I agree, it would be nice to see a slightly more defined 'self-post' culture here which focused on presenting ideas for debate. There are a few things that I think would interest the community here and I have been thinking about writing a little more in depth on but it feels like it could be a bit of a waste compiling something for an hour or two only to have it buried and nobody read it.

The thing we definitely shouldn't be doing is relying on the Alex Jones and Jeff Renses of the world, they act as a form of centralisation an potentially are therefore a weakness in terms of co-opting, blackmail and being a placed agent.

Exactly, this sub has turned into a playground for people who post the same crazy blogs and links and then a swarm of other users come in and turn the comment section into "see this is why conspiracy and the users here are idiots'.

A self-post culture needs to be strong here, yet it seems like most self-posts are either immediately downvoted and never make the view, or they become hives of snarky comments and arguments that have nothing to do with the post.

A lot of times, the people making self-posts will get so discouraged by this that they never do it again. This has happened to me many times, and a couple times I left this sub for over 6 months before deciding to post again.

Another interesting thing is that in the 20 or so self-posts I have made, it is always something off-topic that becomes the source for ridicule. Like the metaphor I used, or the wording, or a single typo or grammatical mistake.

I have found, truly, that if anyone wanted to come into any thread and find an obscure reason to argue, they could. Because there is no way to make a post that is 100% perfect and there never will be. That is why this is a conspiracy site, because we are discussing topics that are going to have blank spaces here and there.

I have no problem with disagreements or counter-arguments, I welcome them. But what I cannot stand is when threads become petty arguments about things that are not even related to the topic.

A self-post culture needs to be strong here, yet it seems like most self-posts are either immediately downvoted and never make the view

This has become significantly more common within the last 6 months or so. Not just self-posts but any "good" post these days seems to have way less chance of reaching the top 5. Some don't ever reach the front page at all.

By design, it appear. The shill vote rigging destroys the front page here.

Those are some really good points, I frequent a few forums that are under direct targeting from JTRIG style trolls such as the BitcoinTalk forum and you see the same sort of hostile culture. My suspicion is that it is an effective tactic for quelling discussion, it discourages new members and prevents original discourse.

We have chunks of the 'troll' play book but even then their tactics are highly effective particularly for sliding and suppression. We appear to be at an impasse where either the trolls will take over or the meek shall inherit the internet.

Personally I think one good way of promoting intelligent, rational discourse is microtipping to reward people who are polite and interesting. Let me know if you need help collecting it or want to know more about Bitcoin.

$1 /u/changetip private

Wow, thanks so much!

Don't worry about it, just think of it as motivation to keep posting and stopping the spread of idiocy and hostility in this sub.

Enjoy a bad self-post too

i used to self post to this sub all the time (with my alt that was banned), but now I don't any more because they are always downvoted. Expressing your opinion about something here can get you seriously into trouble

Stop fearing downvotes. They're just Internet points, they don't sting. (And on Reddit, they're often a clear indication that you're onto something.)

Edit: Also, if you haven't already, go into your profile and enable "show a dagger (†) on comments voted controversial" - you see those little † next to your heavily downvoted comments? Those are the good ones. :)

Exactly. One of my past accounts drew some attention and I began getting harassed daily by a creepy group of users with no history. Of course, it could have been the 'tards just playing around and fucking with me for shits and giggles. But then again...

Either way, it was not cool.

And that was only the side effect. While I was actually posting and trying to have decent conversations, all of the trolls came out of the woodwork. And once they make a note of your username, vote-brigading just becomes a part of your life. And unfortunately, when all of your comments get immediately hit into the negatives, even real users began to get confused as to whether or not you are genuine. Its all very psychological.

I mean, look at my comment in this very thread currently at zero:

Thats a great idea. If the folks at r/worldnews can make a filtering system, why can't we?

I would love to come here and immediately be able to filter out particular subjects that pop up every single day. Or, like you said, links to someone's blog.

Why does that comment warrant downvotes? What could possibly be controversial about it?

I guess you have to not care about things like comment karma if you want to have a real conversation on here. That's become my attitude anyway.

Me too, that is one of the main reasons I started using new accounts. My main account was many years old and had crazy comment karma. And then I realized that those imaginary points were actually really making me hold back and not be as honest as I wanted to be.

Its amazing how our minds work. Its just like what happens when we believe someone is watching or listening and we subconsciously begin to censor ourselves.

Hi, did the mods here come back to you with an answer to your request? I think it could really make a positive difference.

Yeah, one of the mods is talking to me as we speak.

Fantastic, hope it happens

Actually, the mod was talking to me about making a post encouraging users to vote more (based on one I made last week) and it will be stickied. I am not sure how likely the particular idea of this thread will be, I am getting the usual "censorship is a slippery slope" theme.

People care about imaginary reddit points?

This is why democracy is a failure....

I think we need a filter where any topic that is just a link and not an actual intellectual idea that's meant to spark meaningful conversation can be hidden. Almost everything i see on this sub is just a link with a bunch of sheep herding comments that follow, i didn't sign up for this sub to read other websites ideas.

Or [News] so we don't get the "What's the conspiracy?" comments.

But then you'd have to have a filter for the source of the news, for example [MSM] for CNN, Fox, [Alt] for Corbett Report, etc.

Why would that matter? It's all sensationalism.

I find James Corbett to be fair and balanced

Thats a great idea. If the folks at r/worldnews can make a filtering system, why can't we?

I would love to come here and immediately be able to filter out particular subjects that pop up every single day. Or, like you said, links to someone's blog.

Make it happen mods :p

I'd LOVE a tag and a sort system like r/science. It'd be great to either see posts that interest me, or to hide ones that don't.

I made one, yay!

edit: A self-post, not a tag.

I think one of the way "shills" work is by simply owning the top comment chain. Many people only look at the first comment, and its replies, and figure that comment to be the "best", and "correct" one. Normally the comment says something like "this is why nobody takes this sub seriously", "I have a tinfoil hat for you", or something like that that distracts from the damaging topic at hand. Or it is blatantly pro-establishment, posting some info about the "official story"(written by the accused, or their friends), that casts doubt on anybody who doesn't believe what the gov't tells them.

I can already see it now: post gets tagged "serious" and then the trolls come out of the woodwork.

"This is what /r/conspiracy considers serious?!"

"What could possibly be serious about chemtrails lololol"

etc.

And those comments would be instantly deleted. What the trolls want is attention and they want to post ammunition for their voting brigades to come in and inflate.

The best thing we can do is leave them with nothing. They HATE that the conversation would be allowed to go on without their interference.

And those comments would be instantly deleted.

That would be nice, but I won't hold my breath for that sort of moderation to actually happen here. There seems to be a faux concern about censorship that has taken over any idea of moderating shitposts at all.

What you said is so true. And that sucks.

Content control is a slippery slope, I see plenty of things that I would like to remove, but that would lead to inevitable cries of censorship. What we like to do is let the users decide what should make it to the top of the page. If you want to do a good write up/self-post encouraging more users to visit the new submissions page then I would definitely present it to the other mods for a sticky nomination. I think you make several valid points here.

If I had my way I would remove the majority of UFO/ancient alien submissions made to the sub, but I can't do that without alienating some of our userbase or being accused of being some sort of malicious government censorship agent, when in reality I just find UFO conspiracies to be childish and amateur. As a matter of fact I would even go as far as saying that some of those UFO video submissions are submitted here by the conspiratard crowd and brigaded to the top of the page to make us seem like a less serious sub, of course I have no way of proving that.

But I digress, write up a good self post encouraging users to visit the new page more often and I'll nominate it to be stickied atop the page for a few days and if its agreed upon your sticky will go up and you'll see the quality of the front page go up drastically. That way front page submissions are better and the mods won't hear cries of censorship either.

Here is what happened when I recently made a self-post about users visiting new more.

This was not a pleasant experience for me and I seriously contemplated leaving the sub for another 6 months.

Okay, the Russ Baker AMA is going to be up for a few more days for visibility, this Sunday evening when that AMA has run its course I will put this submission before the rest of the mod team for stickying. If you log into Reddit on Sunday night or Monday morning and this submission is stickied atop the front page, you'll know who to thank.

I think that self posts about visiting the new page should be stickied every 2-3 months just to remind /r/conspiracy users how important it is that the new submissions page not be manipulated in any way.

Let me reword it. Because a ton of people jumped all over the wording and basically had a field day because I compared it to a "battle".

Lets try to give them less ammunition this time around. I can revise the post.

I think that's a great idea, and thank you for taking a genuine interest in the state of the sub. Users like you keep this place interesting, don't let the shills get you down.

I know what its like to have yourself invested in your own self-post. You feel like those are your words, thoughts and iterations that are being ridiculed by a seemingly endless cadre of shills, trolls and conspiratards. Try to look at it this way, your iterations are provoking this response from these shills because they don't want the users here to be emboldened enough to submit their own original content to this sub. They don't want this place to be one that is friendly to original thoughts, they want you to be scared of criticism.

In short, they don't want anyone here to get enough confidence in themselves by way of positive feedback from the /r/conspiracy community because then they might have another James Corbett on their hands to worry about.

karmawhore

If I had my way I would remove the majority of UFO/ancient alien submissions made to the sub

The fact that people can't see the difference between this and removing obvious troll posts is part of the problem.

The focus should be on moderating users and content that are intended solely to disrupt the sub.

Conflating that with removing stuff you personally don't think is worthy is a MASSIVE part of this issue.

I sort-of agree, but I'd like to caution that this can be a slippery slope.

On the one hand, this sub will always be prone to scrutiny and subversion. And cleaning it up would be nice.

On the other hand, first: I already think we have a high level of discourse, at least compared to any other news or political sub.

Second, and more importantly, any censorship has the danger of being used against the community. Even simply the application of the rule you're suggesting, while perhaps streamlining the discourse could alienate potentially excellent users.

I personally think the community sorts itself rather well with the voting system and I don't mind off-shoot arguments so long as they're not just petty or adversarial. And I certainly don't mind the occasional joke in this often very heavy sub.

The common problem arises, who decides what's appropriate discourse? I wish we had better controls or support from reddit admin in general. But since that's clearly not on the horizon I think either everyone or no one should get veto on the comments. Which is basically the voting system.

I agree, it would be good. Personally, I would like to be able to throw out 'crazy' hypotheses to see if they have any traction without immediately getting negativized karma and no visibility. I guess people think that whenever an idea is 'too ludicrous' it ought to be downvoted so as to not besmirch the fine reputation of /r/conspiracy and its users as schizophrenic extremists.

I guess that's valid, but without free discussion, how can we hope to crack the puzzle?

As much as the discourse on here supposedly seeks truth, I feel like the majority of the conspiracies presented here climb barely a rung above the MSM-promulgated fairytales.

If we can't make hypotheses and have them fairly evaluated, this sub is just an RSS-feed of the "top conspiracy blogs".

OP, are you the same person as /u/George_Tenet?

No.

Not removed, but ignored by choice. Censor yourself not others

What do you mean?

Democracy is a failure. Reddit is (basically) a democracy. That is why good threads don't make it to the top. What are you complaining about, really?