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!
view the rest of the comments →
Charlie_Prime ago
Conspiracy forums always get wadded up with low-quality content by what I call Serial YouTube Kiddies.
They make themselves feel like Courageous Cusaders for Good be posting links to as many of the 1.3 billion YouTube conspiracy video re-mixes as possible per day. Good discussion and good documentaries are flushed away by this nonsense. (Perhaps it's a conspiracy. :-) )
Small idea. Don't allow direct links to YouTube videos. Make it so people are encouraged to write a short paragraph explaining what a video is, and what can be gained from watching it. This would cut down on the garbage.
arrggg ago
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.
Mumberthrax ago
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.
OWNtheNWO ago
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.
Dysnomia ago
How do you like MagnaFarce's idea though? Requiring a summary blurb might discourage posts of those hour long videos that only contain five minutes of important or new data. It also could help spur discussion. A big problem I've seen on smaller subreddits was many posts with no discussion.
OWNtheNWO ago
It's better, but it's still forcing people and it will just turn self-posts into a shit show of whether it's an actual self-post or not, not actually improve quality in any way.
MagnaFarce ago
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.
me2 ago
I'd never considered this, but I agree.
Mumberthrax ago
That could be neat. I suspect that I'd find that to be a really valuable change, at least worthy of an experimental period - if not mandatory perhaps at least a voluntary one.