Reddit study shows the power of community anti-harassment guidelines

TRollover and harassment are so common online that they may seem inevitable. But if things should not be like that? New research on a particular aspect of Reddit suggests that online communities are actually much more sensitive to the basic rules of civility than might be expected.

In a new community experience, the researchers found that adding a simple reminder of the forum guidelines to the top posts of the popular Web / Science forum had a significant impact on increasing the contributions of new users to the discussions. and on decreasing the amount of abusive or off-topic comments in discussions.

In an article published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesNathan Matias, Ph.D., shows that a publication stuck at the beginning of a comment thread was associated with an 8.4% higher probability that comments from new commentators would not be removed for non-compliance from the community. He also observed that the display of rules was correlated with an increased probability of 70% that first time commentators get into a discussion. Matias, an associate researcher at Princeton University, writes that the reminder may help new commentators feel more comfortable participating in the conversation by saying that the group respects certain social norms.

"R / science is one of the biggest scientific debates in the world with more than 20 million subscribers," says Matias reverse. "The importance and scope of these conversations are conducive to conflict, harassment, and other forms of prejudicial comment, particularly on controversial issues."

But the results of this study provide early evidence that even in a massive web forum, mere suggestions can have a significant effect.

"By providing information about the behavior of other people, they also have a significant effect on the decision of a newcomer to participate for the first time in a community," he writes in the paper. In short, the reminder has helped newcomers understand what type of behavior is tolerated and not tolerated, not just of them, but of all others.

Matias collected data for this study over a period of one month in 2016, when r / science had about 13 million subscribers (this number is now over 21 million). To carry out this experiment, the Matias CivilServant software, to which the moderators of r / science granted subreddit moderator privileges, automatically published the community guidelines reminders in some threads and then observed how the moderator privileges the subreddit. behavior of commentators in these threads compared to those who are not. .

"In our first conversations, members of the scientific / scientific community were expecting very different results," Matias said. "It's the big part of citizen science experiments that allow communities to test rival hypotheses and discover the answers themselves."

Piper Below, Ph.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine, was one of the people in the community who had helped verify these assumptions. As a science and science moderator, she helped manage the relationship between Matias and the rest of the group. Below tells reverse that when Matias proposed this project, it seemed a natural fit.

"As a moderator of science, we are all scientists in one way or another. So when someone interests us, we are interested in studying science and science, so it is quite natural for us to want to entertain such an idea. of collaboration, "she says.

But it is more than mere scientific curiosity that has led the moderators to cooperate with this experience.

Since r / science is subreddit with the sixth largest number of subscribers on Reddit – on thousands of subreddits on the entire site – improving the quality of the discussions is the best way to ensure that the main objective of the forum remains intact.

As explained below, the more all users abide by the community guidelines, the better the user experience for all. And at the same time, the more people adhere badly to the rules, the less the forum becomes useful.

This is especially important for new users. From Below, one of the most frustrating experiences for users is coming to a message on which they are excited to learn more, then to see a so-called "Cemetery of comments" – a vast thread, filled with hundreds or thousands of comments that moderators have removed for not following the instructions of the community. She hopes that this study will help her and her fellow moderators to develop new ways of fostering constructive discussions.

"If we could find approaches to website interface, presentation or content design, visibility of rules, et cetera, that would improve Reddit user compliance with our rules, this would result in fewer deleted comments and a more attractive commenting environment for users. reader, she said. "It's something we take very seriously to science, so everything we can do to create a space in which commentators feel they understand the rules and how to comment on those guidelines. is only good for creating a really positive and active forum. for scientific communication. "

Matias emphasizes that the newcomer experience is essential to the health of subreddit, because the wide variety of levels of scientific understanding is the strength of the forum.