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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   4345 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Newcomer here, what is the reason behind the mega threads? What benefit do they deliver vs. having independent threads for each topic?

So the historical reason is that we did this because that's what the Slate Star Codex subreddit did and I didn't want to rock the boat.

But I actually think this may be an accidentally brilliant choice. The problem is headlines. If you see a row of headlines - which you do on a front page - then you naturally gravitate to whatever you're most interested in. I know you've skipped headlines when browsing Reddit, right? You say "that looks interesting, that doesn't, that doesn't, that does!" and click on things based on that.

That means people go to the things they find most interesting, which also means the things they already have the strongest feelings about. And I think that's a positive-feedback effect that causes people, and communities, to hyperspecialize around points of anger and disagreement.

In this case, you can't do that. You skim, and maybe you find yourself reading an effortpost on a random fight in the Irish Troubles. You wouldn't have intentionally chosen to read that, but, well, now you're reading that.

I think this may both reduce the anger-pressure-cooker effect and encourage people to branch out into other posts.

Sometimes people put headlines at the top of their big posts and I've honestly considered banning those entirely. I haven't done that, but I've thought about it.

Interesting. I admit the threads do seem more like reading a paper or a newsletter vs. typical posts in that sense. I found it initially cumbersome but they are definitely forcing me to look at topics I’d normally skip.

But I actually think this may be an accidentally brilliant choice.

Nope, it was very intentional. Reddit political echo chamber dynamics are well-understood, and we doubled down time after time on the megathread format because it introduced friction in those dynamics the way you describe.

Neat, I honestly hadn't realized it was intended!

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