245 upvotes, 4 direct replies (showing 4)
View submission: Content Policy Update
Holy crap that content policy is vague.
This. One of the biggest concerns when /u/spez 'asked for feedback' was that the content policy needed to be more specific about criteria for banning or quarantining. And what do we get? Even more vague rules.
Comment by mn920 at 06/08/2015 at 00:58 UTC
231 upvotes, 5 direct replies
It wasn't just a community concern. Within the last month /u/spez has stated numerous times that he was committed to a clear content policy.
I'm specifically soliciting feedback on this language. The goal is to make it as clear as possible.
-- /u/spez on the harassment policy, 20 days ago (1)
Very good question, and that's one of the things we need to be clear about. I think we have an intuitive sense of what this means (e.g. death threats, inciting rape), but before we release an official update to our policy we will spell this out as precisely as possible.
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Spirited debates are in important part of what makes Reddit special. Our goal is to spell out clear rules that everyone can understand. Any banning of content will be carefully considered against our public rules.
-- /u/spez on the "harm" policy, 20 days ago (1)[1] (2)[2]
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/ct5red6
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/ct5rsgd
We'll consider banning subreddits that clearly violate the guidelines in my post--the ones that are illegal or cause harm to others.
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I can tell you with confidence that these specific communities are not what we are referring to. Not even close.
But this is also why I prefer separation over banning. Banning is like capital punishment, and we don't want to do it except in the clearest of cases.
-- /u/spez on banning subs, 20 days ago (1)[3] (2)[4]
3: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/ct5r5w7
4: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/ct5sxbm
Part of the reason this went over so well was because there was a very clear line of what was unacceptable.
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Creating a clear content policy is another of my immediate priorities. We will make it very clear what is and is not acceptable behavior on reddit.
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First priorities:
* Get to know the team here
* Make a clear Content Policy
* Ship some mod tool improvements
-- /u/spez on the need for clarity in the content policy, 20 days ago (1)[5], 25 days ago (2)[6] and 26 days ago (3)[7]
5: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3djjxw/lets_talk_content_ama/
7: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cucye/an_old_team_at_reddit/csz2lzu
Comment by Tor_Coolguy at 06/08/2015 at 07:27 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
He asked for feedback so he could later say he had asked for feedback. Does anyone really believe user feedback had any influence?
Comment by Mral1nger at 06/08/2015 at 14:05 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is actually one of the problems with having written rules (side note: it creates a lot of work for lawyers). When you're writing rules you can't include a list of everything that would break them, which would be the most clear way of writing a rule. This is because you would inevitably leave things out or people would change one small thing so it didn't quite break the rule. People would violate the spirit of the rule but not the letter of the rule. Additionally, you could include some behavior you didn't mean to. This is where people violate the letter of the rule but not the spirit of it. The more specific you make the rule, the easier it is for bad actors to find a way around it, and the more over- and under-inclusive it becomes.
On the other side, you can state the spirit of the rule itself, which leaves open the possibility of making sure the rule is applied when it should be and not when it shouldn't. But then it can be difficult for someone to be able to tell what's actually prohibited. What this ends up doing is pushing the meat of the judgment onto the people enforcing the rule instead of on the people writing the rule. This makes theoretical sense because they are the ones looking at what actually happened in the specific case. However, it does allow for both intentional and unintentional misapplication of the rule.
So in writing its content policy, reddit has to decide between 1) writing very explicit rules that make it easy for bad actors to find loopholes and that capture unintended behavior, and 2) writing vague rules that make it easy for mods to abuse their power and don't guarantee avoiding the bad outcomes from explicit rules. They've chosen the latter, and the thing that will hopefully make it work is the promised transparency. This could make it more difficult for mods to abuse their power with no repercussions. The important thing will be to see how this works in practice.
I honestly prefer the more vague rule, though that may be because I'm a law student in the US (where much of our law is written vaguely). I wouldn't want to have to read through a long list of things that aren't allowed every time I thought about posting something to make sure I didn't break a rule, especially if the rules weren't effective at what they were intended to prevent. I'm sure people would leave reddit in droves if it published a long list of violations and people and subreddits started getting banned for things like "violating content policy rule 17.A.3(ii)"
Comment by PM_ME_A_ONELINER at 06/08/2015 at 10:47 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Well it can't be TOO specific because then how would they justify shitbanning?