9 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: [Updated] Who runs /r/Holocaust? Each line represents a moderator overlap. [OC]
I can't help but see how this can be incredibly biased if you only point out the subreddits you want to.
Comment by Geographist at 23/07/2014 at 13:15 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The best approach (though still biased, as is all research) would be to pick one subreddit. A starting point has to be chosen no matter what. Then programatically get the mods, then from that list of mods, see which other subs they mod. For each of those, get the list of mods, and repeat.
You would have to specify some number of levels/iterations to go through, otherwise you would end up categorizing all of reddit in a giant loop. But for 100-1000 levels, it should reveal a much more accurate depiction of mod similarity across a very wide variety of subreddits.
This would of course be influenced by the seed sub chosen in round 1, but the more levels you go, the weaker that influence would become. Even choosing /r/all or a random sub would influence the results.
Which brings me to my next point: if the system was designed to allow the user to interactively choose any sub and then see the results, one could analyze the importance of the initial sub choice, ultimately revealing how moderator networks are structured and what the relationship is between any two subreddits. It would be a family tree, so to speak.
But alas... ain't nobody got time for that.
Comment by BrokenGlassEverywher at 23/07/2014 at 13:10 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
To be honest, I'm interested because I subscribe to these subs but would like a frame of reference from which to view the content. I'm wary of being too eager to just believe something simply because I agree with the point of view.
Comment by [deleted] at 23/07/2014 at 10:53 UTC
-11 upvotes, 4 direct replies
That's why I love posts like these. The post points out the enormous radical right-wing community on reddit and the masses upvote it to the front page. But then those same right-wing extremists come to the comments to try and hide it.
They'll always point out the same subreddits like /r/politics, /r/worldnews, and /r/technology because those are the only ones that haven't been overrun by right-wing extremists. No one would ever consider analyzing /r/news, /r/videos, /r/wtf, or /r/adviceanimals because those are mostly run by libertarians and other white supremacists.