The Planetside 2 Subreddit has a darkside to it.

Savadrin:

The evidence I keep asking about is evidence of downvote brigades. Could you point me toward such evidence? I saw none, especially not from OP himself

As for WaaWaa? I've been observing his activities for a while, and if I were a mod, he'd be banned MUCH earlier. At this point, I expect you to start defending Harvester...

Somehow, you lot are accusing mods of various things, and when they come to defend themselves, you call them unprofessional for defending themselves. Huh? So you expect a thread where no actual discussion is taking place, then, with only one side of the conflict allowed to speak? aka, the very thing you're opposing? (Though DooDooBreff has YET to say something constructive and non-insulting)
First you say there's a "conflict of interest" due to the mods playing together, and when they say they're on a small, temporary break, you complain that them not playing is unacceptable. Huh? Where did the logic go?

Also, PLEASE stop insulting people left and right. There's just no point, it just makes you look bad. (Also, swearing makes the posts hard to read, due to the forum censoring these words. Is there an option to disable the profanity filter?)

"but the MODS are the ones who have access to who is downvoting what and how frequently"
That... is just plain wrong. Sorry, but you have no idea how Reddit works.

Scr1n: Oh, nevermind, he's ignoring every single one of my posts, it's safer this way.

Everyone:

Several people mentioned doing something about the situation. But what can be done, realistically?
Let's assume you can choose new mods. Who do you propose? Why? Are they willing to spend hours of their free time, every day, on a thankless, payless job? One that will result in people constantly hating them? (And yes, hate will always be pointed at mods - either they have to ban the most abusive participants, and thus absorb their hate, or be hated for not banning enough... Or, usually, both at the same time)
Please note that I hate most of the current /r/planetside mods, for various personal reasons. But even through my hate, I realize that there is currently no better candidate, and that they are very efficient at keeping the subreddit a spam-less place.

or a private gloryhole/whackamole club

Lamp pointed this out already, and I conceded (though in fairness, I've said multiple times I do not reddit) that it's the case.

As I just asked him - how then are these things determined, because I know enough people on reddit who talk about vote brigades quite often.

If mods don't have the tools - who does? How is it even enforced in the first place? What kind of **** plan is that?

I know modding is a thankless job. I don't do it because of many of the reasons you listed, and I like the lack of constraint at times that not modding allows me. But it being a thankless job doesn't mean that it's ok to leave a bunch of tested ****ters in place because you're worried about untested ****ters. That kind of thinking is how a democracy turns into a dictatorship.

[edit:] I'm not defending any person because of who that person is. I'm defending every person having the right to spew whatever ******** they want to spew. Including you, and me. Unpopular opinions aren't necessarily invalid, and if you don't allow the dissent, you end up with an echo chamber that produces rot.

I have a Laissez faire approach with moderating. The point of reddit is it's community run via the upvote and downvote system. The moderator should only use its powers to make sure dialog stays related to the topic the subreddit is based upon and whatever other rules the subreddit decides to enforce to keep the community healthy. /r/EmeraldPS2 is a combination of Waterson and Mattherson, two of the most competitive, social, and elitest communities in Planetside. Letting people say what they want (within reason) is one of the cornerstones of the subreddit and as such we are the largest and fastest growing of the PS2 server subreddits.

Thanks .

You don't. There is no defense against it. If the brigading is large enough (as in things going into negative by thousands) you can notify the Reddit admins (Literally employees of the Reddit corporation) and they have the tools to see who is voting and from where. The admins deal with brigading and even still it's hard to determine and enforce.

Based on what you're telling me, it seems rather unreasonable to expect that Scr1n can furnish evidence enough to change a biased mind on the topic, fair to say?

When does it become apparent that if every thread is downvoted out of hand, something is awry?

"Vote brigades" mean people organizing to vote somewhere. Thus, it is determined usually by finding the source - such as a person openly telling people to vote. There's usually "signs" of brigading, for example a disproportionally large amount of votes, be it up or down, and a large amount of commenters with no every-day interest in the subreddit.

I analyzed the Archer thread, which Scr1n claims had downvote brigade, with this information in mind. And I analyzed in depth, pulling all 200 unique commenters with a simple script, and checking every single account, one by one, manually. I spent hours to find the proof that Scr1n didn't want to provide, but claimed he had (back when we were exchanging PMs, long before this thread existed)

As for enforcing, banning the sources and the commenters is doable, and "No Participation" links are widely used - np.reddit.com links, which doesn't disable, but hides the option of voting, making it slightly harder to brigade.

Also, again, please stop with the senseless insults. It's very easy to find the right, appropriate word that literally means what you have in mind. If you use "****ter" for various kinds of people, it loses the intended meaning, and makes understanding your actual intentions harder.

Words have always been and always will be fluid. There are probably 10 different definitions for ****ter that could be listed in a separate thread. Same with any game-related term, people use it in whichever context they understand it.

To your point, I'm not insulting anyone directly. If the mods are bad, they are bad, and it is not an insult to say that. If they are playing favorites or doing things that can hurt a community, they should be insulted and step down.

If not, I can easily be reasoned with and I'm not afraid to apologize publicly or admit my own mistakes the same, when I am proven wrong. I am accountable for what I say and do.

The point I was making is that it's not necessarily better to go with the lesser of two evils when you don't really know which one is lesser. You suggest that we identify new mods - how about they identify themselves?

You need people with initiative and not with common interests to maintain balance.

I can promise you he has no evidence whatsoever unless he personally knows some reddit admin in which case the admin would probably be fired for releasing that information.

Yea, if lots of stuff is downvoted or upvoted way out of proportion than you know something is up. There's also traffic stats that show some small data that can show spikes meaning there is likely some external source linking to your subreddit. Here's emerald's: https://www.reddit.com/r/emeraldps2/about/traffic

Scrin has made a lot of enemies. Occationaly something of his gets linked on Emerald which usually increases his number of downvotes somewhat. I usually remove these threads as they offer nothing constructive to the community and encourage witch hunts. But in general most things he posts are downvoted anyway simply due to people not liking him but not due to any organized action that brigading would imply.

People can do in many ways outside of posting on reddit.

Some guys say "That ****** scr1nrusher is trying to offering a disagreeing opinion against the narative on the thread that were are pushing to make popular" and then spread the word & do some linking.


Or they go " upvote X,Y & Z's comments so people will agree with the "natural/popular" opinion"

Its not complex shaql, we are all just tribal apes trying to act like we have changed.

This is effectively saying "We know it happens, but people don't like you so its alright"

The last paragraph, I think, is why I won't join reddit. I don't care who dislikes my posts, but even the remote possibility of some group of ****wits wielding de facto censorship ability just by not liking me is disturbing. Show how many dislikes I have, but don't you dare hide the content while keeping the Prom Queen at the head of the line.

What do you want us to do about it? We can't keep people from voting. We do not have the authority.

That's perfectly fine and reasonable. The reddit system isn't perfect or for everyone.

But you do have the authority to ban people that legitimately cause problems in the community environment that make it hostile for other people.

The reddit system is a popularity contest.

And those people typically are. But voting is not grounds for ban in virtually any reddit community nor is it detectable in any way for who's doing it nor does it prevent people from just making new accounts. If you want to complain about voting go talk to the admins as there is nothing we can do on the mod level.

For smaller communities like ours, absolutely.

Oooh, Scr1n replied to me, I feel honored. Let's start with him then!

"Some guys say (...)"
That's not very specific. You said you have evidence. Please post it.

"This is effectively saying "We know it happens, but people don't like you so its alright""
No, it's saying "It's not downvote brigades, it's individual persons individually deciding to downvote you, and there is literally no way to stop or change it"

Savadrin:

"And what did you find?"
Nothing out of the ordinary. Most are common accounts, less than dozen are 'suspicious' (very new, barely active, or not very planetside-related), which is far from enough for a typical brigade. Everyone else looked like actual people, with actual opinions, and actual lives (Scr1n mentioned bots, too...)

"Words have always been and always will be fluid."
True, but I prefer to be as specific as possible, to minimize the chance of people misunderstanding me (then again, I'm a madman with a very different thought process, so that chance is much higher for me usually ;] )

"To your point, I'm not insulting anyone directly"
It sure sounds like. You're saying that "****ter" is not an insult? It sounds like one. "you'll come up with some cheesy horse**** excuse because that's what ******* do" sounds like one too, although the filter makes it worse... or possibly, better. "mouth-breathers" doesn't sound innocent either. " a bunch of spineless mods who pander to their friends or associates."? Quite insulting, imo. "******* scumlords." isn't 'directly' insulting? Then what is?

"they should be insulted"
I don't see the point of insults. For example, I see the point of calling someone who steals a "thief", but I don't see the point of calling them a "mother ******" unless they actually had coitus with their mothers.

"You suggest that we identify new mods - how about they identify themselves?"
I definitely agree, but I think they'd do that already if they really wanted to. And if they want to, they may not fully realize the consequences of modding.

Just dropping in to say that's not really accurate. When a mod comes in and starts acting unprofessional, then they get called unprofessional.

I mean look at Lamp. I don't use Reddit for the same reason as Savadrin so I don't know what Lamp has done over the years, but based on the posts I see here alone, it seems likely that Lamp is a damn good mod. It shows, too, just look at the discussion that's happening now as opposed to... whatever that was with the other mod.

Speaking of which, I must say I'm embarrassed that I gave the other mod the benefit of doubt. I started figuring maybe he just goofed a bit being in a situation he's not used to, but after looking through all the other stuff on this thread and skimming through a bit of reddit, "goof" seems to be something he consistently and reliably does every single day. Someone doesn't make so many mistakes unless they're in a position they should not be, and all the "But I've been busy" or "[insert other excuse so one doesn't have to take responsibility for their actions here]" won't change that.

Quite brave, bringing literal speech into the land of the interwebs, where bad metaphor and worse semantics reign supreme.

I did say insulting things meant for those who identify with them. I did not say "Person XYZ is ABC" because the situation hadn't quite called for it.

I would say that Wetpatch is slippery and sounds like he's full of ****, or has an agenda to settle and is weaseling his way out of making any serious counterpoints. But he admittedly came from redditside to fan the flames here, to what end?

This is obviously a playground-level fight. That said, Scr1n has an excellent point in that on a small community, if the popular group wields influence over both what is seen and can influence mod behavior, it can and eventually will be fatally toxic.

I have no seen anything from Scr1n here in Forumside to think that he has incurred this level of **** earnestly. A lot of people can be annoyed by him but he does bring up a lot of good and valid thoughts, musings, and arguments. I find this kind of person good for and healthy for the community.

The mouth-breathing jackdaws, however, who merely fling poo at everything that they disagree with, are the real cancer. They are too small-minded to do anything on their own and they cannot allow anyone other than their current idol to have a say. This is tried and true in human nature, why should I expect that a small reddit community should not be falling victim to the same?

Exactly. The PS2 community has been showing alot of signs.


Also its not just fatally toxic to the community, but also to the game.

Something.......something.....Emerald sub.

And thats where a snowball effect starts to be created.