seems to genuinely care and be a good sincere person, gets to make the decisions.